We learned two things about our new king yesterday.
The first is that Saturday's rather unseemly indecent in which he angrily demanded that pens and inkwells be removed from the table where he was signing documents was not just caused by the stress of the moment, as I had hoped.
He repeated his stress with a pen yesterday, angrily thrusting a pen that had leaked to his wife to sort out. It was as if all such issues were beneath him and anything going wrong was someone else's fault when it was very hard to see why he could not have taken his own pen, filled with suitable ink. I should think he can afford a Mont Blanc. But worse, it showed him as a man who treated his wife like a subservient, and that she was obviously wearily tolerant of this behaviour, suggesting it habitual. It was unbecoming at best.
Worse was to follow. During the course of yet another church memorial service for the Queen, Charles as the employer of staff at Clarence House, which has been his London home and office, made one hundred of his those employees redundant. He did so as he now inherits the staff at Buckingham Palace. The range of duties of those now redundant is wide, from domestic staff to his finance team.
Staggeringly, during a week when we are, at the request of the government and royal family, officially in mourning and when much normal activity, from cancer treatments onwards, is being cancelled, Charles III found time amongst his own grieving to dispense with the services of staff, some of whom have apparently been in his employment for decades. Three myths were shattered as a result.
The first was that Charles cares.
The second is that he has the judgement to be king.
The third is that he is learned anything about the importance of timing behaviour to manage media consequences.
Having at least the appearance of those three abilities matters to be monarch, when the only real requirement of that role is to be popular. The Queen managed that, presumably with the support of aides. If those same aides have advised Charles now they have failed him spectacularly. If he acted on his own, the situation is worse.
Whichever it was, the absurd and sycophantic goodwill so far seem this week is going to be, at the very least, tainted by this.
Letting Andrew appear in military uniform today will only do further harm. The re-assimilation of him is really not wise.
And Harry remains looking like a time bomb of relative sanity within the sea of royal make believe just waiting to go off.
I understand that many want to grieve the Queen. I think they should gave the chance to do so, although how a hearse can require continual television coverage baffles me as a source of entertainment. But that is not the issue I am focussed on.
As I said when talking on BBC 5 Live yesterday, amongst the many abuses of human rights implicit in the monarchy is the abuse of the royal family by placing on its members demands that it is not reasonable they should suffer by reason of their birth, and which they might not either wish for or have the suitability to endure, but from which they are not, apparently, permitted to escape. I think we are seeing the clearest possible evidence that those demands can produce behaviour that is quite unsuited to fit the myth of modern royalty.
This is not the primary reason why I wish to dispense with a constitutional monarchy and the role of all those with hereditary authority within our government. The best interests of democracy are what requires that. But, the very obvious stresses and emerging inabilities of those in the royal household to understand just what is expected of them now will provide the background to what I suspect will be the growth in a rapid disenchantment with monarchy in the UK.
We all know the media can turn on royalty. Papers who were once singing a royal personage's praises can very soon thereafter become immensely hostile. Charles is setting himself up for this, already. I have already suggested this week that this might take only a matter of months, which is why, I am sure, this accession tour was promoted with such vigour, knowing that the likelihood of backlash was high. I suspect it will happen rather sooner now.
What does this mean? I cannot be sure. We could just endure a bad king, who we have long anticipated. I might also be wrong in my reading of the runes. And there again, it may be this might lead to call for change more quickly than anyone expected, with Prince William no saviour in the wings, I suggest.
To put it another way, the need to discuss the alternatives is with us. I suggested an Irish style presidency on the BBC yesterday. I stick with that suggestion. We need it.
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Very perceptive.
Charle’s truculence has all the hallmarks of a teenager who wants all the benefits but none of the responsibilities. Maybe this is what his Mum recognised as she waited for him to grow up?
Charles could not be arsed to sign pieces of paper anyway, so a malfunctioning pen just added to his woes.
It must be awful for him now, pressed into service by the royal machinery faction of our fascist state doing their job of perpetuating a myth.
Having to walk here and there, stand still on a vigil etc., must be very alien to someone who just wants to be left alone to live the life he has always lived. He is a reluctant King having spent most of his life digging himself into the very system he seems to despise. Maybe that system has destroyed him too as you suggest, and created him as he is today.
