The House of Windsor in the Modern World
It transpires that prior to her death, our late Queen had been ill for some time. Bone marrow cancer by all accounts. The end is rarely easy irrespective of privilege and position; even divine right and executive religious roles could not protect Elizabeth. Nor would she have wanted them to. It was Charles’s turn. In the final few years of her life the Queen had done all she could to cushion the mantel of her son’s kingship: his second wife was given the royal seal of approval, ‘it is my sincere wish that, when thattime comes, Camilla will be known as Queen Consort’; Harry and Meghan’s Oprah truth-bomb was packaged in hallmark, conciliatory Elizabeth II speak, ‘recollections may vary’; and her astonishing longevity and legacy guaranteed a smooth start for thenew King. Anti-monarchists were persona non grata during Her Majesty’s extended period of mourning, which was alwaysdestined to neatly overlap with Charles’s accession to the throne (one of hereditary monarchy’s many survival mechanisms).
It is of great personal tribute to the Queen that in old age the public revered their sovereign not only more than all other members of the Royal Family, but above the institution of monarchy itself. In her quiet, steadfast way the Queen had accidentally broken herhusband Philip’s oft repeated rule – Elizabeth had become the star of the show, bigger even than the monarchy she embodied, hervery essence synonymous with all that was celebrated, nostalgic and valued in Britain’s recent troubled lexicon.
Writing this in early 2023, six months after her death, there is still no appetite for a critical appraisal of Her Majesty, but rather a hankering for the soft, benign glow that her ancient shadow cast over retrospective ideas of Britishness. Likewise, on the subject of her relationship with Philip, despite all the swirling rumours and The Crown’s less than subtle insinuations, the tendency, for the moment at least, is to leave well alone. As one senior royal commentator put it, their endurance, all that the couple represented, ‘masked’ Britain’s ‘national decline.’ Certainly their brand, tying us as it did back to the high-noon of Britishness in 1945, packed a punch on the global stage until the very end.
And Elizabeth and Philip’s staggering endurance did something more than that. It neatly refuted calls to find an alternative way forward. Why change what isn’t broken? While they were alive the Queen and Philip were reassuring proof that the old way was the best way. Certainly it was the path of least resistance. But that mantra was always going to be harder for the younger generation of royals to carry forward alone. They lacked the credibility. They belonged to a different era, one where identity politics in itsmany forms is a major rallying cry. This became increasingly apparent in the Queen’s final years. Remember the then Cambridges, William and Kate (a white princess dressed in lily-white), parading on the back of a Land Rover in Jamaica? Uproar followed. No matter that they were mirroring the movements of the Queen decades earlier for Granny’s Platinum Jubilee. Times had changed, if not for Elizabeth, then certainly for her successors, and yet so much remained the same behind palace walls. Perhaps the most fatal flaw was Prince Harry and Meghan’s abrupt exit. They were told they could not have one foot in and one foot out of the Royal Family. There could be no half-way house. That was not how it was done. A clean break was preferable. Or so it seemed in January 2020 after the now infamous ‘Sandringham Summit’.
Two more ‘truth bombs’ later from the ‘House of Montecito’ and, whatever your inclinations, it is hard not to feel relief that the Queen and Philip missed this latest family drama. Apparently, Elizabeth understood Harry’s need to tell his story. Perhaps. Certainly she loved her ‘fun’ grandson and he loved her. During his recent disembowelling of family secrets in Netflix and bookform, Harry kept the memory of ‘Granny’ sacrosanct. Well, almost. There was one very telling scene in his autobiography Spare when he sought the permission of his grandmother, his Queen and his Commander-in-Chief, to marry the girl he loved. In a stubblefi eld, mid-shoot, he steeled himself. Hemmed in by her dogs and exalted position, watching her stoop to retrieve dead birds, and walk towards the royal Range Rover, here was Harry the uncertain outsider. ‘I’ve been told, that, er, that I have to ask your permission before I can propose.’ Have to? Couldn’t he have framed it a little more delicately? Something about wanting her blessing? And gracious permission? The Queen out-foxed him. ‘Well, then, I suppose I have to say yes.’ Harry was briefly stumped, but the problem ran deeper than that: ‘Did she recognise I was afraid? . . . Did she realise that, no matter how much I loved her, I was often nervous in her presence?’ he mused.
