"The Modern Day Cinderella, the British Monarchy, and the Rest of Us"

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Hi 18.2 – B
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Mr. Jose Ma. Edito K. Tirol

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January 29, 2007


“ONCE UPON a time” is the timeless opening line that distinguishes a fairy tale from the rest of the genres in the literary world. These fairy tales, as most of us adults (or trying to act as adults) uphold, are primarily for children. They are the stuff of children’s stories, particularly of little girls’. They are products of resourceful imaginations, of bustling wandering minds, and in contrast with other literary forms, its stories are often the most incredible.

Take for example the story of Cinderella. It is the narrative of a poor, oppressed, yet goodhearted girl who eventually takes the prince’s heart away and becomes the Queen of the kingdom. Only the pathetic, absurdly romantic few are not left incredulous. Add to that how Cinderella was aided along the way by a fairy godmother, who conjured for her all the pieces needed to chance on the prince. Unrealistic, yet wonderful. No wonder people have always been easily drawn to fairytales, and even more when they are called so in reality. Such was the case in the love story of the most popular royal couple in modern times: the Prince and Princess of Wales—Charles and Diana.

In examining Charles, Diana, and all that has been between and around them, this paper aims to point out how their fairytale is short of reality (in more senses than one) and how their lives—no matter its grandness above ours—are a reflection of our lives, as well.

The British monarchy: written on the rocks

Egypt’s last reigning monarch, King Farouk (1920-1965)[1], predicted that “by the end of the twentieth century there would be only five monarchs left in the world: the Kings of England, hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades”[2]. His prophetic skills, we daresay, is not that sharp. His prediction has not yet been true as of the time of this writing. It is now 2007 and there are “29 monarchs left in the world”[3]. However, few of them could stand as real monarchies, or are as popular, as England does. Though its system of government is classified as a constitutional monarchy, there is no doubt that England is one of the few that has kept its tradition of monarchy—at least, most of the elements of it—alive up to the present time.

The monarchy is the “oldest institution of British government”. The present Queen is a direct “descendant of King Egbert, who united Britain under his rule in AD 829. Only once in the subsequent millennium, for a mere eleven years, has there been a brief republican interregnum…[4]” To the rest of the awed and increasingly democratic states, the long-standing British monarchy is the supreme symbol of Britain’s “hereditary wealth and privilege…[5]” To further demarcate England’s system of government, my POS 194.3 teacher, Sir Manuel Enverga, said that “The Queen reigns, but she does not rule.” It has long been the Prime Minister—along with the Cabinet—who has carried on with matters regarded as executive. The Crown is hailed “supreme over the legislative, executive, and judiciary”; yet, it is expected to follow the advice of the ministers. The Crown is considered as the head of the Church of England and as the Commander of the Armed Forces. Yet, its powers are predominantly “moral” in character[6].

Nonetheless, from both a social and political angle, this is discriminatory. The definition of a monarchy in itself limits the power—and the prestigious title—to select few, to those of the noblest blood. Thus, in this time of political and social awakening, in this era in which democracy is the “best choice”, the idea of a monarchy could be contemptible.

The perks of being a blue-blood

Being a blueblood is one heck of a privilege, especially when you’re in England. England’s monarch “lived above the law administered in her name”. She has statutory immunity “from all legislation promoting equal opportunity and banning racial or sexual discrimination in the workplace[7]”. In fact, as the head of the British Commonwealth, she chose freely to employ not a single non-white person in the Royal Household. This is quaint, because upon closer inspection, the British Commonwealth heads millions more non-white than white subjects.

