Life

Can the Monarchy Survive This?

With Queen Elizabeth II's death, the ascension of King Charles III is looking shakier than ever.
Person looks at billboard commemorating death of Queen Elizabeth II in London
Photo: Pietro Recchia/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The Queen’s death hands the British throne to a king more unpopular than Alan Sugar. With the funeral behind us and the corgis packed off to Prince Andrew, the next most obvious question is: Can the monarchy survive all this upheaval?

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Around one in five Brits oppose the monarchy, according to the latest YouGov data. Although 64 percent remain in favour, that support has fallen dramatically over the last ten years. On September 10, pressure group Republic called for a national debate on the monarchy’s future as republicans try to hasten the “endgame” heralded by Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel when she predicted the institution’s demise within two generations.

A lot is riding on the King’s PR machine. Behind closed doors, Charles III and his mother have common ground. The Queen secretly lobbied ministers for personal gain whilst the “meddling prince” lobbied Tony Blair’s government to expand grammar schools. His black spider” memos were sent to senior ministers at Whitehall to weigh in on the Iraq war, schools and even badger culling. But decades of reverent press coverage have immortalised the Queen as a “grandmother to the nation” and friend to Paddington Bear. It’s difficult to imagine the same affection for a King once accused of being “used by the UK government and BAE Systems as an arms dealer” – that verdict came from Campaign Against Arms Trade when a multi-million Typhoon jet deal was announced the day after Charles’s visit to Saudi Arabia. (The then-Prince’s aides said the deal “did not come up in any of his conversations”.)

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As a superficial environmentalist with offshore accounts, Charles irritates both the conservative and liberal press; even an admiring biography describes a “hopelessly thin-skinned” man with a temper most recently unleashed on a leaky pen. It’s no wonder that this billionaire ranks less popular than William, Kate, Princess Ann, and even Princess Zara.

But Charles is currently riding a wave of goodwill: YouGov data found that 63 percent think Charles would make a good King – up from 39 percent in March – while only a fifth think he’s not up to the job. But will this goodwill last? 

Dr Sam Wetherell, author and historian of Britain and the World, says the monarchy is “pretty precarious” under a patriarch.One of the key reasons why the Queen was able to maintain such a powerful emotional hold over so many people is because her office was feminised, and was therefore deemed safe, and able to be kept at arm's-length from politics as traditionally understood,” he tells VICE. “There is a whole different emotional landscape to ‘king’ – a blunt and uncomfortable feeling of authority and presence that will be extremely difficult to navigate.”

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Wetherell adds that the Queen’s appearance of political neutrality “allowed people to project all kinds of extremely contradictory things onto the Queen – grandmother, authoritarian matron, feminist icon, military commander, European cosmopolitan, defender of liberalism. The future of the monarchy in Britain will depend on whether Charles can successfully manage to inhabit these different kinds of projections and I don’t have a lot of confidence that he will.”

A taxpayer-funded funeral that could tip the country into a recession will also test goodwill as one in three households face fuel poverty. Dr Laura Clancy, lecturer and author of Running the Family Firm says the monarchy is a “central” issue in the cost of living crisis: “A country with an hereditary monarch at the top of society is a country with inequality built into its fabric. It receives wealth and funding above and beyond ordinary people, it does not suffer cuts to its funding, it has connections to histories of colonialism and Empire; it is privilege and power.”

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The Queen's funeral procession in London

The Queen's funeral procession in London. Photo: Aiyush Pachnanda

But a recession can also sharpen the monarchy’s survival instincts. Royal historian Dr Ed Owens has studied the growth of royal philanthropy in the wake of WWI and the Wall Street Crash: “During such moments in the past, the royal family have gone to special lengths in order to demonstrate that they care about those who are suffering,” he tells VICE. “Before the Second World War this included setting up relief funds to help the poorest. However, this is not an option today given how political such a move would seem. Instead, the royals speak in platitudes about their concern for those facing economic hardship, while doing little in reality to try to address the underlying issue of poverty.”

Modern-day reinvention includes the King’s vision of a “slimmed-down” monarchy of seven senior working royals. Campaign groups are sceptical that it could lower public expenditure on a family worth £24bn, and not without risk. Dr Craig Prescott, a lecturer in law writing a book on the monarchy’s future, says the royal family need to be “seen to be believed” and “a slimmed-down monarchy risks being a London-based institution, at a time when politics is seeking to spread power across the nations and regions of the UK. These risks multiply with the Commonwealth. An absent Head of State adds to the republican sentiment in those countries.”

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But a lack of face-to-face time with royals on tour was not exactly the issue raised during Prince William and Princess Catherine’s visit to Jamaica, when an open letter from 100 prominent Jamaican activists, politicians, academics and leaders renewed calls for the royal family to apologise for slavery and “begin a process of reparatory justice”. In June, at a Commonwealth summit in Rwanda, Charles shared “sorrow” for “slavery’s enduring impact” but witheld an apology. 

Indian artist Pritika Chowdhry is exhibiting her work The Partition Anti-

Memorial Project in Chicago and believes reparations could help heal the “deep wounds of colonialism”,  including atrocities in India where Britain stole an estimated $45 trillion between 1765 to 1938. “In India, anti-British sentiment stems from 200 years of oppression and the still-fresh memory of the horrors of the Partition; Queen Elizabeth once referred to the atrocious Jallianwala Bagh massacre as a distressing example of colonialism, but she did not issue an apology,” she says. “I believe that to be able to truly heal from the deep wounds of colonialism, we must address the hold it has on the millions of innocent people who still today suffer the consequences of racist and violent rule.”

Calls for reparations run in tandem with growing republicanism in the Commonwealth. Barbados became a republic (but remained in the Commonwealth) last November and at least six other Caribbean countries want to break free from Britain’s “neocolonial tentacles”, as one member of the Saint Vincent and Grenadines Reparations Committee put it. 

For now in Britain, Republic’s call for a national debate could at least produce good television. In 1997 (before Princess Diana’s death), Trevor McDonald co-hosted a televised debate with a 3,000-strong audience, Peter Stringfellow, Jeffrey Archer, Barbara Windsor, and a Druid King, amongst other guests. A third of callers wanted to abolish the monarchy whilst 66 percent voted in its favour, but more people wanted to crown King Richard Branson than Charles III.

Today, only four in ten 18-24 year olds support the monarchy. “Some, but not all will become more supportive of the monarchy, but many will continue to be republicans,” says Prescott. “What we can learn from Brexit is that no political idea is more than 20 years away from being realised.”

@Sarah_Woolley