Suddenly, one of the great plot lines of our island story peters out. What will replace it? For the best part of 20 years the media, not just in Britain but across the world, have been preparing discreetly for the death of the Queen, yet she still contrived to take us royal watchers by surprise.
There she was, on Tuesday, smiling and extending a hand to Liz Truss, her 15th prime minister, and dutifully enduring separate 40-minute conversations with both Truss and her predecessor, Boris Johnson, in her living room at Balmoral. She was looking perhaps a little frailer than we were used to and there were marks of a cannula, but otherwise no indication of how close to death she was. Duty still prevailed until Wednesday’s cancellation of a privy council meeting. Working to the end.
Other monarchs have died suddenly, falling off their horses (William the Conqueror, William III), sitting on the toilet (George II), murdered (Edward II), catching dysentery (Henry V) or even a quick dose of morphia to hasten the passing in time for an announcement in the morning papers (George V), but this is a modern media age where we don’t expect to be taken by surprise.
So the central figure in the royal soap opera starred in this week’s episode but can only be a reference in future scripts. On The Archers or EastEnders they know how to cope with actual or scripted death and media editors know they have tributes and retrospectives aplenty to bulk out the plot. When Diana, Princess of Wales died 25 years ago, the tabloids feared that would be an end to filling their front pages with photographs of her, but somehow it didn’t make any difference: people still bought papers with her face on the front and the plot line still had strands to endure for the best part of a decade.
What now, then? Refinement, of course, but not a full rewrite: all the characters are well known. No convulsions: the monarchy doesn’t like surprises, even if the media do, and there is no Camelot fairytale in the offing, not at least until young Prince George, now second in line to the throne, comes of age.
King Charles is rapidly approaching his mid-70s, but his mournful, equine face has been familiar for 60 years. Prince William, happily married this past decade, father of three and now heir, is 40, staid, reliable, unglamorous. “It’s all very well,” one royal photographer once said to me, “but at the end of the day, he’s just another bald, middle-aged bloke in a suit.”
Now two of the princes who were supposed to help share the burden of the plot have gone Awol. Prince Andrew has self-destructed, left to spend more time with his golf clubs. Despite his pleas to be rehabilitated, that won’t and can’t happen if the family firm know what’s good for it. He is a dead-end plot line: the creepy younger brother written out of the script.
Then there’s a trouble with Harry. The royals must have thought they had hit the jackpot when he married Meghan Markle, an American actor of mixed-race heritage – a series of plot lines all on its own. But that didn’t last; instead she turned, for many British readers at least, into the wicked fairy: lobbing hand grenades at other members of the institution. Even that plot line is wearing thin, as the American-based cast members may now be learning. The royal brothers’ feud remains promising, a source of drama and creative tension, but it will be difficult to sustain if they never see each other.
Who will take up the royal burden, the constant round of openings, walkabouts and visits, years of “Do you come here often?” and “What is it you do?” Princess Anne has been dutifully doing it for years – the busiest royal, year by year – but she’s in her 70s. Prince Edward and Sophie Wessex began promisingly controversially 30 years ago, with his dropping out of the Marines and her inappropriate business links. They play the weak younger brother and the dull wife – but that’s not exactly box office either. No audience was ever thrilled by the prospect of Edward opening a hospital wing.
So it has to be Charles and Camilla and William and Kate to carry on the plot. They will have to work harder: more lines, more scenes, an endless punishing schedule. The ratings must stay high, and the ratings depend on them.
Stephen Bates is a former religious affairs and royal correspondent of the Guardian. His latest book is A Short History of the Crown
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