Where is she? There is only one thing worth worrying about this week, one bedevilling question to be answered: On which Mediterranean resort town’s sun lounge is the Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland currently lolling, just Camilla and her Boot’s bottle of coconut tanning oil?
They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned and now, it would seem that Her Majesty is tanning while the royal family teeters ever close to a tipping point – which is really saying something after the four and a bit years that the House of Windsor has been through.
King Charles is being treated for an unspecified form of cancer; Camilla is off on hols with a rum drink; Kate the Princess of Wales is recuperating after undergoing abdominal surgery, taking at least three, but possibly up to six, months off; the internet has gone off the deep end, adamant some vast conspiracy is afoot thus sparking much hand-wringing about how much the Waleses should be saying and privacy; Prince William has whittled his diary down to nothing to stay home; and preening useless glob Prince Andrew managed to land a starring role at the memorial service of King Constantine of the Hellenes. Oh goodie.
Here we are, only 18 months and change on from the death of the Queen Elizabeth and the handing over of the reins and reign to lifelong intern and all-round trier Charles and things are in disarray.
Fine. Chance, the universe, fate is to blame for a lot of this – His Majesty’s cancer, whatever issue Kate was treated for – but this is also a tale about leadership and the King’s decades-in-the-honing vision for Crown Inc.
At the heart of this mess are four words that His Majesty must now dread having ever uttered – Slimmed Down Royal Family. Come the aughties, the advent of flip phones, hipster jeans and Shakira, at some point god’s gift to hedgerow preservation decided that the royal family was in danger of starting to look like it a bloated gaggle of spongers, many of whom enjoyed gratis grace-and-favour homes and never doing a lick of public duties.
For example, in 2019, the last time that the full complement appeared on the balcony for Trooping the Colour, there were 39 people. Hands up – who can tell me who Albert Windsor, Zenouska Mowatt, Lyla Gilman or Estella Taylor are?*
Enter Charles’ blueprint for his SDRF™, which would see only those in the top spots take centre stage and to officially represent the crown.
The world got its first look at this during the late Queen’s 2012 Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Gone from the Buckingham Palace balcony were the dozens of second and third and fourth cousins so removed from the throne that they probably had to wear name tags to identify one another.
In its place were just Charles and Camilla, William and Kate and Prince Harry who was four years away from meeting future wife Meghan Markle and having to learn to spell ‘unconscious bias’.
(On that day, just the palace, how many footmen do you think it took to hold an indignant, red-faced Andrew back from forcefully joining them?)
The fundamental flaw in this SDRF plan was that it was predicated on those senior members working with all the zeal of Princess Anne amped up on Red Bull. It did not take into account how greatly the loss of Her late Majesty would be felt, sickness, self-immolation via Newsnight interview or a duke deciding one day that he was better off doing this thing called ‘Job’ than having to play obedient second fiddle.
Charles’ grand scheme did not factor in ego, resentment, self-regarding plonkerism, and the inevitable ravages of time. The end result is where we are today: After nearly two months of rolling crises, the royal family looks threadbare, depleted and wan.
The consequences of what now looks like the King’s short-sightedness are currently on full display, with Prince Edward and Sophie the Duchess of Edinburgh, two immensely well-meaning triers who make vanilla look too vanilla, and Anne left to carry the whole show. Oh dear.
Charles’ SDRF, which was meant to make the monarchy look all streamlined and efficient, has instead left them looking pallid and limp. What seemed like a great idea back in 2012 has now, accidentally, temporarily, essentially hobbled the royal family, who are starting to get the whiff of the lame duck about them.
Things now seem to happen to the royal family leaving them regularly scrambling, on the back foot or someone dusting off the red leather crisis folder. It feels like the palace now spends their days reacting to things rather than setting agendas and putting little known diseases on the map.
Harry and Meghan, in the four years since Megxit, have spent much of that time speaking their truth and throwing the royal family under the bus on broadcast TV, Netflix, a podcast and in print. To date, the palace seems to have no idea how to contain or manage the Sus𝓈ℯ𝓍es.
Ditto Andrew. Years on from his downfall, he still regularly crops up like an irritating, impervious rash to try and have a good at some sort of ill-gotten, ill-conceived returning to the spotlight. In February, at the memorial service for King Constantine, the man who paid untold millions to settle a civil 𝓈ℯ𝓍 abuse case was front and centre and all but smirking as he walked in front of the family. (Andrew has always denied the claims.)
To date, the palace seems to have no idea how to contain or manage Andrew’s bloated ego.
Despite the spares having caused no end of grief and appalling PR for years on end, they remain loose cannons who have long since slipped the palace moorings. (Mixed metaphors ahoy.)
Nearly all of the key royal players have been causing headaches or drama of late.
Camilla has raised eyebrows going overseas for a sunny jaunt for a few days (as she generally does this time of year) even with Charles being treated and so much royalling left undone.
William, meanwhile, is off doing his own thing, with his eleventh hour pulling out from Constantine’s memorial service with the brisk, useless explanation that it was because of a “personal matter” setting off an internet and social media firestorm.
How is a King having cancer treatment while still keeping up with his State paperwork and official business meant to get any decent rest with all of this going on?
Here’s a sentence I never thought I would write: Thank god for Edward. And thank god for Sophie and for Anne. They might be the bland filler of the palace ranks but at least none of them have ever hung out 𝓈ℯ𝓍 traffickers or developed a taste for sharing their inner most emotional twinges on American tele or have ever had so much as a moderate cold keep them from a hard day’s handshaking.
Praise be for the plodders. They are all that is holding the show together – just.
*(They are, respectively, the grandchildren of the Duke of Kent, Princess Alice, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Duke of Kent.)
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.
