Historian Richard Weight reflects on Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's bombshell interview and where the latest crisis sits in royal history.
The author of Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940-2000, considers the monarchy's "tin ears to social change" and its need to not miss the next big opportunity to modernise.
While history has repeatedly seen the British Royal Family outlast all combatants and wars of words - this time, they may need to do more than just survive.
Racism. Suicidal thoughts. Exile. Patronages, security and Civil List funding all removed.
A confessional TV interview that dares to criticise a Royal Family that’s deaf to those ‘trapped’ in its’ traditions and outmoded attitudes.
The beautiful ghost of Princess Diana hovers over an institution in crisis once more.
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But who will win the nation’s hearts this time and will the monarchy learn a lesson?
Perspective is needed: all monarchies in the modern world go through crises of legitimacy because the institution is peopled by fallible human beings, however hard a ‘Firm’ of courtiers works to make them seem relevant.
Juan Carlos of Spain, once a hero of Spanish democracy, abdicated in 2014, and went into exile last year a disgraced man after sexual and financial scandals. The military junta in Thailand have spent millions of dollars on a ‘worship, protect and uphold the monarchy’ campaign. Yet still Thai youth protest, and are jailed, for questioning Rama X’s right to rule.
But we’re different, aren’t we? Not as much as we like to think.
This won’t be the last crisis for our own ‘constitutional monarchy’.
And, of course, it isn’t the first.
The Windsors were badly shaken by Edward VIII’s Abdication in 1936 when he too fell for a divorced American.
Almost two thirds of the British public supported the couple, although unaware he was a Nazi sympathiser.
It didn’t matter. The Firm ensured they never darkened palace doors again.
Princess Margaret fell in love with a divorced war veteran and over 90 per cent of Mirror readers supported her.
It didn’t matter. In 1955 she was pressured into choosing ‘duty’ over her ‘love’ for Peter Townshend.
Flings, love affairs, embarrassing divorces and rumours of sexual deviance have stalked the British monarchy ever since.
From Diana’s Bashir interview in 1995 to Meghan’s Oprah interview, one thing hasn’t changed: the monarchy still seems to have tin ears to social change.
Yes, there were people of colour at the Sussex’s wedding, Oprah being one, in what appeared to be a spectacle of integration (Those Brits sure can put on a show!)
And speculating on the skin colour of a baby doesn’t make you a racist, countless mixed-race families of all ethnicities around the world do the same in a spirit of benign curiosity.
However, when Meghan’s revelation is coupled with persistently racist reporting of her life in some parts of the media that can go unrebutted, questions really must be asked about how deep change goes at Buckingham Palace.
Ironically, the most vicious bigotry appears hourly on social media.
And yet the young who largely populate it are more supportive of Harry and Meghan and the changing Britain they represent.
Polls since Diana’s day have consistently shown majority support for the monarchy, and at the same time a steadily declining belief that it will survive the next century.
But yet again, the polls don’t matter.
Because the historical form book tells us that, whoever wins the current war of words, the British monarchy will outlast today’s combatants.
However, the Firm needs to do more than strip and humiliate Harry and Meghan if the monarchy is going to do more than just survive.
To regain their popularity among the young, the Royal Family cannot miss the next big opportunity to modernise.
The Crown isn’t, as some Royals have claimed, a complete work of fiction. And the British know it.
It’s a fairly accurate historical drama about a dysfunctional family and an institution that hasn’t learned the lessons of its’ recent past.
Perhaps Harry and Meghan could play themselves in a future season as part of their Netflix deal?
Now that would wake up the most complacent courtier.