The Queen also lives “at public expense, tax-free, despite possessing one of the largest private fortunes in the world (shrouded in secrecy, but estimated at several billion pounds). Her income from the Civil List, the annual subsidy voted by parliament, amounted to an inflation-proof £10.5 million, a sum which also supported ten of her close relatives. In addition, the Queen and her family enjoyed the use of the world’s biggest private yacht, costing the taxpayer £12.5 million a year, a fleet of private jets costing £6.9 million, and a 14-coach, private train costing £2.6 million. In 1992 the yacht, HMY Britannia, was used by the royals for twenty-seven days (at £462,962 a day), the train for thirty-seven days (at £67,000 per trip) and the planes at an average cost to the taxpayer of £2,000 per hour. In March 1993, en route to deliver a speech in Florida which was not a royal engagement, Prince Philip had Britannia to himself for a ten-day Caribbean cruise, serviced by a crew of 277 at a total cost to the taxpayer of more than £5 million. He flew out to the West Indies, moreover, on one of the three £16 million British Aerospace jets owned by the Queen’s Flight, at a cost to the public purse of £40,000, twelve times the first-class return fare aboard British Airways.[8]”

The monarch had also inherited two private castles from her father. These castles were purchased by their ancestors on surplus public money[9]. Britain’s Queen also enjoy the “sole use of six other royal palaces maintained by the taxpayer to the tune of another £26.4 million a year, or £72,500 a day. Add civil air fares (£820,000), overseas visits (£620,000), the administration of the honours system (£210,000) and sundry other items – from publicity (£380,000), computers (£123,000) and stationery (£139,000) to equerries (£210,000) and the Yeomen of the Guard, or ‘Befeaters’ (£40,000), and the cost of the monarchy to the British taxpayer in 1992 exceeded £75 million. This came to much the same, on a conservative estimate, as the Queen’s tax-free income that year on her private investments. The monarchy, in other words, was costing the British public £192,000 per day – more than thirteen times the average national wage”[10], without tax yet, and that’s per year.

The much-propitious monarchy also “enjoyed immunity from telephone bills and postage costs. Even the £75 million did not, however, include the expense – borne by the Home Office and estimated at £20 million a year – of royal security. At the heart of the operation lay round-the-clock protection by a team of armed, highly trained police protection officers…[11]” Enough said.
That’s another point of history: what we do today creates ripples in the future. In simpler terms, everything we do now has an effect to the coming days, no matter how simple or big it is. The bulk of the fortune of the British monarch was inherited from her ancestors. The royalties of our time are only fortunate that their predecessors have been industrious in the past, so that they, the lucky descendants, benefit immensely. In short, history is a continuum.

…and the irks

However, fortune and fame has a price to pay. Even though those “up there” are more fortunate, they don’t really have everything. Or at least, they don’t have everything automatically. There are some things they’ll have to beg for.

Privacy is on the top of the list. Once, the Queen launched “an angry and almost unprecedented lawsuit against a tabloid newspaper-source of her many woes…” Britain’s prime minister also once “reached unexpectedly for his lawyer, to sue two minor journals which had printed rumours about his private life…[12]” Too bad for them. As they say, we’re just human, and only God is perfect.

And if you’re still green with envy, hear, hear! Royalties don’t always have a good day. Sometimes they can even have a bad year. Queen Elizabeth II had hers in 1992: the year which she called “annus horribilis”. It was the year in which she “would not be able to look back with ‘undiluted pleasure’.[13]” Now, that sounds worse than your bad hair day. Another point of history there: “Great people as are human as we are. They also have problems.” Yeah, but the Windsors are still much richer than you and me.

Going back to the Queen’s “annus horribilis”, why did she not have “undiluted pleasure that year”? The speech was given by the Queen “on November 24, 1992[14]”, only four days after a fire broke out in the Queen’s beloved Windsor Castle. It’s worth mentioning that after the Queen’s speech confessing her “annus horribilis,” she was given a “standing ovation from her distinguished City of London audience…[15]” Were they all touched by her sad words? Perhaps, but you should know that everyone in the audience, apart from the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition, bore a title she had bestowed.[16]”

“At the end of the Queen’s ‘annus horribilis’ speech, Prime Minister John Major was on his feet in the House of Commons announcing that the Queen had indicated her willingness to pay some taxes, and to reduce the burden of her family to the taxpayer…” It was apparent that Major had been rushed into giving that statement by the irate reaction of the public (expressed through the press) about shouldering the cost of the Windsor fire.

