Prince William’s dad dancing, Prince Harry’s smoothing and their endless droning on about their ‘issues’, the monarchy is turning into a reality show
The younger royals are just too interested in the world of celebrity and in the popularisation of their own image
IT’S a summer of change for the House of Windsor — out with the old, in with the young.
The Duke of Edinburgh has just announced that he is standing down from public duties. The Queen carries on, but she’s 91, and now the younger members of the Royal Family are expected to step up.
How will Princes William and Harry and the photogenic Kate cope?
The early signs are not promising. Nobody these days expects the Royal Family to heed 19th century writer Walter Bagehot’s warning that they should not “let in daylight upon magic”; that is, preserve the dignity of the monarchy by shrouding themselves in mystery.
The junior royals, however, seem to be moving to the opposite extreme, which is embarrassing.
If it’s not Prince Harry smooching his celebrity girlfriend Meghan Markle at a polo match it’s Prince William dad dancing in a Swiss nightclub.
Fair enough that they are using their position to highlight mental illness, especially as it is Mental Health Awareness Week. But the younger royals seem to be too interested in the cringe- inducing world of celebrity and in the popularisation of their own image.
At times it’s hard to tell the difference between the real-life entertainment provided by the princes and those “structured-reality” shows such as Made in Chelsea or The Only Way is Essex.
Kate’s sister Pippa is marrying the brother of a Made in Chelsea star, which adds to this strange sense of a slow fusion of monarchy and showbiz.
Miss Markle is a well-known actress, too. There’s no harm in that, of course: Grace Kelly became a successful princess. Meghan, however, is a chronic virtue-signaller.
She is a “UN women’s advocate for political participation and leadership”, posts videos of herself singing on Instagram, as well as endless selfies and motivational slogan memes.
The younger royals have been acting up in a way not quite seen before. Look at their Heads Together campaign.
Monarchy drifting towards entertainment is off-putting
To raise money and awareness about mental health, the princes have performed in videos and given
several interviews in which they waffle vaguely about their own brain issues along with lots of celebrities.
In one, Prince William, in Kensington Palace, conducts a video conversation on his computer with Lady Gaga in her Hollywood kitchen. It’s meant to look natural but fails lamentably. Everybody knows there are camera crews on both sides of the conversation.
In another video, Kate, Wills and Harry sit on a bench talking about their issues as if they were just three normal privileged people sitting on a bench talking about their issues.
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The conversation is so repetitive it makes the listener go mad, which rather defies the point.
Heads Together has been widely hailed a great success, largely because it triggered an avalanche of publicity. People love hearing famous people discuss their woes and mental health is all the rage — everybody is talking about how nobody is talking about it.
We are told the royals are reinventing the concept of monarchy for the digital age and so on. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
It’s an open secret the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh are none too comfortable with all the emoting and the sleb mingling. The Queen has reportedly told her grandchildren to pipe down: “Soul-baring isn’t what Buckingham Palace is looking for,” one royal source told The Sunday Times last week.
The Queen knows she is hugely popular precisely because she does not blather on about what is going on in her head.
Prince Philip is said to be handing over most of his royal duties to Prince Edward, who appears to have learned the hard way that royals should not bask in the showbiz limelight.
In 1987, Prince Edward was behind It’s a Royal Knockout, the TV gameshow in which the younger royals wore medieval fancy dress and humiliated themselves alongside various celebrities.
It was a success in that it raised £1.5million for various good causes. But it was a public relations disaster. Today’s junior royals wouldn’t do anything so gauche, they wouldn’t be allowed.
Yet perhaps they haven’t quite understood what It’s a Royal Knockout taught the previous generation: That the British people don’t want the royals to be too familiar. We find it off-putting when monarchy drifts towards entertainment, even if it is for charity.
Along with their advisers, Kate, Wills and Harry appear to think their job is to rebrand the monarchy in the 21st century — to make it ever more accessible and democratic.
They want to have it both ways with the media — to guard their privacy and advertise their feelings.
They want to tell the world about their intimate sufferings but they don’t want the world intruding in their lives.
Princes William and Harry are much more like their father and mother than their grandmother and grandfather in the expression of their feelings.
It was the Prince of Wales who started the royal habit of whining to the press about the press, and of explaining how very hard it is to live under the burden of great privilege. Princess Diana spoke on television about her depression, her bulimia, and the troubles of her heart.
Is the modus operandi of the younger princes all that different?
On their Heads Together tour, the princes kept insisting the campaign was “not about us”. It is about them, though.
They may be using their own painful experiences, such as the loss of their mother, to try to help others who are in anguish, and that’s kind.
But they are also promoting themselves, and that grates.
Prince William and Prince Harry are widely reckoned to be more popular than their father. But if they keep fishing for empathy and dabbling in celebrity culture, the public will grow weary of them.
In 30 years royal historians might look back at the Heads Together campaign, at the eager association with pop stars and the blooming romance between Prince Harry and Miss Markle, and ask: Was this the moment when it all started to go wrong?
- A version of this article appeared in The Spectator