Say what you will about King Charles’s previously fanfared vision for a “slimmed-down monarchy”, its injury woes suggest it could do with buying another striker. If that isn’t how it works, then it’s clear that despite thinking they are the greatest fans in the world, many diehard royalists are simply not happy with what they’re seeing out there on the pitch, and are voicing their increasingly hysterical discontent. The king’s cancer treatment and the Princess of Wales’s convalescence from abdominal surgery have come at the same time, and social media posts are awash with the type of bizarre and brutal conspiracy theories in which so many of the #BeKind contingent specialise. Traditional media are trying to lose their mind with dignity, and – as so often before – tragically failing.
The royal family itself is playing its second team, the implications of that perhaps most eye-catchingly laid bare at this week’s memorial service for the former king of Greece. As Constantine’s godson, Prince William had been scheduled to do a reading, but pulled out at the very last minute due to a “personal matter”. So, bring on the U-70 Bs.
And who’s this barrelling along at the very front of the family party, grinning and leading the way next to his unestranged ex-wife, Fergie? Could it be Prince Andrew, a man who has spent two years formally in the wilderness (the 30-room Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, which comes complete with several staff cottages)? Could it be a man who regards that most luxuriously cruel and unusual punishment as more than enough for paying multiple millions in an out of court settlement to a trafficked woman he didn’t have sex with when she was 17? Yup, I think it could. Not to suggest that Andrew indecently relished the chance to step up, but the photographs outside the church give the impression he was pretty much doing the Lambeth Walk on the approach. The moving footage is slightly more forgiving, but the vibe was the actor playing Hamlet going off sick, and being replaced not with the understudy, but a particularly dim competition winner. Hopefully Andy was more suitably restrained during the actual service for the man the media kept referring to as King Constantine of Greece, even though Greece doesn’t have a king and hasn’t for 50 years. Still, what do the newspapers know?
Not nearly enough, seems to be their general consensus. Barely six weeks after Kate was admitted to hospital for planned surgery, much of the media here and around the world has wholly exhausted its fabled supply of patience, and is demanding detailed updates on the health of a woman who clearly, clearly doesn’t want to give them.
Kate’s feelings do not remotely seem to matter, despite the fact Kensington Palace indicated from the start that she’d be “unlikely to return to public duties till after Easter”. Almost a full month out from that date, some are already veering in the direction of the weirdness that broke out after the death of Princess Diana. Specifically the unreal part when the late Queen was somewhat bullied back from Balmoral – where she was engaged in the rather more real business of comforting her bereaved grandsons – to comfort the nation. “SHOW US YOU CARE” demanded a typical headline (in that case from the Daily Express), somehow lacking the imagination to grasp that children who have lost their mother are rather more important than grownups who didn’t even know Diana and not two weeks before were lapping up every obviously intrusive paparazzi shot of her. I always love the historian Ben Pimlott’s line on the madness: “A private crisis had become a public one, even though nobody knew what it was about.”
These days nobody really knows what anything is about, with one Mail columnist declaring that Kate’s current absence from public life “feels almost like a bereavement”. (No it doesn’t.) “The King has been open about his cancer diagnosis,” ran another impassioned cry. “Why can’t Kate be open about her surgery?” Mm-hm. I think it’s because she doesn’t want to be? The general tenor of these rapidly snowballing articles is that of your worst nosy neighbour coming round shortly after you’ve had some surgery you don’t want to go into, even though you’ve expressly said no visitors, and screaming through the letterbox: “How are you feeling ‘down there’? I am a well-meaning friend!” Then posting the whole exchange online.
In terms of what “well-meaning” royalists do want from the unwell people they claim to adore, some sort of worldwide privacy tour would seem to be the answer, ironically. Naturally, they can’t own up to this position, preferring instead to couch it in terms of what they, as the king’s subjects, “need”. But isn’t this simply bollocks? The people don’t really “need” anything at all, they would just quite like it, which isn’t the same thing.
Yet we live in an age where the royal family’s chief challenge is itself. All its crises come from within – deaths, divorces, diseases, decampings to America. The trouble for the royals, ultimately, is that you need those diehard fans to be on your side. The base must be rallied. As Queen Elizabeth II famously put it: “I have to be seen to be believed.” Perhaps the monarchy will end up considering the wisdom of slimming itself down to the point it might almost provoke one of those other classic headline templates of intrusive fake concern: “Fears for painfully thin royal family – pals say its health drive has gone too far.” In the meantime, could someone please urgently substitute Prince Andrew, or sell him to the Saudis in the transfer window?
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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