Because of this announcement, the monarchy was “immediately cheapened by appearing to make a somewhat desperate response to a surprising outburst of public resentment. [17]” Politicians are often the ones who respond quickly to public opinion because of the anxiety over losing their position (after all, they are often elected). Monarchs, on the other hand—especially those of Britain—always get what they want. At least, have always gotten what they wanted. “It is supposedly part of the magic of monarchy to rise above the fray.” In this case, to insist their demand of public reparation for the fire damages. Instead, the resolute monarchy was seen at its worse, short of begging for forgiveness from the British public over giving an absurd proposal. What in the world happened? As we know, times change, and people along with them. Only the British monarchy seemed unchanging, but evidently, in severe conditions such as this, it had to adapt to the hard times, too. They can’t always be supreme rulers (or reigners, to be more apt).

So, what was in Windsor Castle that tore the Queen’s heart? The castle is known to be the Queen’s favorite among her stone-walled dwellings. In November 21, 1992[18], a major fire “destroyed parts of Windsor Castle, the 900-year-old palace… where Queen Elizabeth II spends most of her weekends…[19]” The cause of the fire was never found out. The section most affected by the fire was the library, which was not open for public use.

Oddly, the only person in closest proximity to the library during the fire was the Queen’s second son, Prince Andrew. The Duke of York was “apparently ‘conducting research’ there at the time the fire broke out… The Queen’s second son proceeded to help out the fire services, and was duly hailed in the press as some kind of national hero for behaving perfectly normally.[20]”

This is not an extraordinary scene, although what he did was a “perfectly normal” act. Anywhere we turn today, we observe how the famous people are applauded for the things they do, no matter how minimal. Whenever an actress donates even a small amount to the charity (vis-à-vis her earnings), whenever a business tycoon cancels his engagements for a while to promote a cause, we all seem to be left astonished. The cameras zero in on their faces. A long line of media people queue for their interview. On the other side, common, ordinary people like us are rarely given the chance to be known for our daily deeds, despite how noble. It points out that every society’s crème de la crème are considered so exquisite that even their simplest acts do not go unnoticed by the public.

Pounding on the stone walls of monarchy

Several days after the fire broke out, “the National Heritage Secretary, Peter Brooke, had told the Queen that the taxpayer would naturally be footing[21]” the £60 million amount—this was needed to restore the ruined parts of the castle.

“So immediate and universal were the outraged protests from the taxpayer that both monarch and prime minister were panicked into premature announcement of a supposedly face-saving gesture. The Queen... had ‘offered’– after forty years of avoidance–to pay some taxes.[22]” What was even more surprising was that it was only three weeks since Chancellor Lamont had told the same House, through a written parliamentary answer, “that the government had ‘no plans’ for the sovereign to do any such thing.[23]”

The world’s wealthiest woman also happened to be England’s “only non-taxpayer[24]”. It has been so for decades. What does this abrupt surprise signify? Change is always welcome, even in a setting as rigid as Britain. Moreover, people embrace change with wider arms when it is called for in revulsion. As a reformist British remarked, “The idea that the nation should meet the expense of the damage caused by the fire at Windsor Castle has left me ambivalent… The contents of the library are private and unavailable for research, then to regard them as part of the nation’s heritage, and therefore the nation’s financial responsibility…’[25]”

They have the right to be repulsed. It is them, the “ordinary, decent people” who pay all the taxes imposed by British legislations. Regrettably, “it was the Queen’s misfortune that her home burnt down at a time when the average British taxpayer could not afford his own house insurance, let alone compensate the world’s richest woman for failing to take out hers…[26]” The British House of Commons “proved equally unsympathetic. The day after the Queen’s speech, as MPs pointedly denied themselves a pay rise, the all-party public accounts committee ordered the National Audit Office to conduct an immediate inquiry into the ‘value-for-money’ given by the £26.4 million paid annually by the taxpayer for the maintenance of the six royal residences owned by the state: Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace, St James’s Palace
and Clarence House in London, and Holyrood House, Edinburgh.[27]”

