Magic Blood

Ben Wildsmith

So, it turns out that the royal family doesn’t have magic blood after all.

As Andrew Mountbatten Windsor gradually relinquished his bestowed titles and roles it was a matter of what he was permitted to do. Now, with his birthright revoked, we are invited to accept that what he is has changed. What was ordered by God can, apparently, be reversed by man.

For the king to allow that notion illuminates just how precarious the monarchy’s foothold in our society has become.

I’m just old enough to remember the late queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. Back then, the centrality of royalty in British life was only questioned by those with a wider political agenda.

The ubiquity of commemorative mugs, plates, and tea towels saw many Britons displaying the monarch in their homes, albeit submerged in PG Tips or caked in brown sauce.

Disrespecting royalty carried the risk of censure, not only by authorities, but loyal subjects too. The royal aspect of British life enjoyed the protection of privilege and the mob. It was unassailable.

The 1980s, however, put paid to that, as it did to so many of the established modes of British life. Rupert Murdoch’s intrusive newspapers and Spitting Image found that they could feast on the juicy details of failing royal marriages without being closed down.

Royals, like the trade unions, saw their entrenched influence upended by the worship of money as an end in itself.

Royal mystique, surely conceived as cover for a piratical ruling class, became obsolete as soon as ostentatious wealth became acceptable and, eventually, venerated.

Fairy tales

The appetite for fairy tales about God ranking us all according to his will waned as we were sold an alternative version in which ‘hard work’ would some day allow us to buy our own sparkly hats and obsequious servants.

At the apex of British absurdity, the one area of life in which the nation really does lead the world, sit ‘royal experts’. These plummy-voiced hucksters are on permanent call to appear on television and reveal the inner thoughts of royal personages who, as Nicholas Witchell discovered, loathe them with intensity.

They practice a branch of mediumship, interpreting messages from beyond a veil that mere mortals can never penetrate. ‘The king will be furious…’

Tattered and torn as it was, that veil remained for a diminishing number of Britons who find comfort in the continuity promised by monarchy. For, despite the affairs, divorces, family rifts, financial scandals etc. a sizable section of the public still respects the institution as the exemplar of the British way of life. ‘The Queen is actually very frugal…’

Fanatics

These forgiving fanatics have, over the course of my lifetime, been overtaken, not only by abolitionists, but by those who support the monarchy as beloved entertainers.

There are plenty of people who simply enjoy the goings-on of royals without believing that they are any more special or authentic than Phil and Sharon Mitchell. From these people, the monarchy enjoys enduring affection but not the quasi-religious devotion required to forgive behaviour such as Andrew’s.

It’s this section of the public to whose mores the king has pandered with his decision to ostracise his brother. Republicans, like me, are beyond negotiation, and true royalists are either too old or too eccentric to assist in securing a rosy future for his family.

So, the king has accepted his family’s new role as light entertainers and abolished royalty. If a prince can be dismissed for gross misconduct, so can a king.

Even in a constitutional monarchy, the monarch’s authority derives from God. Without that assumption, the hierarchy collapses under the weight of evidence in favour of a meritocracy. A king who revokes the royalty of his blood relatives revokes his own.

From here on, the monarchy dances to a new tune. Without magic blood, the performance will have to be up to scratch or new dancers will be found. That’s showbiz.