Royal family tied up in a Windsor knot
Turmoil dogs the royal family as the United Kingdom moves inexorably closer to having a new monarch.
The Queen, in sunny yellow, beamed from the Buckingham Palace balcony welcoming granddaughter-in-law Kate Middleton to the family as the line of succession was strengthened.
It was 2011 and heaving crowds of adoring people lined the Mall and Green Park to get a glimpse of the happy bride and groom.
The step-perfect pageantry of this magical wedding of Prince William, second in line to the throne to his new bride and future queen underscored the royal family’s authority, and fawning interest around the world.
Within the next two years the Queen had embraced great-grandchild and third in line to the throne Prince George and also cheekily had agreed to appear to parachute out of an aeroplane for the spy character James Bond at the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony.
“Good evening, Mr Bond,” the Queen said as she agreed to the “Olympic mission” with three beloved corgis trotting alongside.
Roll on to the end of the decade and it’s a far different mood: the Queen’s favoured son, Prince Andrew, is caught up in the fallout from his friendship with accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and doted-upon grandson Prince Harry is struggling with the pressures of royalty, fatherhood and helping his American celebrity wife Meghan Markle adapt to the nuances of British life.
The monarchy is in a rocky transition and the next decade will bring a new King Charles, a new royal court and new priorities and power.
Amid this turmoil, members of the royal family must look back fondly to 2010, when affection for the Queen and her family had reached a high: the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 was celebrated by more than a million people crowding along the Thames despite the miserable rainy weather for a spectacular pageant of more than 1000 boats; the Queen and Prince Philip marked the 70th anniversary of their marriage in 2017; and any fierce personal criticism of the Queen’s delayed reaction to Princess Diana’s 1997 death had long dissipated.
In 2015, the Queen passed Victoria’s milestone to become the nation’s longest serving monarch on September 9, having reigned for 23,226 days. Yet few would have foreseen the monarchy ending this year with a most precarious relationship with the public.
It is no coincidence that the Queen’s struggle to enforce her authority over her family comes as her husband — usually the stern and controlling head of the household — has been particularly frail. Prince Philip retired from all public duties in 2017, aged 96, and whiles away his remaining days painting and walking on the Sandringham estate. His 4WD accident at the beginning of this year, T-boning a car as he came out of the Norfolk estate and, blinded by the low setting winter sun, was a shock to many, not least his wife, now 93.
That it took some time for the royal family to send a note to the other car’s occupants was a sign that the internal workings of the royal family were not operating as smoothly as before.
Sir Christopher Geidt was the Queen’s private secretary from 2007 until 2017 and palace sources say he was a guiding force, ensuring royal family members followed various unwritten royal rules and protocols. He was in charge of co-ordination of the royal households and the media office.
Palace insiders say Philip and Geidt would have advised against Prince Andrew giving a television interview about his relationship with Epstein and guided Markle against her profligate spending on dresses and a lavish trans-Atlantic baby shower. Even though Harry has matured since his naked partying antics in Las Vegas in 2012, the disastrous handling of the birth announcement of little Archie Mountbatten-Windsor and the rift between the brothers and their wives perhaps would not have been so publicly exposed. And surely Markle’s difficult relationship with her estranged father would have been resolved by now.
But two years ago, just as Philip’s health has declined, Geidt left amid a plan to bring the various royal palaces under one streamlined chain of command. Prince Charles and Prince Andrew have been at odds about control.
This has created tensions in the palaces from Kensington to Buckingham to St James.
The Sussexes have fled to Frogmore House on the Windsor estate, while the Cambridges have consolidated their home at Kensington Palace, moving back to London from their Norfolk bolthole to take on greater royal responsibilities.
One part of the squabbles has been the Yorks adjusting to life way down the pecking order. Andrew, once the spare, is now eighth in line and his two daughters, whom he claims are “blood princesses”, Beatrice and Eugenie are ninth and 10th.
The daughters spent a lot of this decade on holiday: Beatrice had 18 holidays in 15 months in 2015 and early 2016 while Eugenie took eight breaks in the same period, including a stint in the first weeks of a new job.
Yet the Queen was indulgent of this, as was her oversight of Andrew’s friendship with Epstein, who had attended the royal box at Royal Ascot in 2000, a Windsor Castle party in June 2000 to mark Andrew’s 40th birthday, a shooting weekend at Sandringham in December that same year and arriving at Balmoral with a young woman in her 20s in 1999.
It wasn’t apparent to a self-described “honourable’’ Andrew that in 2011 it was highly inappropriate to see Epstein in New York, two years after the latter had served prison time for soliciting the prostitution of a minor. Curiously, some weeks after that Epstein paid off some debts of Andrew’s former wife, Sarah Ferguson.
Andrew has argued to the Queen that his daughters should have royal roles and the extravagant wedding celebrations of Eugenie to Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle last year was supposed to reinforce that point.
But Beatrice’s planned nuptials next year have been squeezed by the fall from grace of Andrew, which has given Charles enhanced authority to push through his own reforms.
The decision in November to cast Andrew aside from royal duties was made by Charles and William and authorised by the Queen. Any lofty ambitions for his daughters have been similarly downgraded.
In time it would be expected that Harry and Meghan’s family also may drift away from the core of the royal family, with George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis taking more of a central focus as they grow up.
In the past 18 months the plan for a succession to the Queen has ramped up with Charles taking on increasingly heavier workloads and preparing for a possible regency by 2021.
By then the Queen will be 95, her husband possibly reaching a century.
At the beginning of the decade the idea that Charles would become regent was dismissed out of hand by the Queen, who had vowed on her 21st birthday to serve for her whole life.
Yet during her 90th birthday celebrations she confided the milestone was “not one to which I have ever aspired”.
Symbolically, Charles has laid the wreath at the annual Armistice Day commemorations since 2017 and the Queen has not worn the heavy Imperial Crown at the opening of parliament for several years, in an acknowledgment of her advancing years.
During this time Charles’s second wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, gradually has increased her visibility. With the public softening towards her good humour and devotion to Charles, she is destined to become Queen Camilla, rather than the lesser title of princess consort first mooted during their nuptials.
Charles will be hoping the next 10 years, and the first of his reign as King Charles III, will not feature the royal rollercoaster dramas of the past decade.
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