Modern Monarchy Retold: From Queen Victoria To The House Of Windsor | Kings & Queens | Real Royalty

We begin our look at the Modern Monarchy with the longest ruling royal in British history; Queen Victoria. From her accession to the throne in 1837 to her death in 1901 Victoria was to reign for 64 years. In contrast, Edward VII her successor, was to be king for only 10 years; a reign that led up to the current House of Windsor.

From Elizabeth II to Cleopatra, Real Royalty peels back the curtain to give a glimpse into the lives of some of the most influential families in the world, with new full length documentaries posted every week covering the monarchies of today and all throughout history.

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Foreign The story of the kings and queens of England is more surprising than you might think it’s a fine drama a thousand years of tales of lust and betrayal of heroism and cruelty of mysteries murders tragedies and triumphs oh you’re probably thinking that applies to medieval kings all right but this

Program’s about the modern monarchy from Victoria to the home life of our own dear Queen and there’s not much of that sort of thing going on here oh really keep watching what you may Wonder did lust have to do with the matronly Queen Victoria well she was young once and her husband

Prince Albert gave his name to more than just a bridge at concert hall and a memorial no other British royal has a body piercing named after him and we can’t show you where the ring goes in a Prince Albert you’ll just have to guess kept Victoria happy nine children

And this isn’t only a collection of Royal trivia for the tabloids we can reveal for the first time on television that the present Queen’s grandfather George V actually took over the running of the country secret personal rule for a few days in 1931. he believed it was the only way to save

The country from Revolution most of the papers relating to this are still hidden how much do we really know about what goes on In 1867 Walter Badger wrote a book on the British constitution which said that it had two parts the efficient part and the dignified part the dignified part was headed by the queen it was a piece of theater whose only purpose was to make people feel loyalty the actual power was entirely

Held by the efficient part which he said was a secret committee called the cabinet everyone believed Badger’s book the government encouraged people to believe it so did the royal family then and now well they would wouldn’t they truth has been rather different [Applause] obviously when the 18 year old Victoria

Came to the throne in 1837 she wasn’t in much of a position to try to run the country she’d had a rather odd upbringing her father had been a brother of George IV and William IV but he died when she was a baby her mother was a straight-laced German

Princess who was determined that her daughter should not be part of the disreputable life of the court or murdered as her mother thought possible by one of her terrible uncles who wanted the throne himself she was brought up in isolation in Kensington Palace which in those days was rather cut off from London

Her main interest on becoming Queen was to finally cut free of her mother and supervise her and move out of her mother’s bedroom and when she was 19 she fell hopelessly utterly in love with her first cousin the 20 year old younger son of the Duke of sax Coburg gota Handsome such beautiful eyes my heart is quite going he certainly tried hard to look good that notorious ring piercing if it did exist no one can be quite sure was attached to a chain to assist in smoothing the line of his britches they married in 1840. she wasn’t hugely popular at the time

Headstrong willful she actually blocked a change of government because it would have upset her domestic Arrangements the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne had given her the wives and Daughters of his own supporters as the ladies of her bed chamber when his weak government fell and Robert peel came to power peel insisted that

The queen should replace at least some of the leaders so that the court wasn’t a complete one-party state Victoria refused peel felt forced to resign and Melbourne came briefly back to Power people didn’t like what she was doing they didn’t like her and they didn’t like the stiff German Prince Albert

Peel came back to Power and refused to Grant him much more than half the allowance Victoria demanded saying that people were very hard up which they were the position of the throne seemed pretty shaky it didn’t seem likely that this would become the most secure and richest monarchy in the world

How did that happen when Victoria came to the Throne all she had as her own was the revenue of the duchy of Lancaster 27 000 pounds a year the Sunday Times rich list for 1990 showed Elizabeth II as being worth 6.7 billion pounds that’s nearly 10 billion in today’s

