After the Prince Andrew scandal, it’s time to
slim down the monarchy
Simon
Jenkins
Royal offspring are accidents waiting to happen. Far
better to cut down the throne to an heir and a spare
Fri 14 Jan
2022 17.03 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/14/prince-andrew-scandal-slim-down-monarchy
The royal
family is engaged in frantic damage limitation ahead of the Queen’s platinum
jubilee this summer. The Duke of York’s court case, which could turn out to be
a high-octane festival of royal humiliation, risks contaminating the
celebrations. This should have nothing to do with Britain’s monarchy, except
that it has everything to do with it. The essence of monarchy is its image;
right now, the royal family’s public appearance looks messy.
The
lifestyles of the Queen’s son and grandson, the dukes of York and Sussex, have
acquired the aura of a Shakespearean tragedy appropriate to their titles. The
Duke of Sussex has done nothing wrong; as yet, neither has the Duke of York.
Prince Harry was merely seeking to profit from his only marketable asset –
royalty. Prince Andrew used the same asset to win unsavoury friendships, one of
which laid him open to what he regards as outrageous blackmail, as yet untested
in a court of law. His desperate hope was that a New York judge would disallow
Virginia Giuffre’s suit. But American lawyers do not volunteer to starve.
The Queen
may not have power, but she can wield tools of emphasis. Just as the Duke of
Sussex was shorn of even the slightest royal status, so his uncle has been
stripped of titles, badges, regiments, charities and patronages. Like a
disgraced medieval saint, he is cast out of heaven into the jaws of hell. His
fault is not a matter of right or wrong – he may yet prove a victim of a gross
unfairness – but of embarrassment, shame and misery, caused to his mother and
family and the institution they represent.
Monarchy
depends for public support not on votes but on a fragile, intangible
underpinning of public opinion. It needs to be loved for its dignities, its
ceremonies and its anniversaries. It must be beyond criticism, pure as the
driven snow. It can be tedious and boring. The one thing it cannot be is
scandalous – least of all sexually scandalous. Sex was always a royal taboo;
for royalty was about heredity, as James II and Edward VIII learned to their
cost.
As for
Prince Charles, he has spent a quarter of a century purifying his image after
his own purgatory years. He has carefully fashioned himself as a genial and
blameless middle-aged monarch in waiting. As his moment approaches, the last
thing he needs is his brother’s alleged antics flashed in headlines round the
world. As he found with his second son, he must preserve royalty on its eerie,
untainted pedestal.
How a
nation embodies its statehood is bequeathed to it by history. A virtue of
inherited monarchy – perhaps its sole virtue – is that it takes succession
beyond argument. It also puts beyond argument any suggestion that the monarch
should exercise political power. If monarchy strays into politics or
controversy – or shame – it ceases to embody its nation.
That was
the fundamental risk taken by the Queen – reportedly against her better
judgment – when she decided in the 1960s to depart from the custom of other
postwar European monarchs and present Britain’s monarchy as a “royal family”.
While monarchs in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands were retreating
into bourgeois semi-obscurity – where they have wisely stayed – the Queen
turned monarchy into a family firm under a blaze of televised publicity.
Royal
offspring – who were then still children – became instant celebrities. A cast
list of entitled princes, princesses, dukes and duchesses prowled the gossip
columns and monarchy magazines. Inevitably they became accidents waiting to
happen. It was hard to see these junior royals as anything but victims as they
stumbled through life’s perils, but the chief risk was to monarchy itself. So
it has proved.
The single
best decision Prince Charles could make on assuming the throne is, quite
simply, to abolish the royal family. He should go Scandinavian. Monarchs do not
die young. The throne needs only an heir and a spare. The rest of the family
should become commoners and lead normal lives. Perhaps inadvertently, that
process started this week.
Simon
Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
No comments:
Post a Comment