Princess Kate set to miss out on ‘coronation’ ceremony
The Princess of Wales should be due a massive royal ceremony that comes with her historic title, but that’s not going to happen for a key reason.
Haven’t we suffered enough?
We’ve had years of hand sanitiser, masking up to do something as dangerous as buying grapes, the deleterious effects of months slumped in front of Netflix, a war in Ukraine, a war in the Middle East, a tangerined Donald Trump and now maybe Trump again.
We need – nay, deserve – a treat.
Something lovely and bright; a massive, unambiguous dopamine hit. We need a unifying, rallying moment that does not require unpacking complicated emotions, but a big state event. With trumpeters.
But no, we can’t have nice things like an investiture for the Prince and Princess of Wales.
The UK and the world were treated to an event 55 years aog this week which involved a live TV broadcast from a honking great castle for a stellar bit of cod medieval pageantry that 500 million people globally tuned into watch.
On July 1, 1969 the then Prince Charles knelt before his mother, the late Queen, to be formally invested in a title that dates back to the 13th century when Edward I popped over to pinch Wales and made his imaginatively named son Edward the first English Prince thereof. (‘Awww …’ said a lot of sad-faced boys named Dafydd and Llewllyn).
Ever since then, the monarch’s oldest son has generally been handed the Wales title; it’s not automatic – Charles was only given the title at age nine years old, a fact he reportedly learnt while watching the TV news.
They also, handily, get the vast Duchy of Cornwall that funds them as they twiddle their very soft, white thumbs waiting for the throne.
Only 24 hours after the late Queen’s death in 2022 King Charles used his first address to the nation to announce that he was immediately conferring the title on his eldest son. No fiddle-faddling, no shillyshallying here. Blamo! William was IT.
But as we approach the two year anniversary of this occasion it has become painfully obvious that there will be no replay of the events of 1969.
William and Kate might firmly be the Prince and Princess of Wales in our hearts and minds, having fully shed their former guise as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, but will they be starring in an investiture reboot?
Sigh. No.
Kensington Place has made clear that such a repeat performance is “not on the table”.
There will be no scene where William gets down before his father and effectively marries himself to the Welsh people as Charles did.
Back then, Charles had an amethyst ring made for this part of the ceremony which is about as 60s as the poor man ever got. ‘Letting it all hang out’ in his book probably equated to a particularly right-on mustard pocket square.
The reasons why there will be no Wales investiture nearly list themselves, the biggest and obvious being, the cost.
The 1969 affair, with Princess Margaret’s husband, the Welsh Earl of Snowden, set-designing the entire production while probably wearing a modish black skivvy, would have cost positively oodles.
In the current climate, with inflation and the cost of living being jacked up faster than Princess Anne’s horse feed bills, there is no way in hell that Buckingham or Kensington Palaces would want to be seen blowing so much money on something wholly unnecessary.
There is also the fact that, with a Labour government inbound, 10 Downing Street would hardly be supportive.
An investiture would be God-given ammunition to those prune juice-drinking, sandal-wearing sorts who stand outside regional cathedrals to chant ‘not my King’ these days.
The case could be made that it would just drive home what an unnecessary bit of flummery the whole institution of the monarchy is.
To which I’d say, well, yeah. Of course it is and that’s fine.
The modern royal family has done incredible and meaningful work that tangibly benefits not only the UK but global communities.
The stats around William’s Earthshot Prize winners’ work is incredible and Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, deserves far more recognition for her work on sexual violence in war zones.
But Crown Inc is also about giving us, the Commonwealth masses, a right old thrill too.
The showy, grand bits of pomp and circumstance and ermine cloaks are a huge part of the fun and the appeal, distracting us in Australia long enough to not start having those naughty republican thoughts again.
There is no denying that Charles’ 1969 investiture was a shameless bit of theatre meant to jolly the people, wholly stage-managed and set-designed by Earl of Snowdon to maximise the potential of the advent of colour television. (Truly.)
However, just because an investiture for the Prince of Wales, with a huge supporting role for the princess of course, is not set down in some bit of weather-beaten stone doesn’t mean it’s not a cracking idea.
It was only in 1911, for the first time in 600 years, that a Prince of Wales (the “a painfully embarrassed” Edward Windsor, later Edward VIII) was invested at Caernarvon Castle.
Something that rarely gets talked about is how much of what we now read as immutable parts of the whole royal box and dice were actually made up as they went along.
It was George II who decided that Trooping the Colour should be about his birthday; it was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who cooked up the idea of selling the royal family as a whole as a commodified, unifying symbol of nationhood; it was George V in 1917 who chose the surname Windsor; and it was only in 1970, in Sydney no less, that the late Queen invented the walkabout, now as part and parcel of royaling as an overfed Windsor swan.
An investiture like 1969’s, basically a William and Kate trial coronation, would be a stupendous bit of marketing genius on the part of Crown Inc and could be a symbolic book-end for what has been an incredibly rough five years for the palace.
Not to mention it might actually do something for the flagging British GDP.
It would also be a pip, pip, hooray morale boost for a world where unbelievable human rights atrocities and an oversized suit full of saggy, fake-tanned skin, veneers, and racist mewings dominate the news, day in and day out.
And who knows, maybe after Sir Keir Starmer has had a few months of trying to wrestle the ship of state into some semblance of order he might need a way to distract the people from his inability to magically fix everything.
Man cannot live on prune juice alone.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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