Money the richest person in the land by a huge margin it’s true that the latest rich list shows her being worth a mere 250 million has she lost 97 percent of her money on the horses did she give it all away to charity no the latest figure is a guess based on

An instruction to the Sunday Times not to count anything she holds on trust for the nation obviously she can’t sell the crown jewels and pocket the proceeds but actually most rich people hold much of their wealth in trust yet it’s still treated as theirs because they have the use of it

The Royal move into profit began when Albert took charge of the royal finances he wasn’t allowed to be king there was deep suspicion of him but Victoria let him manage her Affairs and he did an astonishing job of it the Royal household was an incredible Gothic ant Heap

Clean a window in Buckingham Palace was a job for the Lord Chamberlain staff unless it was a kitchen or scullery window then they had to call on the Lord Steward and neither could touch the outside of the glass which was looked after by the office of woods and forests

Laying a fire was the Lord Stewart’s job but lighting it the Lord Chamberlain’s as their staff were not on good terms the queen froze other Palace staff were paid for jobs whose very purpose and even existence had been forgotten enter Albert with boiling water and a hatchet he sorted

That lot out and cut Victoria’s costs dramatically he had a huge capacity for work and organization so when he came up with the idea for a great exhibition of the world’s arts and Industry no one should have doubted that he could make it happen of course they did doubt it they had no

Confidence in the exhibition Hall the Crystal Palace a giant Greenhouse erected by a gardener and when they realized that thousands would congregate there they thought that it would be a rallying point for revolutionaries The opening of the great exhibition on May the 1 1851 was a thrilling day for the nation and for Victoria the royal couple began to be viewed with some enthusiasm and it was quite understandable that the next year an eccentric Miser should leave the queen half a million pounds in his will

Albert’s influencing government Rose visibly which of course soon put an end to his popularity by 1854 it was generally believed that Albert The Foreigner was a traitor in League with Russia forcing loyal ministers out of office crowds gathered round the tower under the impression that Albert and Victoria had been arrested for treason

That frenzy died down but at the back of it were two things that were going to be permanent problems one was that the queen and her consort must have some role in running the country but that couldn’t be squared with any kind of representative government and the other was that people were

Realizing that the Monarch was making a profit and they didn’t like it the solution was to conceal what was really happening under a cloak of secrecy and that cloak is still in place when I was researching a book on the most sensitive part of this story I

Needed to see some papers that should have been released by the ministry of Defense the then Navy Minister David Owen read the file and released it but the crucial documents weren’t there he suggested they would have been treated as the private property of the crown and kept in the Royal archive private

I wasn’t allowed in Albert’s own role was pretty secret he was in reality acting as king of England but that was behind the scenes the title he was eventually given in 1857 was just prince consort when Albert died Victoria uttered a terrible shriek she never recovered she retired to Scotland and went into

What seemed to be Everlasting morning she and Albert had built a number of Retreats for themselves Osborne on the Isle of Wight Sandringham in Norfolk and her favorite Balmoral here she hid for months at a time with the faithful Highland retainer John Brown he was allowed enough familiarity for

The queen to be widely referred to as Mrs Brown Victoria herself could see no reason to take part in public ceremonies like the opening of parliament she thought that her hidden role as the head of her government was enough but that of course led many people to wonder why they had

To pay for her upkeep at all she received as she had done from the start of her Reign 385 000 pounds a year from the government it was more than she needed her Court was nowhere near as expensive as for instance George IV’s had been and without her being visible many

People could see no point in her having this money by the 1870s there was a strong Republican movement expressing itself in newspapers large public meetings and in Parliament the nature of the country was changing dramatically new industrial cities were darkening the landscape with smoke and

Soot a new kind of society was formed a society of factory workers and low-paid Artisans of Builders and Miners and metal workers these were people outside the political world with no natural attachments to traditional political structures and there were a lot of them over the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts

