The Queen deserves better from her family

A failing sense of duty among the princes is threatening the future of the entire monarchy. Why is so much going wrong with the royal family?

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II. Picture: AFP

Pity the Queen. Recently bereaved, she is now having to face no fewer than three simultaneous crises involving members of her close family, all of which are damaging the institution to which she has devoted her life.

Her grandson Prince Harry has become an uncontrollable malcontent, seemingly determined to inflict pain upon his family and harm upon the monarchy. He and his wife have turned themselves into a titled insurgency: media guerrillas regularly exploding grievance bombs under the royal firm.

Her third child, Prince Andrew, has been accused in America of sexual assault as an associate of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. While we don’t know the truth of this, he has chosen to tough it out by affecting to ignore the American lawsuit altogether. It’s therefore hard to see how he can avoid years of sordid headlines and a permanent cloud of suspicion.

Now accusations have surfaced involving the Prince of Wales. Through fixers close to his inner circle, a Saudi businessman and a Russian banker are said to have bought access to the prince and even obtained the promise of honours in return for donations to his charitable causes, including the upkeep of royal residences in Scotland.

Prince Andrew, Duke of York, has been a magnet for unwanted headlines. Picture: AFP

Last week Michael Fawcett, the prince’s former valet, stepped down temporarily as chief executive of the Prince’s Foundation after it was reported that he had helped Mahfouz bin Mahfouz, the Saudi businessman, to be made an honorary CBE by Prince Charles.

The Russian banker, Dmitry Leus, had been convicted of money laundering in Russia in 2004 although his conviction was later overturned. The ethics committee of the Prince’s Foundation had rejected his donation over concerns about its provenance.

The Prince of Wales appears to have been spectacularly badly advised. The potential danger that he might be compromised by such arrangements was surely blindingly obvious. Like many powerful people, however, he is surrounded by sycophants who won’t tell him the truths he badly needs to hear.

Astonishingly, Fawcett’s temporary resignation last week was no less than the third time he has been forced to step down amid allegations of wrongdoing in Prince Charles’s service. The prince has been quoted as saying he could “manage without just about anyone, except for Michael”. Was there no one in the entire royal firm who nevertheless could have stepped in to insist that, to avoid future risk to himself, he’d have to do precisely that?

Meghan and Prince Harry. Picture: AFP

Since he is heir to his 95-year-old mother, these grubby claims about him are far more risky for the monarchy than the problems around Andrew and Harry, who are too far down the pecking order to be important in themselves.

Prince Charles has used his position to do many exemplary things, with his Prince’s Trust the most stellar example in its invaluable support for some of the most vulnerable young people in society.

This is also a project that adheres to the core principle of the monarchy: that it must be above not just any taint but also anything that may cause social division. The monarchy brings the nation together by embodying unity.

With Prince Charles having long provoked public unease through his perceived eccentricities and often dogmatic views, the hopes of many monarchists rest with the Cambridges, William and Catherine. They have certainly turned in stellar and assiduous public performances.

Yet even here, there are mutterings that Prince William is too much a slave to cultural fashion by banging on about mental health. While it’s admirable to bring this issue in from the cold, the whiff of victimhood risks irritating the public. Rather than making people feel better about themselves, it lowers their mood. In serving as a mirror in which the public want to see the best in themselves, one of the royal family’s key tasks is to lift their spirits.

Britain’s constitutional monarchy exists through the consent of the people. If it loses their support, it’s finished. So why is so much going wrong with the royal family?

Maybe the most fundamental answer is that it reflects British society all too well. A society that has been fractured by the disintegration of the traditional family, with its resulting pain, rage and profound dysfunctionality.

A “me” society disfigured by a hyper-individualism that focuses on personal feelings and an overwhelming sense of entitlement. A society that, most important of all, has junked its sense of duty.

Prince Charles is next in line to the throne. Picture: AFP

Doubtless even the junior royals have duty dinned into them. But the word loses its meaning when it patently becomes a chore and the royal in question would clearly prefer to be doing something else in life.

Some royals still define themselves through duty. Princess Anne does, with her unshowy acceptance that you just get on with it. The Duchess of Cambridge seems not only to understand this obligation but to enjoy it, too.

The person who is the quintessence of duty, of course, is the Queen herself. That’s almost certainly because she understands that her crown is consecrated and that the duty she owes is to God. It’s this religious element of the crown that makes her commitment to her people absolute and unbreakable. But at the root of Britain’s moral and cultural meltdown lies the loss of religion.

So how is the monarchy to be rescued? Well, it’s quite simple. As I’ve observed before, the Queen must never die.

The Times