Nearly all British government documents are made public after 20 years – except royal ones. The monarchy is a hoarder of family secrets, no matter how many bygones have passed. (What’s that? Who had sympathetic views of Hitler?)
But here’s a great big stonking one that you can have for nothing: It’s men of the House of Windsor who have the actual royal blood, the genetic inheritance, the lingering hint of Habsburg in their DNA. And it’s the men who, for the next century, have and will make a divine commitment to god with a ring.
Except that’s a huge furphy, a massive bit of pretend. In reality, the people who are truly carrying Crown Inc., who are sherpa-ing the monarchy into the 21st century, are women.
And by ‘women’ I largely mean Kate the Princess of Wales. (Though just behind her we have Princess Anne, Queen Camilla and Sophie the Duchess of Edinburgh. Sisters are doing if for themselves …)
But Windsor, we have a problem, after news broke on Thursday that the princess has been hospitalised in London and has undergone abdominal surgery. Palace sources have told the Times that she is “doing well”, which tells us precisely nothing.
Kate will now spend two weeks at the expensivo private London Clinic – the Ivy of IV stands, the San Lorenzo of stethoscopes – before returning home to Adelaide Cottage where she will convalesce for three months.
And so, before 2024 has even really had a chance to get going, Buckingham Palace is facing a hitherto unthinkable scenario: Having to muddle through for an extended period of time sans Kate. All of which is a bit like suggesting that Taylor Swift’s Eras world tour continue without her while she stays home to buy whimsical valances for Travis Kelce’s home gym.
Not only does the loss of Kate from the royal starting line-up present a huge palace headache in terms of manpower and staffing levels – only further driving home what a practical loss the exit of Harry and Meghan The Duke and Duchess of Sussex was – but there is something much bigger going on here too.
Subtract the princess from the picture, squint a bit, step back, tilt your head and the image is … oh my god my eyes!
Take Kate away and what view of the royal family are you left with? That they are nothing more than a gaggle of well-intentioned, unelected, public servants who can make small talk to an Olympic level; people who don’t mind standing around drinks reception clutching glasses of room temperature tap water and politely enquiring, “Have you come far?”
Remove the princess from the equation and the royal family suddenly loses all of its razzle dazzle, its fairydust, its seductiveness. PFFFT. Gone. The Princess of Wales, without any one of us twigging, has unintentionally witchily glamoured the world and that has now been stripped away.
Without her particular brand of sparkle, the remaining working members of The Firm are all just so painfully drab. Dull. Grey. They don’t have ‘It’ factor so much as an abundance of ‘meh’ about them.
This week’s Kate health crisis has revealed just how dependent Buckingham Palace is on her to make the nation swoon over royalty and how reliant their brand has become on her charm and the mythical quality she brings.
As every lovelorn dumpee slumped over a rapidly emptying bottle of Whispering Angel can tell you, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. And with Kate gone, at least for a bit, the Palace now finds itself in some dire straits.
The royal family is now facing a trial by blandness, of the actual blood members of the outfit struggling to in any way hold the nation’s interest, making it even harder for them to regularly demonstrate just how pluckily they are working for the UK.
Ask yourself: When was the last time that Princess Anne or Edward and Sophie the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh scored their own front pages? When they could be counted on to shift newspapers or to garner clicks?
Suddenly we are facing down the barrel of months of Kate-free engagements, the sum total of upcoming glamour now entirely down to Anne and her collection of hardy drip-dry worsted suits. (Coming this year. My 800-page book all about the multitudinous wonders of horsey Princess Royal called 50 Shades of Hay.)
We will now be denied seeing Kate on the BAFTAs red carpet in February, her handing out shamrocks on St Patrick’s Day, her attending the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey, and she and Prince William, the Prince of Wales jetting off on two official international trips, including to Rome.
Sigh. Just imagine the exquisite looks Kate and her dresser Natasha Archer would have planned for her for time in the Eternal City.
But Kate represents more to the royal family than just being a nice decorative thingamabob. If you think about it really, she is the heart of things. Now that the late Queen has died, it’s the Princess of Wales who is The Mum.
What we are all about to go through, I think, is a sort of Emperor’s new clothes lite. Charles is a substantive, impressive man who has achieved more in his royal career than anyone, ever since someone in the dark mists of history decided to let someone have a go at being King and sat them on a nice rock.
However, respect and a certain admiration might not be enough to really keep the Charles & Co. going in an age where royalty has long strayed over into entertainment territory.
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For the monarchy to succeed they not only need to be doing good, meaningful things but we want them to put on a bit of a lovely-jubbly show. The King is the bread but without Kate, where are the circuses?
For the next three months, the House of Windsor has no choice but to, as Winston Churchill used to say, KBO. “Keep buggering on”. So, in 2024, that’s what all of us are going to have to do. KBO baby. KBO.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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2024-01-20 19:06:13Z
CBMinQFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L2NlbGVicml0eS1saWZlL3JveWFscy9rYXRlLW1pZGRsZXRvbi1zZWNyZXQta2luZy1jaGFybGVzLWNhbi1uby1sb25nZXItaGlkZS9uZXdzLXN0b3J5LzEyZDYzZTEyMjZhMDNhNTQ1MmRkOTJkOTU3OGI1Y2Iy0gEA
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