The brief reign of the slimmed-down monarchy is over

As reigns go, that of the British nuclear monarchy, the minimalist “slimmed-down” institution dreamed up by the present King, was exceptionally brief. It was never feasible, but even those of us who knew it was impractical did not expect it to implode quite so quickly. Now, however, the coincidental outbreak of serious illness affecting two of the inner quartet conceived of as the core representatives of the Crown has exposed the need for the broader-based monarchy prevailing throughout the reign of the late Queen to be quietly reinstated.

With both the King and the Princess of Wales, the principal props of the institution, hors de combat at least until Easter, a considerable extra burden will fall upon the remaining two of the new “Fab Four”: the Queen and the Prince of Wales. With his wife back at home convalescing and reunited with her children, Prince William will need to take on as many public engagements as he can. The Queen has stepped forward with a will, but it would be unfair to expect someone of her age to undertake an unsustainable number of engagements. The indefatigable Princess Royal, who must by now have shaken hands with almost everyone in the United Kingdom, remains a tower of strength, but she cannot fulfil the entire royal programme by herself.

Clearly, far from contracting, it is necessary to expand the pool of working members of the royal family (not “royals” – the bastardization of the adjective into a noun is a tabloid vulgarity). The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh have long done sterling work; it is time to draft in other, younger, junior members of the royal family to put their shoulders to the wheel. 

Even at the time when the King first proposed a “slimmed-down” version of the royal family, its pitfalls were obvious, the most immediate being the prospective loss of patronage by worthwhile charities, or at least a reduction in the amount of contact they could expect from their royal patrons. Today, it is simply an unrealistic impracticality. The most potent appeal exercised by the royal family lies in the visits paid by members to otherwise obscure institutions and locations. A visit by a junior member of the royal family can leave a village fervently royalist for a generation.

To reduce that invaluable outreach, at a time when a small minority of hostile commentators are trying to disseminate propaganda against the Monarchy, is dangerous. The desire to “slim down” seems to have been a reaction not only to public alienation from the Duke of York, but also to longstanding, if ill-informed, criticism of so-called “hangers-on”, originally directed at courtiers (now a virtually extinct species), but since transferred to the more peripheral members of the royal family.

The Palace’s PR machine needs to redouble its efforts to educate the public in the realities of the royal circle. If members of the royal family are “working”, in today’s argot, fulfilling duties on behalf of the King, then they will quite rightly receive payment from the Civil List; if they are not performing such duties, they will not receive any taxpayers’ money, so the public has no grievance.

For the moment, the main concern is the King’s health. Everyone will wish him a speedy recovery and there are grounds for optimism. The cancer appears to have been caught early, he is only receiving outpatient treatment, rather than being hospitalized, and he has always led an extremely healthy lifestyle. There are no constitutional issues: the duties he has temporarily abandoned are of the public, flesh-pressing character, he will continue to work on his red boxes, sign Royal Assent to statutes, give weekly audience to the Prime Minister, though perhaps via Zoom, and preside at meetings of the Privy Council.

If his medical treatment were to have a seriously debilitating effect, then recourse could be had to invoking the temporary empowerment of Counsellors of State, their number recently increased by the Counsellors of State Act 2022, which added the Princess Royal and the Duke of Edinburgh to their number. Despite the inclusion of the Dukes of York and Sussex, that ticking time bomb has been defused by the new stipulation that only working members of the royal family may act as counsellors.

Much speculation has been created by the speedy arrival in Britain of the Duke of Sussex to visit the King. Whatever his motives, and recent indications have suggested the Duke is increasingly concerned about his alienation from his family – which he himself aggressively provoked with his malevolent memoir – there can be no objection to a son visiting a father who has just been diagnosed with cancer. 

That, however, must be the limit of Prince Harry’s intervention. He cannot be readmitted to the royal family because of his notorious indiscretion: his presence would freeze all meaningful conversation. He has disgraced and embarrassed Britain on the world stage and he and his wife’s irremediable unpopularity would damage the Monarchy. The Living Legend of Litigation has no locus in this country: he is a Californian now.

Much is being made of the Palace’s candour about the King’s medical condition, with contrasts being drawn to the invincible discretion surrounding the health of King George VI, the anniversary of whose death occurred this week. Yet an historian would recognise that such discretion was not a product of royal protocol, but of the mores of the time. Such medical matters were wreathed in privacy, at all levels of society, in the 1950s and preceding generations.

However, in the broader historical sweep, the health of kings was a matter of intense public interest: it could hardly have been otherwise, when the death of a sovereign could presage war or other disasters. In the gilded, sumptuous château of Versailles, the silk-clad courtiers of Louis XIV had one consuming preoccupation every morning: to discover from the king’s physicians the state of the royal stools – regarded as a crucial indicator of the condition of his health. The doctors’ report would furnish the basis of conversation throughout the morning: to fail to express acute interest in the royal faeces might smack of disloyalty.

In the present climate, the Palace appears to have struck a sensible compromise between transparency and retention of more intimate medical details such as any one of the King’s subjects would wish to remain private. The individual who most needs to learn from this situation is the Prince of Wales. There are credible rumours that he itches to “reform” the Monarchy even more radically. That would be the path to disaster.

Britain does not want a Scandinavian-style bicycle-clip monarchy. It does not want a small, isolated group on the palace balcony on state occasions: it wants a large, extensive family, featuring many children. It does not want a pared-down coronation or a reduction in ceremonial: it wants pomp and circumstance, for its own sake and also because it raises Britain’s prestige around the world.

In any case, we must hope it will be a long time before such considerations become an issue and that Charles III is granted many more years on the throne. As for the chimera of a nuclear, slimmed-down Monarchy, “Events, dear boy” have already rendered that notion a dead letter. We have an extensive royal family, so let us avail ourselves of the opportunities that represents and see a multiplication, rather than a reduction, of the number of public engagements that enable the Monarchy to maintain close contact with its subjects.

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