Presented by world-renowned historians all from history hit watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device download the app now to explore everything from the wonders of ancient Pompeii and the Mystery of the princes in the tower to the life of Anne Berlin

And D-Day sign up via the link in the description the anti-royalist head of steam built up every time Parliament was asked for extra grants to Victoria’s children when they came of age or married but in fact it was very probably these children who saved her throne no British Statesman wanted to see the

Royal family given its marching orders when their marriages offered such a useful back door into the chancellories of Europe Victoria’s eldest daughter was married to the heir to the Kaiser of the new German Empire and was a strong and useful influence on her husband and a thorn in bismarck’s flesh

The heir to the British throne Albert Edward had married Alexandra daughter of the king of Denmark and sister of the king of Greece the Greek Crown had actually been offered to another of Victorious Sons Alfred the Greeks had sacked their own King and held a national vote on who should get the throne

95 percent of them voted for Alfred who was at the time an 18 year old midshipman in the Royal Navy the government made him turn it down because they had promised to keep their hands off Greece never mind it went as a sort of hand-me-down to the son of

England’s good friend the king of Denmark and in 1874 Alfred married the daughter of Tsar Alexander II which was Jolly useful given the anglo-russian competition on the edges of India these were marriages that would produce many many well-distributed children by the time Victoria died in 1901 she had over 90 living descendants

It was a full-time job just getting them birthday presents the rulers of Germany Greece Romania Norway Russia Yugoslavia Spain and Sweden would all Trace their descent from this Stout little lady there was a downside to all this Royal into marriage Victoria was a carrier of Hemophilia the condition that prevents

Blood from plotting and the Spanish Prussian and Russian royal families were consequently affected by it but even if the British government had known about that they wouldn’t have shed many tears over it as a system for exercising influence abroad the monarchy was well worth the money it also ought to have the

Advantage at home of inducing people to be loyal to their country even if they detested its government which is obviously very useful if you ran that government but to sell monarchy to the British public that monarchy needed rebranding enter in 1867 a new Tory prime minister Mr Disraeli the man to do it

He flattered flirted and lured Victoria out of mourning and back to public life creating her Empress of India turning her into the queen empress Britain was now a world power with an international trade that dwarfed all others its Navy dominated the oceans and its Empire expanded on the simple

Principle that trade follows the flag and if the Union Jack is flying in each remote corner of the globe then other flags aren’t the problem was for a small country with a very small army to rule Evermore of the Earth’s surface that rule couldn’t be maintained by force it required the

Consent of the governed and the grand theatricality of disraeli’s Victorian imperialism invited people throughout the Empire to take pride in being subjects not of a bunch of industrialists and politicians but of a prim and matronly great sovereign Victoria became the logo of the British Empire her portrait spread all over the world thanks especially to the introduction of postage stamps her statue would appear in virtually every ambitious town and city of the British Empire and where there was no statue there would certainly be a Victoria Street or

Victoria Park or Victoria something the whole process came to a glorious climax in her golden jubilee of 1887. the great processions in London of Representatives of her dominions were followed by an eruption of ugly public Halls clock towers fountains and statues disfiguring public spaces over about a quarter of the planet

By the time Victoria died hardly anyone even remembered that her throne had once seem endangered and she’d reigned so long 64 years that hardly anyone could even remember any other sovereign her death in 1901 22 days into the new century seemed portentous she’d become synonymous with Britain and its Empire

And now britons would leave the 19th century without the security of the great mother hen Thank you Victoria would cast a long shadow Elizabeth II coming to the throne 51 years later would be the first of her successors who had no personal memory offer her oldest son Albert Edward the new King Edward VII was already 59 years old the funeral of the queen empress and

Edward’s coronation involved a huge invention of traditions and ceremonies and in this atmosphere it’s not surprising that Edward was granted an annual allowance even greater than Victoria’s a few voices said that it was unnecessary for the king to have as big an income as Andrew Carnegie the Bill

