If his new reign goes the way King Charles III should hope, the main royal news of the week will be his visit to the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday. There the king did the things that British monarchs do and received the respect they are used to receiving. He spoke to staff, met political leaders and unveiled a bronze plaque commemorating Elizabeth II’s funeral, as well as two ornate beacons, gifts from both houses. In the words of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the new beacons symbolize “the enduring and guiding light [the queen] has been in our nation – and indeed throughout the world – for the past 70 years.”
Unfortunately for the king, this highly traditional visit to Westminster, with its reverent rhetoric of continuity and stability, was not the main royal news of the week at all. Instead, it was ensured by Thursday’s release of the final three distinctly irreverent episodes of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix docu-series.
The new episodes don’t hold back. In one, Prince Harry raised the curtain on the 2020 royal summit in Sandringham on the future of Sussex, at which he said Prince William “shouted and shouted” and King Charles said “things that were just not true”. while the queen sat quietly thinking how to protect the institution. In another, the duchess and her mother described how Meghan’s despair at the royal world – echoing Diana, Princess of Wales a generation earlier – had led her to think “it will all stop if I’m not here” and to thought takes its life.
These are shocking claims. Along with the racism and misogyny detailed in earlier episodes, they shed a wretched light, to say the least, on the way the British monarchy conducts itself. It is true, as the late Queen said in a statement, that “some memories may differ” on some matters. It is also true that the biggest villains in this whole saga are not King Charles, Princes William or Harry or any of the individual royals, but the relentlessly intrusive and hyperbolic British tabloid press and the lying and abusive world of social media. None of the major players, including the Sussexes themselves, come away from these televised raids without questions and perhaps criticism. Saddest of all is surely the sight of so many miserable people in such a dysfunctional institution. Few directors seem unscathed, often seriously, by the pressures of the roles they play before audiences of sometimes infantilized millions.
Although the Sussex campaigns were damaging to family relations in Windsor, they may not have had much impact on the state of the monarchy itself. A Savanta poll this week found that 59% of Britons think documentaries are a bad idea, compared to 33% who think they are a good idea. These figures reflect public attitudes towards the institution itself, where 55% support the monarchy against 31% who prefer an elected head of state. That these figures are unchanged since Elizabeth II’s reign may make King Charles feel that his own reign is settling in nicely. But with Harry’s book set to breathe fresh air in the new year, the new king is on probation. He is still only working his way to the levels of public approval that under his mother provided such support to the monarchical system.
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