Secret to the Queen’s success is that she’s never given a public interview
There’s a reason the Queen is much loved and it might be because she’s never done the one thing Meghan and Harry are about to do.
COMMENT
The Queen could teach us all a thing or two: How to mix the perfect gin martini; how to breed an Ascot sure-thing; and, how to become one of the most powerful women in the world.
The secret to her success, aside from the hand that fate played, is one that her grandson and granddaughter-in-law Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, could do well to heed as tensions heat ahead of their tell-all Oprah interview airing on Monday (AEDT).
This coming Sunday evening, US time, tens of millions of people, if not hundreds of millions once the global tally comes in, will tune in to watch the self-exiled duo spill the beans on the two-and-a-half years or thereabouts between their engagement and their shock 2020 decision to quit royal life.
Teasers for the prime-time must-see have shown a po-faced Harry saying his biggest fear was “history repeating itself” and Meghan saying, “I don’t know how [the palace] could expect that after all of this time we would still just be silent when there is an active role that the Firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us.”
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The drama! The pathos! Fetch my fainting couch!
In the scheme of things for the couple, this follows the trajectory they have set themselves on over the last three years, one marked to share and share some more. They have chatted, posted and spoken up via face-to-face meetings, in magazines, on TV and with inspiring messages scribbled on bananas.
They have made being much more open royal books their calling card, setting themselves apart by their willingness to eschew stiff upper lips for repeated displays of public vulnerability.
They have made their inner emotional landscapes and their innermost thoughts readily available.
Already, days out from the broadcast, the collective view is that the royal family should be battening down the hatches with one royal source previously telling The Times that it was “Time to hide behind the sofa at the palace.” (Won’t someone think of the dorgis!?)
There is an enormous Sussex-sized storm brewing on the royal horizon and the countdown is on to the first lightning strike.
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However, while they look set, at this stage, to win this particular battle, there is an important lesson the Queen could teach them about winning the war.
Because, Her Majesty shouldn’t be quite so influential, should she? She might be the titular head of a government but no sovereign has played an active role in British political life since Queen Victoria.
She might be the commander of the army, navy and the air force but we are not likely to see her riding pillion on an Abrams tank any time soon, nor could she declare war on France should she still be smarting from being on the losing side of the Battle of Hastings.
The thing is, she might have a slew of lofty titles and get to open parliament every so often in a tottering, vertiginous crown but she has no real political power or might. She is a beloved, diminutive figurehead who knows her way around a nice broach.
And yet, there is not a President, a titan of industry, a Wall Street honcho or Silicon Valley billionaire who would not take her call. When she speaks, the world listens. When she offers her very, very rare opinion on anything, nation states take note.
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President Joe Biden, Elon Musk and Beyonce would all most likely make time for a Zoom session tomorrow should she decide she fancies a chitchat. That is a sway that few – if any other soul on the planet – wields quite so dexterously or subtly.
Not bad for a 94-year-old who has never been hired for a job in her life.
And the secret of how she got there (aside from winning or losing the genetic lottery, depending on how you look at it)? Well I’d argue that part of it comes down to this one truly astounding fact about Her Majesty: She has never given an interview in her entire life.
Not one. Not one sit-down with a sympathetic BBC royalist. Not one on-the-record conversation with a trustworthy scribe.
While she has given five TV addresses, telling the world in 1997 after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, that she was speaking “from the heart” as “your Queen and as a grandmother” while more recently she comforted a beleaguered nation as the pandemic took hold last year saying “we’ll meet again”.
But what she has never done is cede absolute control over her message and to rigorously mete out her words.
Whether she planned it or not, she has transformed herself throughout her reign into the rarest of public commodities by going staunchly against the cultural grain and keeping her lips zipped.
Her Sphinx-like inscrutability and her keeping her cards essentially welded to her chest has meant that whenever she does speak, her every utterance feels like some sort of voice on high.
That strategy is not about artificially cultivating a coquettish air of mystery but about making her words carry an impact and weight that politicians the world over would dream of holding.
It has also, crucially, helped her preserve at least some of the stardust and magic that surrounds the monarchy as the vicissitudes of the 20th century stripped away the majesty of the whole show.
She might be a great-grandmother who looks like she has a handbag rattling full of old tissues and mints but make no mistake: As a study in how to gain and exert influence, she is the ne plus ultra.
Harry and Meghan, in dishing to Oprah and likely going on at length about how hard things were inside the cloistered walls of The Firm, might be about to exact a form of very public and painful retribution against the palace.
But, what the example of the Queen teaches us is to consider the long term view.
For Harry and Meghan, this Monday represents them playing their post potent and damaging hand after which, what can they say that will really truly grab the world’s attention?
They surely won’t be able to top whatever revelations and claims they level against the palace and the royal family, leaving them with nowhere to go. They will get one shot at this to do the most damage.
And after this squall is over, after grievances have been aired and family ties have buckled under the weight of so much ringing of hands in public, where do the Duke and Duchess go from here?
Will they garner the same level of breathless attention if it starts to feel like they are on our screens every second day? If an interview with them no longer feels like quite so rare a gem or quite so precious?
What happens if we get to a point where hearing them talk about their royal lives become positively quotidian? ‘Oh, the Duke is back on? Yawn. So? He is every other day. Change the channel.’
Essentially what they could be about to do is to devalue their ‘currency’ to devastating effect longer term.
The Queen is already the longest serving monarch in British history and next year will hit her Platinum Jubilee having lasted 70 years on the throne. For a woman who never wanted the job – a job, mind you, that is built on symbolism and illusory power – she has built up a disproportionate level of global might and influence.
And you know who else would take her call in a heartbeat? Oprah.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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