Individual citizens were not alone in their dissent. Several players in the media have also voiced out their sentiments. Janet Daley, a columnist for Times, succinctly summed up: “‘while the castle stands, it is theirs, but when it burns down, it is ours.’[28]” With all its guts, The Star published a “spoof letter from the Queen, which reads: ‘After a disastrous fire at my gaff in Windsor, I am down to my last three homes, not counting my royal yacht, my personal railway train and of course my airline.’” In tumultuous moments like this, the role of the media comes most constructive. The forces of media—even greater in countries which espouse freedom of speech—cannot be overemphasized. The media serves as the public’s voice; it is the most effective avenue to reach the authority and fellowmen. That’s why whenever the reigning group of any state face unrest and scandals, the best advice to give them is to please the media people. It is because the media, with its sweeping influence, can make and break its targets.

The courageous uproar of the masses proves that there are limitations to everyone’s faculty, yes, including that of the seemingly unyielding British monarchy. It is also a reflection of how people’s conventions can be broken over time, depending on the current age’s circumstances and ideologies. To contrast the 1992 uproar, a few years earlier, the British people would have bitten down their lips and dutifully sat down in silence as they are told to shoulder the £60 million bill. That was during the leadership of the ultimate imperial fanatic: Margaret Thatcher. Conversely, with the consequent protests of the masses about bearing the Windsor fire expenses, fresh and liberal ideas have undoubtedly permeated the stiff British thinking.

To have had all these consequences, was the Windsor fire the most horrible of the Queen’s “annus horribilis”? No, to be straight, it was the breakdown of the marriage of the heir to the throne and the most popular princess in history.

The “Heir Apparent”

Prince Charles is considered as “one of the richest men in England[29]”. However, he does not carry that fortune in his pocket. There are the ubiquitous equerries and secretaries to put their hands in their pockets on his behalf, if necessary. But often, it is not, as the Prince’s engagements are often arranged way beforehand, sometimes even a year in advance.

Unsurprisingly for a royal that he is, Charles’s arrival in the world received a totally different reception than the rest of us’. The official announcement of Charles’s birth on the 14th of November in 1948, a Sunday, was celebrated all throughout Britain and in its dominions around the world.

“That night would be remembered in pubs and clubs throughout the land. The much-awaited birth of the heir to the throne gave the nations a feeling of relief. Perhaps the horrors and misery of the grueling war years were finally over. The rich and the poor all wanted to celebrate the birth of Prince Charles. Presents began to arrive from all over the world. From the United States, where Americans had read of Britain’s poverty after six years of war, a staggering one-and-a-half tons of diapers were donated, all apparently destined for the baby Charles. Diplomatically, his mother, then Princess Elizabeth, decreed that no present could be accepted by the Royal Family; everything, including the diapers, was distributed to expectant mothers by a special operations room set up to collect and dispatch the hundreds of gifts.”[30]
The first child—and son—of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, this prince was destined to be in the limelight for the rest of his life. He will always be surrounded by “privilege, grandeur, and servants[31]”. As a child, he was under the custody of “two royal nannies, two nursery maids, and a nursery footman to handle the heavy work[32]”.

As a growing child, Charles saw his mother only twice a day: before breakfast and after dinner. Charles also rarely saw his father, Prince Philip, who was serving as “an officer in the Royal Navy at that time”.[33] Charles, it can be said, may have grown up in a big house (rather, castles), yet he never experienced truly living in a “home”. He spent little time with his father, who “believed that children should be taught to fend for themselves, in all matters, from a very early age[34]”. He was stiff with his mother, because he was “brought up to be in awe of her[35]”.

The prince unquestionably lived a prince’s life. Everything was done for him. “He never had to cook or even make a cup of coffee, never make a bed or wash clothes, never iron a shirt or clean the car or mow the lawn.[36]” This is practically every person’s dream: to live idly, comfortably, to get all that one wants. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why common people are drawn to royalties, or even in lower figures (e.g. politicians and celebrities). It’s because they have something which we do not have, besides lots of money: freedom and security. We believe that with these good things, they are (and we too, could be) happy. So we think.