There they were, two incriminating little words: ‘afraid’ and ‘nervous.’ Harry loved his grandmother, he respected her, but he was intimidated by her. Just as Charles had felt intimidated when he was young. The Queen’s parenting and grandparenting role was compromised by her position as monarch, or at least altered by it. What Harry referred to in a podcast as a ‘cycle’ of ‘pain and suffering’, including presumably the lack of intimacy (he never did hug his Granny), was also a vital shield behind which the Queen could hide. Emotional abundance is time consuming and can prove messy.
One can only take so much. The last survivors from a pre-war generation, Elizabeth and Philip retained old fashioned habits. Occasionally they came under fire for being glum, tactless, unfeeling even, but the tide of time was on their side. They reminded us of our own grandparents, those bastions of rectitude, good behaviour and standards. Now, for the first time, without this protective veneer of retro-civility, the Royal Family is much more exposed. Harry has done his level best to make sure of that, and our voracious press have helped him on his way. The Windsors have become new vehicles for our dog-whistle politics; apparently nowadays you are either pro- Sussex (unlikely if you’re British and over forty) or pro-the Royal Family.
With several newspapers led by the Daily Mail and populist media players like Piers Morgan and Dan Wootton articulating avoluble loathing of Harry and Meghan, and by default a love of (almost) all other Windsors, the core principle of an impartialmonarchy suddenly feels compromised. I have challenged both men regarding their stance live on air. They pushed back with misleading accusations that I am ‘pro-Sussex’ and entirely missed the point. In today’s noisy world of grievance politics andmisinformation, it is vital that the Royal Family appear above the fray; taking sides is not only futile, it is highly problematic for Britain’s constitutional monarchy.
Elizabeth and Philip understood that. The late Queen’s potency was her ability to speak for everyone while saying almost nothing.This political vacuum gave platforms less sympathetic to the monarchy very little to go on. Assuming a neutral role wasalways going to be harder for King Charles (he’d endured seventy-three years of waiting – and sometimes oversharing – in the wings). But recently the overt trench warfare, exacerbated by social media, that’s infected public discourse, pitching hatred and bile towards the attention-seeking, litigious Sussexes, has made Charles’s job much harder. A mild-mannered man, a father, and now a king, he has accidently become a cause célèbre in an unpleasant, polarised debate. With a state-funded coronation just aroundthe corner, that matters. The modern monarchy has long relied on the support of the media (no matter how much Philip chafed), but when so much of the contemporary press is only concerned with emotive point-scoring in front of a divided audience, have they become more of a hindrance than a help to the new King and his vision? That question goes beyond the remit of this article. But we do know that the challenges facing today’s monarch are far greater than those confronting our late Queen on the eve of her coronation seventy years ago, which is ironic given Elizabeth’s anxiety ahead of the big event.
In 1953, the Queen was a slip of girl who had just lost her father, a mere ‘child’ according to Prime Minister Winston Churchill.But despite her tender years and lack of experience, together with Philip, the pair resonated with thousands of young former servicemen and women keen to prove the post-war world was a better place. It helped that the royal couple looked so damn good. For a new multi-media age Elizabeth and Philip were picture-perfect; glossy and fresh, off they went in late 1953 circumnavigatingthe globe on their first Commonwealth tour. Philip in his striking naval uniform, Elizabeth with her coronation gown carefully stowed in one of many trunks. ‘God save the Queen!’ roared the crowds, and they really meant it.
It is important to remember that heady optimistic story, but it is also worth bearing in mind that the couple’s extraordinary longevity and popularity helped disguise just how much has changed over the last seventy years. Stuck in the chronological hinterland of a different era, hereditary monarchy under Charles has a harder, less clearly defined job to do. Only time will tell how ‘uneasy lies the head’ that wears the crown in a modern world. As for his parents, their lives, so generously lived, are a tantalising memorial of how things were just a few decades ago.
Dr. Tessa Dunlop is a Sunday Times bestselling historian and author of Elizabeth & Philip: A Story of Young Love, Marriage and Monarchy.
