In the week before Harry and Meghan’s wedding I watched a woman in the Kensington Palace shop buy a mug that featured the entwined initials of the couple and retailed at £39. “I love how down to earth they are,” she said. I wonder where that mug is now (the cup, not the woman). There will always be new mugs, of course, and the Royal Collection is currently selling a coronation tankard for £50, as well as such essentials as a £40 bone-china coronation pillbox finished in 22-carat gold, possibly in keeping with King Charles’s oft-stated mission to modernise the monarchy. If you are one of the lucky Brits selected by lottery to receive a GP appointment before the big day, do consider purchasing it and popping your medication in it.
In the meantime you have to ask: how confidence-inspiring, really, is any event that has thus far been defined by about 4,000 articles (and counting) about the attendance or non-attendance of a couple of guests? Nothing says “we’re bigger than that and have moved on” like obsessing over the social plans of two California residents. This event is so inspiring and generational and monumental that the sole thing people can get truly worked up about is how their worst person in the world isn’t coming to it. Surely the one interesting thing about King Charles isn’t his fractured relationship with his younger son? And yet, the tale of the column inches seems to suggest it might be. For a couple we keep hearing are no longer important, the Sussexes do still seem to be the only subject in town.
Royal experts, pro and amateur, act like they’d be lost without them. If the Sussexes had any sense, “they would have accepted immediately”, explained the Mail’s Sarah Vine, about three paragraphs after saluting the “collective sigh of relief” that Meghan would not be attending. The whole interminable saga is afflicted by more than a touch of the Schrödinger’s invitation, with a yes/no able to be both right and wrong at the same time, if likely to induce fatal error one way or the other. Turning up would be an act of war; non-attendance will garner endless headlines about insulting behaviour and “what she’s missing”.
Once again one has to contrast the apparently undimmable ire directed at Meghan and Harry with the muted version enjoyed by Prince Andrew, who last year paid millions in an out-of-court settlement to a woman who had long accused him of sexual abuse when she was 17, after she was trafficked by his good friend Jeffrey Epstein. The Duke of York denies the allegations. If newspaper stories were any guide to what the public wanted, it would seem rather notable that Andrew’s presence or non-presence at his brother’s crowning were of far, far less feverish concern than that of the Sussexes.
Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation was scheduled to avoid a racing fixture; this one was timetabled firmly for Harry and Meghan’s son’s fourth birthday. Back in 1953, the Duke of Windsor (Edward VIII as was) got told by Winston Churchill not to attend. Did the newspapers of the time wet their pants daily for several months about this minor detail of the day? It feels unlikely. Perhaps newspapers back then were made of stronger stuff. Or perhaps, mindful about what happened at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, His Majesty’s Press these days regard it as part of their solemn duty to hold every royal guest list to the very highest scrutiny, lest their readers end up being put to sleep for a hundred years by failure to cover the potential fallout from any NFIs. In a 24-hour period last Friday, shortly after Harry’s attendance was confirmed, the Daily Express website featured a full 44 articles about the Sussexes, one of which suggested the couple’s brand was “on life support”. Hand on heart, the Express and others do an awfully good job of suggesting otherwise.
Back on the official channels, strong efforts are being made to get people excited about the approved royal menu for their subjects’ day. It feels somehow apt that the official dish selected by King Charles is a quiche, given quiches are often wet and almost always disappointing. Like some of Charles’s recent walkabouts, the dish has been regarded as a good use of leftover eggs. Traditionally, indifferent cuisine is a celebrated feature of royal occasions. Of a banquet on the eve of Elizabeth’s coronation, Richard Crossman noted in his diary that “the food was cold and not very good”. Charles’s official coronation quiche features tarragon, the king having failed to commit entirely to the bit, and bung in that most divisive of herbs, coriander.
Odd, finally, to read so little about the determined grumbling about the hundreds of millions to be spent on the coronation, which is a definite thing, from radio phone-ins to even the upper reaches of the MailOnline comments section. Defence of the cost has already seen a resort to the telltale line that it will be a “boost to the economy”. It also seems to have resulted in that great rarity – a bank holiday that doesn’t draw from the woodwork some killjoy from a business body to explain how, actually, bank holidays are an unacceptable cost to the UK economy. Even so, the overriding impression given by all this is that without the attendance or otherwise of one or two non-player characters, there would be very little to say about what could be for many a once-in-a-lifetime event. That doesn’t suggest a monarchy in the rudest health – perhaps the proof of the quiche will be in the eating.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