Charles had faced the most difficult task of choosing a spouse. As heir to the British throne, and prospective head of the church, he was by all accounts “selecting not merely a partner for life – his commitment to her sanctified by the most publicly taken vows in history – but, of course, a future Queen. He had to get it right.[37]”

Alas, the restrictions on Charles’s future wife were “formidable. Under the 1689 Bill of Rights—enshrined in the 1701 Act of Settlement, by which his family’s legal claim to the throne is established—the Prince of Wales was forbidden to marry a Catholic. Under George III’s Royal Marriages Act, he was barred from marrying before the age of twenty-five without the consent of his mother—or, after that age, the consent of both Houses of Parliament and the parliaments of all the dominions. As the future Supreme Governor of the Church of England he could not marry a divorcee. Royal protocol, furthermore, discreetly required that his bride be intacta.”

With the barrage of all of these criteria, the Prince must have had migraine. It was “far from easy for Charles to gratify his mother’s expressed preference that he marry a royal princess. Given the collapse of so many European monarchies this century, eligible non-Catholic virgin princesses were in somewhat short supply.[38]”

Besides being haunted by the task of finding a suitable wife-and-queen-to-be, another stressor pushed Charles to the edge. By the time he was thirty-two, he was the “oldest unmarried Prince of Wales in British history. (Being) a late developer sexually… By his thirtieth birthday... his duty to wed had become an uncomfortable, almost pathological obsession.[39]” Imagine his relief when Diana came.

The most beloved princess

Undoubtedly, Princess Di is the world’s most loved princess, or even, royalty. From a shy, introverted girl, Diana has become a household name chiefly through her marriage with Britain’s royal heir.

Besides fulfilling the flood of requirements for the future queen, Diana was also the eleventh cousin of Charles, “once removed, from James I, or—put another way—they are sixteenth cousins, once removed, with a common ancestor in Henry VII[40].” This questionable coincidence was pleasant, as “George III believed that royalty should marry royalty—as does his descendant, Queen Elizabeth II[41]”.

Diana’s father had served as an equerry “to a king and a queen, and all four of her grandparents, the Spencers and the Fermoys, as well as three grand-aunts, were at one time or another in the personal service of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.[42]” In the end, Queen Elizabeth II was delighted with the arrangement. With that, Charles was immensely satisfied.

The wedding of the century

The Windsor-Spencer nuptials was a warm blanket to the tempestuous time when the number of unemployed British were growing, when the “homeless and bankrupt were not alone in resenting the disproportionate wealth of a maladroit monarchy[43]”. It was at the time when “the mood of the hard-pressed middle classes—their businesses failing, their homes repossessed in record numbers, their domestic budgets stretched to the limit—was to abandon their instinctive loyalty to most of the major institutions at the heart of British life[44]” that the wedding of the century was chosen, with military precision, to be held.

The wedding of the heir to the British throne was “the biggest media event in history, watched by some 700 million people throughout the world…[45]” Sadly, the ‘fairy-tale’ wedding was a “sugar-coated, gift-wrapped fiction (which)… served to disguise a marriage of convenience.”

Nevertheless, it was “happily swallowed by a well-meaning British public in dire need of some romance in their lives. Mid-1981 also saw the country riven by a series of alarming civil disruptions; rioting and street violence, arson and looting… [sic][46]” Along with few other roles, the magic of royalty is able to and must, in all its capacity, “blot out such home truths with romantic dreams-come-true”. That is only one of the few things the royalty is counted on to do, and that’s because only the monarchy possesses the allure to do so.

Walter Bagehot writes in one of his most celebrated pensees: “‘A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and as such it rivets mankind.’[47]” He adds: “‘No feeling could seem more childish than the enthusiasm of the English at the marriage of the Prince of Wales. They treated as a great political event, what, looked at as a matter of pure business, was very small indeed.’[48]” A small business it was indeed, but this is applicable not only to the English but to all other races. It is part of our nature as humans to admire those who are “greater” than us (in whatever aspect), and to childishly treat their small business as a great event, and sometimes, even as part of our life, as well.