Gates of his day but no one took much notice Edward had been given a miserable and oppressive childhood Victoria had measured him by The Impossible yardstick of her hero worship of the perfect man his father naturally young Bertie had rebelled of course his first visit to a prostitute shocked his parents deeply

It happened to be followed by Albert’s fatal illness which Victoria had inevitably blamed on her Wicked son she had arranged his marriage shortly afterwards in the hope that domestic discipline would Reign him in Princess Alex of Denmark was beautiful but she was also deaf and dull company

With nothing much else to do Bertie had become the living epitome of the life of the Billy Pock a life of champagne drinking cigar smoking horse racing gambling and entertaining Showgirls and pretty married ladies he was naturally drawn to the company of Outsiders not just Shady characters but Jews and Catholics bankers and

Foreigners and he was outspokenly outraged by the Casual racism of the emperor because a man has a black face and a different religion than our own there is no reason why he should be treated as a brute he sat on a commission on working-class housing and even invited a member of the

Working class to stay at Sandringham admittedly the man in question was an MP and a fellow member of the commission Andy had to eat in his bedroom because he didn’t have the right clothes to come down to dinner but still by the time Edward came to the throne he

Was a big fat old man with a social conscience and a comforting mistress Alice keppel who understood him perfectly Edward saw himself as something like a nursery rhyme Monarch magnificent and jolly caring and helpful in 1903 completely ignoring his government he went to France and started negotiations for a treaty that would

Become the Anton cordial isolating Germany he detested his nephew the Kaiser he persuaded the press and then the government to back a treaty which guaranteed that if Germany attacked France Britain would go to war so that’s what happened in 1914. he determinedly resisted any increase in democracy in Britain and was a firm

Opponent of votes for women the crunch over his reaction reviews came when Lloyd George planned to introduce old age pensions in 1909. to raise the cash there would have to be new taxes on income the Tory majority in the House of Lords voted down what was called The People’s

Budget and when the liberal government threw up legislation to take that power away from the Lords they voted that down too obviously so the Prime Minister told the king he needed to create about 250 new peers to swing the vote Edward was not enthusiastic would he actually defy the government

In May 1910 in the middle of the battle he died in 1910 Edward’s 44 year old son George inherited the throne He was the late King’s Second Son he’d worked as a commander in the Navy to which he was deeply attached but in 1892 his elder brother Clarence had died and he’d unexpected to become heir to step into his brother’s shoes he’d left his job and married the woman who’d

Been betrothed to Clarence a relative called Princess Mary of tech he now inherited a fortune worth around 140 million in today’s prices and a political crisis as part of the deal with the government to pass the budget and cut the powers of the House of Lords it was agreed that

The crown could stop paying any income tax in return the king would pay for his own trips abroad the new constitutional deal drew the teeth of the House of Lords whatever the elected government in the Commons decided to do it now could do the only possible break on its power was

Now the king and the question was of course whether he would ever exercise it and what would happen if he tried at first the crown was too weak to try when War began with Germany in 1914 George was seen naturally enough as a German which he was

He kept a bit quiet about his courtesy titles of field Marshal general of the Prussian Army and admiral of the Imperial German Navy to make himself seem more British and therefore more secure in July 1917 George felt forced to change his family name from sax Coburg gota to Windsor and

Stop being a German Prince and Duke of Saxony Revolution was a real danger cousin Nikki the tsar of Russia was deposed in February 1917. the new Russian government asked Britain to give him Asylum and Lloyd George agreed to it but King George was terrified of being associated with a man now labeled Tyrant

By revolutionaries so he forced the government to withdraw the offer the Bolsheviks took over Russia in October and Nicholas and his family were slaughtered to protect the king’s reputation it was put about that Lloyd George had refused to rescue them despite the Kings pleading then in November 1918 a German

