For centuries, nay millennia, Kings, and to a lesser degree Queens (feminism, Dove ads and the Spice Girls hadn’t been invented yet), could pretty much do what they liked. Hunt peasants, eat goose in bed in their underwear, or change an entire country’s religion willy-nilly because they fancied a bit of Boleyn totty.
Then, the English barons clocked they actually had all the money and made King John pull his head in and sat him down to sign this thing they had come up with called magna carta. For the 808 years since, the actual power – and immunity from consequences – of the throne has dwindled such that they can’t even get a second class rail ticket, gratis and Princess Anne has a criminal conviction. (Really. In 2002 her dog bit two children.)
Enter Prince William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales.
This week it became clear how willing the prince is to test how much the public will let him get away with, with historian and biographer Dr Tessa Dunlop appearing on UK tele to argue that William has become “untouchable”.
On Tuesday, UK time, William managed to panic the bejeezus out of the internet with his decision to stay home rather than go to his godfather King Constantine of the Hellenes’ memorial service, as Kate continues to recover from abdominal surgery.
Kensington Palace said his no-show was due to a “personal matter”, two words that tell us precisely nothing, nor rule out anything. (Though they did later add that Kate was “doing well”.)
The prince’s last-minute cancellation set off an avalanche of paranoia and speculation about whether the palace was hiding the ‘truth’ about Kate’s health. (Some poor courtier is currently peering, perplexedly, at their screen having Googled ‘Brazilian butt lift’.)
The simple fact that William scrapped going less than an hour beforehand and that he must have known this would cause a meltdown, suggest that he does not really give a fig about the consequences.
The day after Kategate took over the internet, ITV’s royal editor Chris Ship and Dr Dunlop appeared on Good Morning Britain to discuss the issue.
Dr Dunlop’s read was a fascinating one, arguing that after the absconding of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to virtuously make their own chia puddings and hustle for paying work, William and Kate no longer had any “competition”.
“The predominantly right wing press have pushed William and Kate up onto this incredible, untouchable pedestal. Really I think to an extent, understandably, he feels he can do what he likes. We’ve made him untouchable,” Dr Dunlop said.
Before we fall down any rabbit holes considering the culpability of the press (who us? BLAMELESS, I tell you. Cough) the reality is that yes, the Waleses are essentially “untouchable”.
Just look at the evidence. The couple, long having converted to orthodox ‘normalcy’ as their in-house religion, take time off work for all of their children's’ school holidays each year – all 19 weeks – an extraordinary amount of time away from the palace salt mines.
Yes, their flagship, big picture, bells-and-whistles personal initiatives, the Early Years work, the Earth Shot Prize and Homewards, William’s initiative to combat homelessness, are bang on, first-rate, exciting stuff. But the couple has had no compunction about jettisoning the unglamorous, graft of royalty, dumping it in the capable, generally overlooked hands of Princess Anne, and Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.
Last year, King Charles performed 516 engagements, Anne hit 410, Queen Camilla put down PD James long enough to do 218 and the Duke of Gloucester got in 190. They are, respectively, 75 years old, 73, 76 and 79.
And William and Kate? They managed 175 and 134 engagements.
When a nearly 80-year-old duke who is 31st in the line of succession is managing to squeeze in more official outings than the next King, it’s not a particularly good look.
But William seems to feel entitled to make, and play, by his own rules.
I think, aside from Megxit and Fleet Street, what has made the 41-year-old “untouchable” is one simple factor: He picked Kate.
The extent to which the Prince of Wales’ current success is down to the Princess of Wales simply cannot be underestimated. You don’t have to take my word for it – he is the most popular member of the royal family, according to YouGov polling, most quarters beating out all of his relatives, including his wife.
The masses were in raptures, largely, when the prince and princess produced, one, two, three, children and then proceeded to give the royal family a young, sunny and wholesome image.
There is also what Kate represents. Perhaps on a psychological level, William, in choosing a normal wife (albeit one from a wealthy background) he married an avatar of the people, choosing normalcy over nobility.
The Princess of Wales might now be viewed as a wholly establishment creature but that’s a relatively recent development. For the first decade of the Waleses’ relationship, right up until the Archbishop of Canterbury pronounced the couple husband and wife and was getting ready to take his cassock off, Kate was seen as a parvenu and a horribly bourgeois sort who had somehow gotten her nicely moisturised hands on ‘their’ prince.
She was an outsider, as hard as that is to believe, and that simple fact has had out-size consequences.
Arriving at Kensington Palace on day one with a Longchamp bag full of nearly sharpened pencils and a packed lunch, Kate had not only enjoyed an emotionally healthy, stable upbringing, but she was gloriously free of any sort of insidious sense of entitlement.
The princess might not have shown any particular keenness for plaque unveilings and such, but hey. The public clearly connect with her and respond to her in a way that they don’t with many of the ‘blood’ members of Crown Inc.
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Kate has given William not only the emotional support base and healthy family life he lacked but she is an invaluable asset.
Unfortunately, that ‘asset’ is currently on the couch, recovering, and, I’d hope, having quite the giggle about the hysteria and havoc her husband managed to cause this week. That is, of course, in between deciding what sort of butt lift to get next.
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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2024-03-01 19:10:54Z
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