Do we really want to lift the lid on scandal-plagued royal family?
There is increased scrutiny of their behaviour, properties and finances. But is it the time to leave well enough alone?
In June 1969, weeks before Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales, television viewers were treated by the BBC to a rare glimpse of the monarchy at work and play.
Royal Family (110 minutes including a two-minute tea break) showed a year in the life of its core members: the most memorable scene was a barbecue beside a loch at Balmoral, at which the future king was seen mixing the salad dressing while his father grilled the sausages.
The documentary was a hit: more than two-thirds of the British population watched it, but many in royal circles were aghast. Prince Philip, although a driving force behind the project, had second thoughts after filming began. “Get away from the queen with your bloody cameras,” he barked during the barbecue scene.
David Attenborough, at the time BBC director of programs, accused its late maker, Richard Cawston, of “killing the monarchy”. “The whole institution depends on mystique and the tribal chief in his hut,” Attenborough claimed in suitably anthropological terms. “If any member of the tribe ever sees inside the hut, then the whole system of the tribal chiefdom is damaged and the tribe eventually disintegrates.”
In the event, the institution survived – just as it went on to survive Queen Elizabeth II’s annus horribilis of 1992, when Windsor Castle and three of her children’s marriages went up in smoke; Martin Bashir’s Panorama interview with Diana three years later, and; the palace’s characteristic mishandling of the public mood after her death in 1997.
It weathered the acrimonious split with Harry and Meghan and, more importantly, the accession of Charles himself. Fears that Australia, Canada or any of the 14 non-British Commonwealth realms over which the monarch presides would use the moment to break ties with the crown came to nothing.
But now the monarchy is under pressure again, triggered by the shaming of the man formerly known as Prince Andrew. The steady stream of revelations of his alleged misdeeds, which he denies, further fuelled by the posthumous publication of Virginia Giuffre’s memoir, obliged the King belatedly to take action against his wayward brother, stripping him of his last style, titles and honours.
The ensuing row about the “peppercorn” rent paid by Andrew to live at Royal Lodge, his mansion in Windsor Great Park, prompted the announcement last week by the British parliament’s public accounts committee that it would look into the financial deals enjoyed by other members of the family. This in turn looks set to provoke a broader debate about the institution as a whole and its money, privilege and, above all, accountability.
What’s the Monarchy For? – David Dimbleby’s new three-part series – is adding to the debate.
“It’s the ‘me too’ moment for the monarchy,” said Andrew Lownie, whose book about Andrew, Entitled, had added to the furore since its publication some months ago.
“If it is to go into the 21st century properly and a new reign, it needs to be fit for purpose, which it isn’t at the moment. In some ways, they have brought the crisis on themselves but I think it is part of a broader backlash against elites getting away with things.”
The next step, Lownie hopes, is a proper parliamentary inquiry into the former Duke of York’s activities as trade envoy. He would also like to see a broader look at royal finances and other reforms, such as a “royal register” obliging family members to publicise their commercial interests in the same way as MPs.
The clamour is growing to lift the lid on the Windsors, but once removed, can it ever be put back?
Falling support
The crisis is all the more worrying for the royal family in that it coincides with a precipitous fall over decades in the popularity of the monarchy as an institution.
When the National Centre for Social Research conducted its first annual survey in 1983, 86 per cent of respondents felt it was “quite” or “very important” for Britain to continue to be a monarchy; by September this year, little noticed by the media, the figure had plunged to a record low 51 per cent.
That number looks likely to keep on falling: although only 38 per cent of the population as a whole want to replace the monarch with an elected head of state, this figure rises to 59 per cent of 16-34-year-olds.
Craig Prescott, an academic and author of Modern Monarchy, is not surprised. Falling support for the monarchy, he argues, goes hand-in-hand with declining appreciation of other institutions such as the church and political parties. “It’s harder for them to understand the monarchy’s relevance to the country and to their daily lives,” he says. “It’s always been the case, but it seems particularly marked with this generation.”