Revolution forced the Kaiser cousin Willy to abdicate and Germany gave up the war the whole political landscape had been transformed there had been six Emperors when George was crowned by 1925 he was the only one left and his world was not exactly safe most of the Southern Irish were

Committed Republicans attempts to hold that country by force were disastrous and in 1922 the Irish free state had come into being King George had lost a considerable chunk of his kingdom the wealth of the royal family continued to grow due largely to Queen Mary’s enthusiasm for collecting valuable trinkets at special prices

The romanovs hadn’t been allowed to join the British Royals but a substantial chunk of their jewelry did people began hiding their Treasures if the queen was coming to call as she would hint strongly that she expected to be given them and sometimes take them anyway so that embarrassed AIDS had to

Quietly return them later in 1924 Ramsay McDonald became Britain’s first labor prime minister the old political establishment had been given a kicking no one knew where this might lead and then came the Wall Street crash of 1929 and financial disaster the government needed huge loans which were conditional on Cuts in unemployment

Benefit and the pay of public servants and the Armed Forces the labor cabinet wouldn’t do it and McDonald went to the king to resign George was pretty sure this was a decisive moment if these harsh policies were forced through by conservatives class war would probably break out everything including

Himself might very well be swept away so he refused to accept the resignation he persuaded Ramsay McDonald that it was his patriotic duty to stay on as the leader of a new coalition government to force through the cuts that way they were more likely to be accepted this was an extraordinary exercise of

Royal power and it wasn’t over yet when the cuts were announced in September 1931 the entire Atlantic Fleet went on strike this was the most powerful military force in the world and it was gathered at Inver Grove there was total panic in the admiralty mutiny the intelligence Services warned that it

Was a communist plot and that the sailors were going to march to London rallying all the disaffected including the police on the way the financial markets went into a tail spin and the bank of England was forced to stop exchanging pounds for gold going off the gold standard the admiralty Drew

Up plans to bombard the mutinous fleet from the land and sink its own ships and the King decided he had to save the Navy and the country he knew Sailors they weren’t revolutionaries they just needed to be spoken to in the right way in complete secrecy he took control

Appointing a retired Admiral to deal with the situation Admiral John Kelly was not appointed by the government or the admiralty and was instructed not to report to them but directly to King George he offered the sailors a deal if they sailed back to their home ports the king

Would see to it that their grievances were taken seriously and they would not be punished it was a sensible approach and it worked but all evidence of the king’s role and Kelly’s appointment was hidden we’re not supposed to know what power royalty can wield of course the bit about mutineers not

Being punished was a lie once the danger was passed the leaders were identified and quietly removed the following year 1932 King George gave the first Christmas radio message he was now a presence in homes throughout his Empire the Empire had changed its form of course and in 1931 the dominions the

White bits of the Empire Canada Australia and so on had become legally independent of Westminster they were the Commonwealth and The Sovereign was its institutional core as part of his program to make the monarchy seem British and so he hoped more secure he decreed that his children need not

Marry partners of royal descent this would indeed transform the position of the monarchy but not in the way he expected in 1936 when George was 70 and dying his doctor Lord Dawson decided to ensure that the death would not be reported first in the vulgar evening papers

You’ve heard of Lord Dawson of Penn he’s killed any number of men and that’s why we sing Oh God Save the King from Bertrand Lord Dawson of pen Lord Dawson met the times his deadline by giving the king a fatal injection called a whiz Bang George was told he would soon be

Convalescing in bogna his last words were bugger Bogner the times was told he’d said how is the Empire His successor his son Edward was 38. the poorly educated child of rather dysfunctional parents the queen had been completely distant and King George famously said my father was frightened of his father I was frightened of my father and I’m damn well going to see to it that by children are frightened of me

Edward had escaped by traveling widely and as the world’s most eligible bachelor enjoyed affairs with a number of married women culminating in the love of his life the twice married elegant American Wallace Simpson at the time of Edward’s succession the affair was in full swing and her husband

