A look at one fortnight in the royal diary shows who is carrying the engagements, and most of them are over seventy
The Working Royals You Do Not Read About
If you took your picture of the Royal Family from the front pages, you would think it consisted of about six people, two of whom live in California.
The published diary tells a different story. I spent an evening with a listing of forthcoming royal events for October, and what struck me was who is in it.
One Fortnight
Here is part of the first half of the month, for the British family alone.
On the first, the Duke of Edinburgh in Toronto. He has been on a five-day tour of the United States and Canada. A digest of coverage for that day lists a local report of his being welcomed at George Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon. I should like to have seen that. The great-great-great-great-great-grandson of George III, being shown round by the heirs of the man who got rid of him.
From the fifth to the seventh, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester carrying out engagements in Botswana. On the eighth, the same couple in South Africa.
On the sixth and seventh, the Princess Royal in Norway, as patron of a project commemorating the Anglo-Norwegian resistance in the war.
On the eleventh, the Princess Royal again, in Edinburgh, at the laying up of the colours of a battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, of which she is Deputy Colonel-in-Chief, at the Canongate Kirk.
On the fourteenth, the Princess Royal a third time, at the annual national service for seafarers at St Paul’s.
The same digest for the first of October notes the Duchess of Edinburgh at a memorial day for the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.
None of this will trouble a news editor. All of it matters a great deal to the people who were there.
Who These People Are
For readers who have lost track, and it is easy to.
The Duke of Gloucester is the King’s cousin, a grandson of George V. He trained as an architect and expected a quiet professional life. His elder brother was killed in a flying accident, and he inherited the dukedom and the duties with it. He is eighty-two. He and the Duchess have been doing this for more than fifty years. I doubt one person in twenty could pick him out of a line.
The Princess Royal is the King’s sister, seventy-six, and by most counts the hardest-working member of the family year after year. She is patron or president of several hundred organisations. She is known for arriving on time, having read the briefing, and leaving without fuss.
The Duke of Edinburgh is the King’s youngest brother. He and the Duchess took on a large share of public work after the late Queen’s death and are now, in effect, the mainstay of the middle of the diary.
What They Actually Do
The engagements listed are not glamorous. A regimental service. A commemoration of wartime agents. A memorial day for army engineers.
But consider what each means to its audience. The veterans of a regiment are laying up colours that men carried. The presence of the Deputy Colonel-in-Chief tells them that the state has noticed. For the families of resistance fighters, a royal patron travelling to Norway says that what was done eighty years ago has not been forgotten.
A minister could attend. Ministers change every two years and are usually looking at their telephones. The point of a royal is that she was patron last year and will be next year, and remembers the name of the secretary.
That continuity is the thing the monarchy sells. It is not delivered by the handful on the front pages. It is delivered by cousins in their eighties on a wet Sunday in a kirk.
The Arithmetic Problem
Here is the difficulty, and it is not a small one.
The King came to the throne with the idea of a slimmed-down monarchy. Fewer working members, a tighter core. There was sense in it. A large extended family on the public payroll is hard to justify.
But events have slimmed it further than anyone planned. One brother has withdrawn from public life entirely. One son has left. The King and the Princess of Wales have both had serious illness. The Prince and Princess of Wales have, understandably, limited their engagements while their children are young.
What remains is a small group, and its average age is high. The Gloucesters are in their eighties. The Duke of Kent, who is ninety, has largely retired. A royal news site reported this week that Princess Alexandra, who is eighty-nine, missed a key family event, prompting concern for her health.
The Princess Royal cannot go on for ever, though I would not be the one to tell her.
In ten years, most of the people in this fortnight’s diary will have stopped. The number of patronages, regiments and charities will not have fallen.
Two Answers
There are two schools of thought about what should happen.
One says: do less. A modern monarchy does not need to open every hospital wing and attend every regimental dinner. Concentrate on a few large causes, as the Prince of Wales has done with homelessness and the environment. Let the hundreds of patronages lapse or pass to others. Quality, not quantity.
The other says that this misunderstands what the institution is for. Its strength was never in a few big campaigns. It was in being everywhere, a little: the lifeboat station, the county show, the hospice. Take that away and the monarchy becomes a small celebrity family with a charitable foundation, and people will ask what it is for.
If the second view is right, the answer is more working royals, not fewer. The King’s nieces and nephews. In time, the Wales children. That runs directly against the slimmed-down idea.
I incline to the second view, though I can see why the first is attractive to those who have to justify the cost.
A Modest Proposal
Whatever is decided, the people doing the work now deserve more notice than they get.
So here is a suggestion for anyone who cares about the monarchy and is tired of reading about feuds. Once a month, look at the diary. Pick one engagement by someone you have barely heard of. Find out what the organisation does.
You will learn more about what the Crown is for from a memorial service for army engineers than from any number of interviews.
The London Prat has always had a soft spot for the further reaches of the family and visits them in its British satirical news on minor royals and its London satirical news about unveiling plaques. Bohiney Magazine covers a country where the nearest equivalent is a former president opening a library named after himself.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
