One way to measure the popularity of the royal family is by the frequency with which its second most grotesque member, Sarah Ferguson, makes a bid for attention. She surfaced, in saviour mode, during lockdown; now she finds the forgiving, post-funeral mood perfect for re-entry with a new fiction product and some very special memories of the Queen: “My mother and my wonderful best friend.”
Fergie’s inheritance, with Andrew, of the sacred corgis probably afforded further protection against the sort of pre-funeral interrogation that might otherwise have featured anything from Jeffrey Epstein to that old royal plan, the one going back years, to strip royal dependents like her of their privileges. In Fergie’s case, along with the status she currently leverages for Mills & Boon commissions, the occupancy of a royal mansion in Windsor.
If the British royal family is, gauged by Fergie sightings, safe from hostile inspection until at least after the coronation, some recent demotions at the Danish court should remind King Charles that it can’t last. And the longer he puts off the radical “slimming down” we’ve heard about for ever, the more likely he could find, like Denmark’s Queen Margrethe, that the price of inaction is not just public resentment but the tragic wrath of the humbled.
Even young royals, somehow able to comprehend the horror of civilian status from their earliest years, could end up like the afflicted Danish royals, “saddened and in shock”. Or feeling “ostracised”, according to the mother of two of the victims, unable to “understand why their identity is being taken away from them”.
Though the lost identity part, given its central place in any smooth-running monarchy, is probably less important than the direction of travel. We have yet, for example, to hear any objection from King Charles at losing his own prince identity; nor, now they’ve all shuffled up a place, complaints from the replacement Waleses at not being Cambridges (though in fairness they’re allowed to keep that as a kind of aristocratic side-hustle).
Camilla’s identity, too, seems unimpaired by accelerating metamorphoses that have propelled her, in a kind of bloodless version of Kind Hearts and Coronets, from Mrs to duchess to royal lady of the Garter to Queen Consort to, in the pages of the Times at least, Queen Camilla.
One of the new non-princes of Denmark, a 23-year-old model called Nikolai, has confirmed his sadness and shock at being downgraded to count, and thus addressable, as soon as January 2023, as “excellency”. Yes, it would take a heart of stone – but imagine this happening to a prince or princess you actually cared about. Think of Richard II’s misery when he loses all his titles in Act IV: “Alack the heavy day, That I have worn so many winters out, And know not now what name to call myself!” Snap! “I am very confused as to why it has to happen like this,” Prince Nikolai said. Has he considered a move to England?
His father, the Danish queen’s younger son, Prince Joachim, expressed such anguish about the loss of his children’s prince and princess titles that the royal household issued a statement saying she had underestimated the impact. At the same time: “We hope that the Queen’s wish to future-proof the royal household will be respected.”
Like Sweden’s King Carl Gustav before her, Queen Margrethe concluded that some deprincing was essential to the dynasty’s survival, “in line with similar adjustments that other royal houses have made in various ways in recent years”. It seems curious that her younger son and his children neither anticipated the change nor, as dedicated Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburgs, appreciated its bloodline-enhancing purpose.
As it is, their cries of indignation, seemingly unsupported by any public outpouring, further illustrate what the British royal family has shown us for years: the deforming effect of being born into continual flattery. Even when the head of the family is someone like Queen Margrethe, a keen amateur archaeologist and talented illustrator of Tolkien, to whom this whole episode has served as a welcome introduction. Elizabeth II could still, after all, produce both the monstrous Andrew and a famously petulant successor. It has been considered disarming proof of Prince George’s early awareness of his destiny that he warned classmates: “My dad will be king so you better watch out.” In their way, Queen Margrethe’s children and grandchildren are simply stamping their feet about stinking pens.
If it’s too early in the stages of national mourning to mention Charles’s benefactors or to ask if Princess Beatrice (now a “counsellor of state”) still has that job she was given by an alleged perpetrator of sexual assault, it could be a mistake for the royals to mistake tact for approbation. Some bleating about the imminent new season of The Crown suggests that unexpected popularity is already raising palace deference needs to near-absurd levels, with the Telegraph reporting that officials have “moved to protect the reputation of the King”. Is he worried that a still emotional public, dangerously overexcited by the sight of Elizabeth Debicki looking nothing like Diana, might yet turn on him? He’s more at risk from Fergie and Andrew reminding everyone of the still bloated state of the real institution, with its cargo of freeloaders and embarrassments.
So what stops Charles royal-future-proofing, like Queen Margrethe, while the sun is shining? We know he can be ruthless and not only because he humiliated his younger, ex-military son by denying him his uniform at a military spectacle watched by 29 million Britons. He also, while praying for the Queen in Edinburgh, had his aide send redundancy warnings to dozens of Clarence House staff: “The change in role for our principals will also mean change for our household.” He could use the same template for the wider royal family, minus, perhaps, any talk of “alternative roles”. That’s surely for Mills & Boon.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