The entitled Princess of Wales then went on and presented her husband with “the proverbial ‘heir and spare’ to ensure the succession, relieving him of another of the monstrous duties imposed by his birth.[49]”

A wedding is not equal to a marriage

“‘Marriages in the royal family are of the highest importance to the state.’” Thus proclaims the Royal Marriages Act, which was instituted in Britain in 1972. [50] Throughout the 1980s, the “festive succession of royal marriages and births had rendered the institution of monarchy as popular as at any time in its thousand-year history.[51]” These weddings and births “held the nation in thrall, melting the hearts of housewives, reducing strong men to tears and moving poets laureate to laughably schmaltzy verse.[52]”

The Queen has always been known as “an extremely indulgent parent to all her children... ‘In the Queen’s eyes,’ in the words of one despairing courtier, ‘her children can do no wrong.’[53]”

April 1992 “witnessed an extraordinary six-week period which saw the public collapse of all three marriages of the Queen’s offspring, before the eyes of an astonished and disenchanted public.[54]” In that year, in which she celebrated her own forty-fifth wedding anniversary, the Queen saw “her only daughter divorced and both married sons separated within nine traumatic months[55]”. (Her fourth child, Prince Edward, “remained single—although publicly denying, perhaps ill-advisedly, that he was homosexual”[56].) In the successive collapse of the royal marriages, none was more disappointing than that which was most celebrated.

The main culprit of the Charles-Diana marriage breakdown was the ill-famed Camilla Parker-Bowles. Camilla was the daughter of “a decorated war hero[57]”. She, as a twist of fate, was also “the great-granddaughter of Mrs Alice Keppell, the favourite mistress of Charles’ great-great-grandfather, Edward VII[58]”. This picture is more suited for biology than history: concubine blood seems to bleed concubine blood. In history, the past of a person’s predecessors is often a huge factor in the future of the person’s descendants. (Take for example, the precursor of the infamous genocide in Rwanda. The Tutsis were killed in great numbers not because they were guilty—no, they have been living in peace, looking almost like twins with the Hutus. No, their misfortune was that their ancestors, the Tutsis during the Belgian rule, exploited the Hutus then. The Tutsis’ past was magnified into their present, and ultimately, to their future. That’s history.)

On the day before the 44th birthday of Charles, the Daily Mirror (notice again the role of media) “revealed the existence (if not yet the precise contents) of the Camillagate tape.[59]” The tape exposed “the man who betrayed the affections of the world’s most popular woman… At first in Australia, then in America, then in newspapers and magazines all over Europe, the transcript of the notorious Camillagate tape was published in full. The would-be king was revealed to be a puerile, bawdy, hot-blooded adulterer.[60]”

“‘I want to feel my way along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out,’ the future Defender of the Faith told the wife of one of his oldest friends. ‘I fill up your tank! I need you several times a week,’ said the heir to the throne to Mrs Silver Stick-in-Waiting.[61]”

The publication of the transcript of the Camillagate tape “dragged the crown as deep into the mud as at any time in the five hundred years since Henry VII found it there at Bosworth Field.[62]” On noisy nights in “pubs and clubs around the land, royal subjects pored over this latest insight into the character of their future king.[63]” The publication of Prince Charles’s “vulgar intimacies with Mrs Parker-Bowles then sank his reputation—and that of the monarchy—to an all-time low. The would-be head of the church appeared to have been caught breaking at least two of the Ten Commandments.[64]”

At centre-stage of all of these was and is the “world’s most popular princess, cruelly neglected by her husband, and schemed against by his coterie of cronies. A vandalized icon, a betrayed innocent, a manipulative hysteric: Diana, Princess of Wales is many things to many people. But for the editors of Time, as for the vast majority, there is no doubt who has now come to ‘represent, express and affect the aspirations of the collective sub-conscious.’ Diana, wrote Time at the end of 1992, is ‘another Joan of Arc… a feminist heroine.’ The masses sympathized with Diana, because they felt cheated by the monarchy, like what happened to her.

