Those (televised) thorns in Britain's crown
English original of article published in Italian in today's La Stampa
[Fittingly, La Stampa published this comment on its front page with a photo of Harry and Meghan, under the headline “Le Spine della Corona” (the crown’s thorns) adjacent to a story about what in Italy is the other big romantic talking point: “quel bacio ingiusto” (that unfair kiss) by the fictional Inspector Montalbano of his new love in the final programme of that long-running series]
If you feel strongly about the interview given by Britain’s Prince Harry and his American wife Meghan Markle to Oprah Winfrey on CBS, then just remember what Leo Tolstoy wrote in his great novel Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” These members of a famously unhappy royal family simply chose to share their unhappiness on global television. But if you wonder how this might affect the British monarchy, then refer to the Netflix series, “The Crown”, whose theme essentially is that the monarchy and the royal family are two separate issues.
For a country that boasts often about its long history of democracy, the United Kingdom is strangely addicted to some very undemocratic institutions: a completely unelected upper chamber of Parliament, the House of Lords, which with more than 800 members is the second largest legislative assembly in the world, after China’s National People’s Congress; and, of course, its head of state, Queen Elizabeth the Second. Stranger still is the fact that the monarch’s main obligation is to be as silent as possible, as uncontroversial as possible, on all matters of politics.
Unlike Italy’s President of the Republic, the Queen is unable to have any say at all, even privately, about how British governments are formed, how long they stay in office, and what they do. This means that the only real purpose of the monarchy is survival, and through survival the monarchy provides a form of historical continuity. The impotence of the monarchy leaves huge scope for the government and the House of Commons to act in whatever ways they wish, constrained only by the law and the need to hold elections. Justifiably, the British system of government has been described as an elective dictatorship.
With survival and continuity as the basic purpose of the monarchy, the officials that run the Royal Household have caution and conservatism running like blood through their veins. Having been monarch for nearly seven decades, the Queen can of course be highly influential in how the Royal Household operates. But at the age of 94 she is unlikely to exercise this influence very vigorously. It is the officials who run the show.
So let us return to the hot topic of the week: complaints and claims made on American television by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who are also known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Prince Harry is only sixth in the line of succession to Queen Elizabeth. Which invites the question: beyond mere curiosity about the life of two celebrities and the family of which they form part, why should complaints by the sixth in line of succession matter at all?
The answer is that what Harry and Meghan say would matter only if their criticisms brought the survival of the monarchy into doubt. But they don’t. The thrust of their complaints is, really, that the Royal Household is rigid and conservative, and that the Royal Family has been unsupportive as well as displaying some racial prejudice. Yet the conservatism of the Royal Household is part of its essence, and the existence of racial prejudice in a family that is highly remote from normal modern life is regrettable but not at all surprising.
We have seen this all before. Britain’s Royal Family is socially remote while also being even more dysfunctional than normal British families. Of the Queen’s four children, three have seen their marriages end in divorce, as did that of her own sister, Princess Margaret. There is no constitutional requirement that the Royal Family should be harmonious or happy.
The sole question standing before the monarchy is now, as it always has been, that of ensuring a smooth succession to the next generation to wear the crown. When the heir, Prince Charles, had his acrimonious separation and divorce from Princess Diana in 1992-96, it was reasonable to question whether the British public might dislike the idea of him as King. But no government would have proposed holding a referendum on the succession, had Queen Elizabeth died in that decade, so the monarchy would still have survived. Now, Prince Charles is perfectly popular, as is the next in line, Harry’s elder brother Prince William.
Only if Harry and Meghan’s accusations were to strike at the heart of the legitimacy of Prince Charles or Prince William would this sad affair hold any political significance. Yet they do not. What we are left with is simply a form of escapism: public attention to the troubles of celebrities as a diversion from their own. In this sense, the British Royal Family is merely a branch of the entertainment industry, for good or for ill.