Royal photos taken just years apart show sad new reality
Comparing two iconic photographs just years apart show a sad new reality the royals are facing.
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There have been many moments that have come close to making and breaking the British monarchy, generally involving bloody battlefields,, the Tower of London, Spanish brides shipped over special-like, Marys (Tudor, of Scots) and blowing $80 million on a pan-Asian themed “pleasure palace”. (George IV really knew his silk wallpaper.)
One poor choice, made by King Charles back when he was just the Prince of Wales in 2012 and the world’s poshest biscuit maker, was unmistakeable over the weekend.
Every June the sovereign gets their official birthday parade, Trooping the Colour, which clogs the more touristy bits of St James’s and this year, despite the usual circus of horse flesh and red coated, stiff-spined military sorts clomping down The Mall in regimental perfection, it had the whiff of the dud.
Not even Kate, The Princess of Wales turning up in a mermaid-core aquamarine coat so bright it could dazzle a seeing eye dog, could quite save the event from having the zip and fizz of a perfunctory birthday Sara Lee cake being shared in a break room.
The reason - back in June 2012 Charles wheeled out his vision for a slimmed down version of the royal family for the first time and the after-effects of that captain’s call were unmissable at this year’s Trooping.
Sure, this year, as usual, we got ponies and a nice bit of gold braid but the remaining working members of the royal family allowed to take their place on the Palace balcony looked more like a Home Counties golf club board on their way to a wake than the exciting future of a multi-billion dollar institution.
We could beat around a nicely trimmed yew bush or we could be blunt. The royal family is, overall, a tired, greying, much reduced outfit.
Aside from Charles and his good lady Queen, Camila, who had luckily remembered to take her wellies off under her Anna Valentine coat dress, and Prince William and Kate and their adorable three children, there were only seven other official working HRHs allowed out on the balcony, the majority of whom are over the age of 75-years-old.
Can even the most ardent of ‘I’ve got all the commemorative teaspoons’ monarchists tell the difference between the Duke of Kent (89-years-old and 42nd in line to the throne) and the Duke of Gloucester (80-years-old and 32nd in line to the throne)?
How many people can tell me who Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence is?
Aerial shots of this year’s Trooping suggest I am not alone in feeling this way, with the 2025 crowd size, based on a bit of highly scientific eyeballing, appearing to be smaller than previously.
For some reason the public was not willing to stand around for an age to see a few 80-something dukes who’ve never had to buy their own white sliced or fill out a job application stand on a balcony.
Weird.
The decision Charles made in 2012 was this: Fearing this image of a balcony mob scene would make the royal family look like a bloated, grasping lot and put the British people off the concept of a hereditary monarchy, he decided to limit who was allowed out for big events and restricting working royal roles to only those closest to the throne.
Younger Windsor cousins, second cousins, third cousins and a blood princess here and there suddenly were surplus to needs.
His Majesty wanted the royal family to be represented by a trim, toned, lean working cadre who would make the Crown Inc look like good value for money and not like a bunch of old Etonians scrounging off the Windsor teat.
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie were reportedly barred from ever doing full-time royal duties and sent off to polish their LinkedIn pages.
Charles’ idea for a slimmed down royal family is now looking like a disastrous move and this year’s balcony moment was a shadow of how things once were.
Of the late Queen’s eight grandchildren, William is the only one who is allowed to undertake official royal duties.
A last hurrah came in 2019 when the late Queen permitted, what would be for the final time, more than 35 Windsors tromping out onto the balcony in a big, colourful gaggle.
Waving space was at a premium and playing spot-the-crammed-in-minor earls was the pub drinking game you never knew you needed.
Now there is so much room on the Palace balcony they could invest in individual sun loungers with optional shade coverings and still fit in an esky.
What Charles’ slimmed down plan did not factor in was the downfall of the spares.
The first domino fell in November 2019 when Prince Andrew, The Duke of York went on Newsnight to defend holidaying with a convicted child sex offender and to give Pizza Express Woking untold millions in free publicity.
Still, Andrew was hardly that much of a loss, unless you were a) an Kazakh magnate looking to curry favour in London, b) an alleged Chinese spy, or c) the Four Seasons Bahrain’s brand manager who just lost their number one customer.
What proved truly devastating was when, two months later in January 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they were done with toeing lines, smiling on cue and making do with a five-bedder horribly lacking in saunas and proximity to an Erehwon.
Charles’ slimmed down model relied on both William and Harry rolling up their off-the-rack sleeves and mucking in to do royal duties alongside their perpetually-game-and-cheery wives. In the space of that one January 2020 Instagram post, the future of Crown Inc went from relatively robust to worryingly malnourished.
Back in 2019 when that last mass group balcony photo was taken, with Meghan still having that new duchess smell, there was genuine sizzle about the royal family.
The addition of a biracial, divorced American go-getter who could wear the hell out of a pair of jeans was the shot in the arm the Palace never knew they needed so badly.
The Sussxes made royalty seem relevant, interesting and contemporary in a way that a 1001 Hello covers and tireless visits to Bognor Regis never would.
Imagine how this year’s Palace balcony scene could have looked if the Great Megxiting had somehow been prevented.
Harry, grinning up a storm and corralling his young children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, Meghan doing superlative, stunning hat work.
The combination of the Sussexes and the Waleses would have made the future of the royal family seem young, exciting, glamorous.
Instead, what the photos of this year’s Trooping the Colour spell out is that the loss of the duke and duchess is not something the Palace can or will recover from soon.
(To a lesser degree, the permanent barring Beatrice and Eugenie from ever being full-time working members of the royal family is also looking short-sighted.)
What the King thought he was doing was future-proofing the crown; instead the images from Trooping make it look like he could have accidentally hobbled it.
In ten years, how many members of the royal family will be left to take the place on the Palace balcony?
And how many people will bother to get off the sofa to come and watch?
Kate and William and their kids were always going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting to keep the monarchy going - now the effort and struggle is going to be positively Herculean.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Royal photos taken just years apart show sad new reality
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