Could Charles have chosen to abdicate in favour of his son? Was this not a choice?
He could have
After 70 years of waiting he was not going to do so
I noticed there was no coverage of Liz Truss being with King Charles yesterday apart from the memorial service. We do seem to have some separation of the symbolic branch of government and the real one and that’s a good thing in my view.
You think things do not happen unless on TV screens?
Why?
There are lots of media available now and you can also attend in person or speak to eye-witnesses to get your news. Modern communications gives you so many ways to learn things.
Sure, you can learn things wrongly, but you can learn them faster and via so many channels. And be corrected on your initial misunderstandings too.
None of which supports your claim
Fair point. I hadn’t thought of that.
If we ever do get a Scotland independent and able to choose in such matters, a President in the Irish mould would seem an excellent alternative – only I’d vote for the office bearing a version of Wallace’s ancient title – Guardian of the Realm – or in such a case, Guardian of the Republic.
Quite so
The fawnification over the passing of an unelected old lady has been worthy of any production of total national grief from North Korea.
The revelatory behaviour of the mardy new King was something to behold. His seemingly irritation with a cluttered table and malfunction writing instruments were evidence of pure unadulterated entitlement.
I feel for those on the receiving end of his petulant outbursts more so those who worked tirelessly only to be rewarded with the Order of The King’s Boot.
Carry on Charles , it’ll hasten the demise of this ancient soap opera.
We can criticise the monarchy, both the institution and the people who embody it, for many reasons. However, there is one reason which is unarguable, and outweighs any others. It is undemocratic.
Not even the most ardent Royalist argues otherwise.
It is therefore incompatible with any system of government which claims to be democratic, and it undermines those democratic processes and institutions that we do have.
I think the argument about The Monarchy imposing an unreasonable burden on those who are born into it is, and remains the strongest argument for its abolition.
Many years ago someone made the point to me that with any ‘Country Estate’ every so often an heir will appear who either cant manage it, or drinks the income. It clearly seems that Edward VIII was more flawed than most, and what would have happened if Andrew rather than Charles was the first born male?
“Letting Andrew appear in military uniform today will only do further harm. The re-assimilation of him is really not wise.” I may have missed it, (or our coverage in Australia is not complete), but I only saw him marching in a long coat with his medals on. But I take it that’s not what you meant Richard. It makes no sense that he is allowed to march in uniform while Harry isn’t. Inconsistency to a “T”. I guess for the Royal family, it’s one rule for one and one rule for another.
I gather he will appear in uniform by the coffin
I gut the timing wrong
I have no sympathy whatsoever for Andrew, or for any of the Royal Family for that matter, except I have sympathy for the loss of a loved family member. But it seems more than a little ironic that the only members of the Royal Family who did not wear military uniform in the parade behind the coffin were the only 2 who have actually seen active service.
To put it simply, I think the UK needs to decide whether to regard its Royals as celebrities—hounding them unmercifully in their private life, while letting rumour and media speculation manage our expectations of them—or whether to worship them as if they were untouchable and unknowable. You can’t have it both ways.
The late Queen was born and reigned through an era where the untouchable/unknowable British monarch was the thing. However, her children and grandchildren have become celebrities—not necessarily by choice. However, they can’t cross back into untouchable/unknowable, because we know too much about them.
I am not a royalist, and I agree with Richard that a long-term (non political) honorary presidency is probably the best way forward to create a stable, democratically-elected head of state. But other countries with royal families—Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc—seem to manage their royalty more calmly than the UK does.
The very same things struck me. A normal person would just have moved the inkwells out of the way, and maybe complained. I was stunned by the redundancies for Clarence House staff as if they were rubbish to be disposed of ASAP. Given the wealth of the Royals a kind person would have started by keeping people paid while other employment was found, a drop in the ocean of flunkies.
Agreed
I think the Irish constitutional system is one of the best systems that currently exists in the world. Interestingly it’s largely based on the British system but with two major, transformative changes:
(1) an elected president (currently the wonderful Michael D Higgins) as head of state instead of a monarch;
(2) Proportional Representation (STV) instead of First Past the Post.
If we made those two changes to the UK we’d have a much better system than we currently have.
Agreed
indecent = incident surely?
Typos happen