In this role, the once ‘shy Di’ can lay claim to have become the most powerful image in popular world culture… an ever-changing feminine archetype steeped in resonance to the modern cult of celebrity. She began life as a custom-built Cinderella, whose prince came to rescue her from an unhappy childhood, complete with two older sisters, a wicked stepmother and an over-indulgent, hard-up Baron of a father. There followed a period as a silent movie star an entirely visual media icon, prevented by her contract with the royal studio system from shattering the illusion by opening her mouth. Then came the neo-Renaissance Madonna, a mater dolorosa hugging her orphan-like children, her loyalty spurned by an absentee husband, apparently the only man in the world not in love with her. Then she is Rapunzel, the princess in the tower, the damsel-in-distress awaiting rescue-by-white-knight…[65]”
The monarchy, in its desperation to reclaim Prince Charles, and “thus to secure the monarchy’s future, the secret machinery of the British establishment… (went to work) to marginalize Diana… Phones are bugged, houses burgled, documents stolen, false stories implanted in newspapers—all the classic ingredients of a campaign of black propaganda, with just one aim: to minimize the influence of a thirty-year-old woman on a thousand-year-old
institution which has survived wars, insurrections, and violent overthrow.[66]”

A Squidygate tape was exposed, the transcript of a forty-minute telephone conversation between the princess “and an affectionate male later identified as her friend James Gilbey. This was printed full in The Sun, apart from ten minutes deemed too risqué for publication, it was also available for eavesdropping on the paper’s telephone ‘hotline’. For a breathless moment, as the nation listened in on her most private moments, Diana’s popularity wobbled… The very naivety of the rambling, teenage duologue seemed in itself to clear the pair of anything untoward; and Diana won over most listeners…[67]”

What helped Diana win through? Perhaps it’s her charm, her simplicity, or even her good taste of clothes. What could have helped also was her “commitment to a number of causes had helped compensate for the emptiness of her marriage. She was genuinely passionate, for instance, in her support for caner hospices and, above all, AIDS research (a cause Charles considered ‘inappropriate’ for royal involvement, even though his childhood friend Guy Nevill, a godson of the Queen, was dying of the disease). Diana’s public work, as the royals were all too aware, was one of the main sources of her huge popularity…[68]” We all love good people, don’t we?

“When it comes to the royal soap opera, one critic’s royal indignation is another’s feminist fury. ‘Why, after all, haven’t male members of the royal family, or male consorts married into the royals, attracted the same level of invective leveled at Fergie? On the other hand, why does no male member of the royals, however worthy and hard-working on behalf of the disadvantaged, attract the same adulation as Diana? It does seem that women are still stereotyped as in the nursery rhyme about the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead: when they are good, they can do no wrong, and when they are bad, they are seen as outrageously horrid.’[69]” As you saw, along with all the frills of being a monarch, you have seen the slightly down side: you are expected to behave as noble as possible, because you represent the institution of monarchy.

“As they reluctantly became fully fledged Europeans, the people of Britain were still subjects rather than citizens, with no written constitution, no Bill of Rights, no Supreme Court, no Freedom of Information Act… Recent events had persuaded him even more forcibly that the institution of monarchy, though ‘durable’ throughout British history, had now outlived its usefulness. ‘The trappings of monarchy, the Irish state coach, the cap of maintenance and the paraphernalia of palaces, castles, jewels and pictures beyond price belong more to the glories of an imperial past than to the shrunken and utilitarian world we live in today.’[70]”

The House of Windsor, to one observer, is “not just another soap opera: ‘It is our soap opera. Its characters may be rich and arrogant, they live in palaces and treat us with contempt. But we pay them. they are our creatures[71].”

