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| Diana - one name is enough (Picture from Wikipedia) |
The point of democracy is that you have a choice, while the
point of monarchy is that you do not. You
might think the two systems are incompatible but you would be wrong - in the
case of the United Kingdom at least. The
Queen and Prince Philip went to Bath Abbey in 1973 to celebrate the thousandth
anniversary of the coronation of King Edgar who will have to do as the first
king of all England, although pedants can dispute the accuracy of the
commemoration. Whenever it started, the
monarchy continues to work and the Queen enjoys levels of popularity and
acceptance which politicians would kill for.
As long as the royals continue to do their duty there is no reason why
the monarchy should not continue for the foreseeable future. It is a harmless pleasure for millions, a
boost to the tourist business and a symbol of continuity and stability in an unstable world.
One anniversary which is undisputable is that of the death of
Diana, Princess of Wales, killed in a car accident in Paris twenty years ago. I was one of those who thought
that the inquest into her death was a waste of public money – until the jury
gave its verdict that she had died, as had seemed obvious to me, in a chaotic
accident while being pursued by photographers who were themselves satisfying a
demand for pictures of her fed by you and me.
We were guilty of her killing,
not some obscure conspiracy anxious to get rid of a troublesome and
unpredictable princess. Once the jury
looked coolly at the facts and came to this conclusion conspiracy theories
faded from view and those who persisted in them were not taken seriously any
more.
While the British system has proved that democracy can
survive the presence of monarchy, the case of Diana shows that the monarchy
might not survive the introduction of democracy. There is no doubt that she was more popular
than the other royals, probably than all of them combined. Yet, if Prince Charles had not married her,
she would have probably married some wealthy banker or aristocrat and been
ignored by the public who came to adore her.
It was not just good looks which made her popular and loved. Clive James wrote of how she could
immediately identify the most isolated and lonely person in the room and offer
him (or her) comfort. One flash of that
killer smile and your day was made. If she and Charles had hit it off, she could have been such an asset to the royal
family. As it was this charming
apparently naïve young girl, who did not have a single academic qualification,
did more to destabilise and threaten the monarchy than anyone since Oliver
Cromwell 350 years ago.
The Windsors did what they normally do; they kept calm and
carried on, gradually regrouping and working away to rebuild their position
without worrying too much about their popularity. In Britain, if you stick around for long
enough and are not guilty of something unforgivable – child abuse, feathering
your own nest, abandoning your children – then sooner or later you are accepted
back into the fold. The royal family did
not survive for so long by refusing to adapt to the times. Their very name comes from the fact that their
original German title, Saxe-Coburg Gotha, was considered unacceptable during the
First World War, when London was being attacked by Gotha bombers, and had to be
changed. Instead of their main home
being named after the family, the family was renamed after their main home, as
good an example of pragmatism as you could hope to find. The hundredth anniversary of the name change
earlier this year was virtually ignored while the memory of Diana will be
dredged up again by people who met her once or twice and sell their stories on
the twentieth anniversary of her death.
We will lap up these stories. Diana died at the age of thirty-six, her
youthful prettiness giving way to a mature beauty none of the horsey Windsors
could hope to emulate. Her death will
keep her, in the words of the Bob Dylan song 'forever young'. As the old
saying goes, those whom the gods love die young. Prince Charles, as he grows old, will have to
watch as his painstaking attempts to improve his position are undermined by the
memory people have of his being unable to make her happy. The Queen will stagger on for a while longer
until Charles succeeds her as an old man, while the country waits impatiently
for Diana’s son William, a stolid Windsor but with the looks of his mother,
takes over.
In the play King Charles the Third this process is
accelerated by Charles’s determination to override democracy by refusing to
sign a bill sent to him by parliament.
It is a fine play with a flimsy foundation, that Charles would be
foolish enough to sacrifice his long-waited for succession by committing
political suicide leaving the path open for his son to succeed him. In practice, future kings of England will be
middle-aged to elderly men for the foreseeable future, the opening up of the
crown to the first-born child, rather than eldest son, coming at the time when
the Windsors have managed to produce males for the succession. As long as they choose – and keep – suitable
wives, they should be around for a while yet. That is, if they do not try to override the political process. If it were to come to a choice between monarchy and
democracy, there can only be one winner.
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
Edwin Lerner
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