The greatest impresarios will this week stage their most lavish production to date, the Coronation.
It will be a spectacle of music, colour and ceremony.
This, after all, is what the Royal Family does best.
To maintain their appeal they have always combined the majesty of the crown with the showmanship of PT Barnum. But is the magic starting to wear off?
Is the monarchy – once the hottest ticket in town – nearing the end of its run?
Buckingham Palace regards the Coronation as a moment of continuity: the symbolic handing over of the crown in a ceremony which is more than 1,000 years old.
But whether they like it or not, it has also prompted questions about the role of the monarchy, its size and purpose.
And when you start to ask those questions you raise further questions about how Britain is presented to the world, the legacy of empire, the cost to the taxpayer and why our head of state is chosen by the lottery of birth.
The first thing to note is the Royal Family are not just born to rule, they are born survivors. They have overcome civil wars, broken bloodlines, beheadings, divorces, abdications and scandals.
Even the most die-hard republicans admit they will not be easily dislodged in favour of an elected head of state.
Although Britain remains royalist , support for the Windsors has declined.
In a sign of the gradual shift in opinion, King Charles is frequently met by people holding “Not My King” placards – the kind of protests which rarely, if ever, troubled his late mother.
In 1969 some 88% of people said the monarchy was good for Britain. By 2021 only 55% said it was important. What should worry the crown is the difference in attitudes between the older and younger generations.
Surveys by Ipsos showed 84% of those aged 65 and over back the monarchy but that fell to just 43% of those aged 35 and under.
Prof Robert Hazell of University College London’s Constitution Unit points out that all of the 11 working royals are aged over 40.
The departure of Harry and Meghan has left them without two royals who appealed to the younger generation.
William, 40, and Kate, 41, about as cutting edge as a Boden catalogue, do not have the same reach.
Graham Smith, of the anti-monarchy organisation Republic, says young people are “unimpressed” with the Royal Family’s recent scandals, their ties to empire and slavery and their extreme wealth.
Any dip in the royals’ popularity is accompanied by a rise in questions about whether they are good value for money.
As a recent Mirror poll showed, 80% want a slimmed-down monarchy and 84% would have preferred a less costly Coronation.
Apologists point out the Sovereign Grant – the mechanism for funding the Royal Family – will be £86.3million this year: equivalent to £1.25 per head of population.
This is boosted by private incomes from the Duchy of Lancaster, worth £20m a year for King Charles, and the Duchy of Cornwall, which brings in another £20m for Prince William.
Charles’s private fortune is reportedly nearly £2billion, thanks in part to the fact the royals do not pay inheritance tax.
Many will argue the Windsors more than earn their crust from the boost to tourism and their promotion of the UK overseas, not to mention their contribution to the souvenir industry.
But the Labour MP Clive Lewis argues their wealth is harder to justify in a cost of living crisis.
He says: “If you have a head of state that is unelected who is worth billions who is exempt from 160 different pieces of legislation, exempt from most forms of taxation, exempt from inheritance tax, it’s kind of giving justification why so many of the wealthiest are given a moral free pass.”
Lewis is one of the few openly republican MPs. He believes the Royals should come under greater scrutiny but he’s forbidden by parliamentary rules from raising their finances in Parliament.
“It’s a cast iron rule, it’s ludicrous,” he says. “Your elected representatives cannot hold [the Royal Family] to account.’
Lewis believes the erosion of the monarchy’s influence will begin, not at home, but overseas in places such as Jamaica and Antigua - two of the 14 countries which still have King Charles as their head of state.
Australia now has a minister for the republic, while Belize has formed a Commission to look at ending its link to the royalty.
Some argue the Palace may welcome these countries’ moves to independence as it would mean fewer overseas trips, leaving the royals more time to focus here.
King Charles has indicated he is in favour of slimmed down monarchy. Prof Hazell questions whether the Palace has thought through the implications.
“If the team is half the size then we, the public, are going to see less of them and that requires some careful management of public expectations,” he says.
“Clearly, the larger number of working members of the Royal Family, potentially the more vulnerable they are to two types of attack. One is when one of them goes off the rails like Prince Andrew and the second is the more general charge that there too many hangers-on,” he said.
Putting on a show may not be enough. The Royals need to prove they are relevant and representative of modern Britain.
“It’s possible people will hold onto them as a kind of semblance of normality but it’s also possible that people will regard them as part of the problem and we need to change things,” says Lewis.