Conclusion

The issues involved in this scandal “had become inextricably linked with the constitutional arguments… The underlying lesson on 1992 was that the royal family had failed in the primary role expected of it: not so much, that is to say, in the execution of its ill-defined duties as in the provision of a group of archetypal figures for its followers to idealize and emulate. In a secular age, the royal family had become objects of quasi-religious worship,
hitherto capable of inducing the suspension of normal critical faculties.[72]”

Members of the monarchy appear to be “endowed in the popular imagination with almost superhuman qualities—charm, wit, consideration, and more native intelligence than any ordinary mortal could possibly possess. So when they inevitably show themselves, in reality, to be as normal and fallible as anyone else, the disillusion can be quite shattering.’[73]” In short, we have the tendency to aspire that the monarchy (and others in similar ranks) are perfect, and when they fall short of our expectations, we overreact.

Pay attention as how, when all those marriages had collapsed, along with them collapsed the royal ratings. The royal family, as such, is a mirror of the institution and state it stands for.

Behind all these perplexity “lies hidden a crucial psychological question to which the royal family has offered, at bets, an inconsistent response: does the Queen expect her subjects to think of herself and her family as ordinary people, with the same mundane problems as themselves? Or are we required to look up to them as distant, symbolic objects of worship, to be bowed and scraped to, addressed as ‘Sir and ‘Ma’am’?[74]”

Being endowed with so much material and sociological goodness, the royal family has become archetypes for perfection: for all that is good. However, that is forgetting that again, they are as human as you and me.

In the end, a member of Britain’s monarchy, despite all that he/she represents, is a mere institution, and as such, he/she “must remain an institution rather than an individual, an institution invested with all the wealth and woes of his predecessors, along with the glamour, scandal, gossip, prejudices, misconceptions and legend[75].”

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Holden, Anthony. The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor. New York:
Random House, Inc., 1993. 1-6.

Davies, Nicholas. Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage. New York: Carol Publishing
Group, 1992. 1-6.

Honeycombe, Gordon. Royal Wedding. London: Book Club Associates, 1982. 1-6.

Wikipedia. “King Farouk I of Egypt.” 25 Jan 2007. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farouk_I_of_Egypt>.

24 Jan 2007. <http://now.rickeyre.com/category/world/>.

27 Jan 2007. <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1035880.html>.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farouk_I_of_Egypt
[2] Holden. The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 285
[3] http://now.rickeyre.com/category/world/
[4] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 6
[5] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 7
[6] Caranto, POS 194.3 class notes
[7] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 8
[8] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 8
[9] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 8
[10] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 9
[11] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 9
[12] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 10
[13] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 39
[14] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 24
[15] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 39
[16] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 39
[17] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 39
[18] http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1035880.html
[19] http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1035880.html
[20] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 35-36
[21] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 13
[22] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 13-14
[23] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 13-14
[24] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 27
[25] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 35
[26] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 23
[27] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 41
[28] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 37
[29] Honeycombe, Royal Wedding, p 57
[30] Davies, Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage, p 61
[31] Davies, Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage, p 62
[32] Davies, Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage, p 62
[33] Davies, Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage, p 62
[34] Davies, Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage, p 67
[35] Davies, Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage, p 67
[36] Davies, Diana: A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage, p 67
[37] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 55-56
[38] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 56
[39] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 56
[40] Honeycombe, Royal Wedding, p 37
[41] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 52
[42] Honeycombe, Royal Wedding, p 25
[43] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 7
[44] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 7
[45] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 53
[46] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 54
[47] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 53
[48] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 53
[49] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 59
[50] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 51
[51] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 5
[52] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 53
[53] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 52
[54] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 68
[55] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 52
[56] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 68
[57] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 58
[58] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 58
[59] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 67
[60] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 220
[61] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 220-221
[62] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 50
[63] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 221-222
[64] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 23
[65] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 5-6
[66] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 6
[67] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 64
[68] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 63
[69] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 20-21
[70] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 19
[71] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 20-21
[72] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 20
[73] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 22
[74] Holden, The Tarnished Crown: Princess Diana and the House of Windsor, p 22
[75] Honeycombe, Royal Wedding, p 69