This is in large part because they increasingly consume their news from international sources such as YouTube or TikTok rather than from national broadcasters or newspapers, which have traditionally given the royals prominent and largely favourable coverage.
The European solution
But is the solution staring us in the face on the other side of the Channel? Although largely unnoticed by the British, six other European countries are constitutional monarchies like ours. Could they offer a way forward for the Windsors?
Their kings and queens play important ceremonial and constitutional roles, and there are castles and official residences – even if there are fewer of them and they tend to be smaller (with the exception of the Royal Palace of Madrid, which is double the size of Buckingham Palace).
State financing is also more straightforward and often confined to core family members, making the institutions substantially cheaper to maintain. They are also generally subject to a far greater degree of transparency.
Yet Europe’s royals have also suffered their share of scandal – none more so than in Spain, whose former king, Juan Carlos, now 87, was obliged to abdicate in 2014 over allegations he received large, allegedly secret donations, including a $US100m ($150.5m) “gift” from the Saudi monarchy.
There have been problems elsewhere too. In Belgium, for example, the former king, Albert II, 91, who stepped down in 2013, long resisted calls to recognise his love child, Delphine; in the Netherlands, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima’s popularity ratings are still suffering from claims they flouted Covid rules.
Things are looking even grimmer in Norway, where King Harald’s daughter, Princess Martha Louise, 54, could teach the Duchess of Sussex a thing or two about monetising her royal connections. The latest of a string of scandals centred on her wedding in August 2024 to Durek Verrett, a self-proclaimed “shaman to the stars” – detailed in a lucrative world exclusive for Hello! magazine. Rebel Royals, a Netflix documentary featuring the couple, only added to the criticism of her.
Trond Noren Isaksen, a Norwegian expert on European royalty, says that if any European monarchy is a potential model, it is the Danish one. Margrethe II, 85, had vowed she would never abdicate – but did just that in January last year, effectively acknowledging she was no longer up to the job after 52 years on the throne. This paved the way for the succession of her popular son, King Frederik X, 57, and his wife, Mary, 53, the Tasmanian former estate agent who has proved surprisingly adept at the job.
With an annual budget last year of 125 million Danish krone ($29.6m), according to Danish royal accounts, the whole operation is a bargain compared with the Windsors, whose sovereign grant was almost six times higher.
The British figure includes only “core spending” such as staff casts, official duties and property upkeep, not security, which Republic, the campaigning group, puts at £150m (more than $301m). It estimates the true total cost of the monarchy is £510m, once other elements, such as lost income from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, are included.
Can the British royal family reform?
So could the Windsors take a leaf out of the book of their Danish third cousins? Despite the monarchy’s enormous symbolic power, it is the government that ultimately decides how the institution functions, as well as the nature or scale of its financing. Prescott points to the observation by Walter Bagehot, the Victorian constitutionalist, who noted that the queen “must sign her own death warrant if both houses (of parliament) unanimously send it up to her”.
Yet any government contemplating change must also be careful not to undermine the pomp and pageantry that surrounds monarchy – what Bagehot called its “dignified parts” that “excite and preserve the reverence of the population”.
This value goes beyond patriotic entertainment for the masses: at his first visit to the White House in February, Sir Keir Starmer wooed President Donald Trump with an invitation signed by the King for a state visit.
Robert Hardman, author of Charles III, argued in The Spectator last week that the royal family retained its diplomatic power. “In short, the world would rather meet British royalty than anyone else we might park on a red carpet.”
Change can also come from within the royal family, especially when it comes to their willingness to tolerate inappropriate behaviour in their ranks. They must also balance the clamour for greater accessibility with the need to maintain mystery.
The next time they are planning a barbecue by a loch, it might be wiser not to invite along the television cameras.
THE SUNDAY TIMES
Peter Conradi is the author of The Great Survivors, How Monarchy Made it into the The Twenty-First Century, and co-author of The King’s Speech.
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