Had resigned himself to a divorce the British press completely censored the whole subject while the rest of the world was fascinated by it Edward insisted that he was going to marry Wallace and make her Queen the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury said the country wouldn’t stand for it were they right

Probably not Edward was actually pretty popular he wanted to go on the radio and appeal to the nation but he wasn’t allowed to do that he was told it would be unconstitutional without a written document the Constitution is what the government can get away with they had their reasons

These went beyond the court gossip that Wallace was said to be a lesbian or a man engaged in a sadomasochistic relationship with Edward The crucial issue wasn’t even that the head of the church shouldn’t marry a divorcee or that secret investigators had reported that Wallace Simpson had

Two other lovers a car salesman and an Irish peer the real reason only came to light in 2002 secret documents show that the FBI told the British government that Wallace had another lover the German ambassador Von ribantrop in fact the FBI said she was a Nazi agent that was why the government

Insisted Edward must give her up to keep the throne Edward chose love rather than the Crown he abdicated and took Mrs Simpson to live in France the coronation went ahead but with his brother Albert sitting on the throne Albert was crowned as King George VI he was 18 months younger than Edward and completely lacked his brother’s social Grace he stammered he was shy but at least he was safely married to Elizabeth beau’s lion the daughter of a minor Scottish Aristocrat the first Royal to legally marry a commoner since Henry VII

Foreign That’s the woman we remember is Elizabeth the Queen Mother refused to allow themselves any doubt as to the outcome of the second World War when Buckingham Palace was bombed the queen said she was glad it meant she could look the yeast end in the face at least it meant the royal couple

Wouldn’t be booed anymore when they visited other people’s bombed out homes actually while they spent their days in London they retreated for the night to Windsor which was considerably safer nevertheless they did have one really narrow Escape as the war went on the royal couple became more and more identified with

Churchill as the spirit of Britain dog-eared in their determination to see Nazism defeated when the victory celebrations came in 1945 it seemed natural that they should revolve around Buckingham Palace by the time of his premature death from smoking in 1952 this shy Country Gentleman and his Queen had gone a very

Long way to restoring the monarchy to its central place in British life it had vanished virtually everywhere else there had been 16 monarchies on the continent of Europe when Victoria died now there was only Sweden monarchs were restored to Belgium Holland Norway and Denmark but as a pale shadow of the old

European royalty The new Queen the 25 year old Elizabeth II seemed to be a fairy tale remnant of a lost world of Glamor her coronation was a celebration of pageantry itself in a country that was a vast bomb site four houses out of ten have been damaged or destroyed

It was even shown on the new medium of television though the Archbishop of Canterbury feared men would watch in pubs without removing their hats by her side in the coronation coach wrote her husband like Albert he would never be crowned Philip Duke of Edinburgh was from the Greek and danish Royal House of

Schleswick Holstein sondenberg luxberg he had no surname he was given the name of one of the branches of Elizabeth’s family Mount Patton There was no question of the queen becoming a modest Suburban Sovereign like the restored European Royals George’s Widow was sure her daughter should be Regal and Grand royalty required flunkies and castles and palaces and golden coaches she herself made do with six cars three chauffeurs five chefs two pages three

Foot men two dressers and 30 secretaries Maids treasurers and housekeepers and she was absolutely dead set against royalty paying tax for a long time this was met with an extraordinary degree of complicity from the governments of the day in 1947 when labor came to power amid all the nationalizations and the class

War Declarations of We Are The Masters now that come in agreement that the government would take over the cost of running Buckingham Palace Now the conservatives said the government would take over the cost of the royal train and Royal visits abroad and freed the queen from paying tax on property apart from rates on Sandringham and Balmoral in Edward Heath’s time as prime minister it was officially stated for the first

Time that the queen pays no tax In 1973 she was Exempted from the new company’s bill that could force shareholders to identify themselves even if they hid behind the names of nominees her Shares are hidden in a company called the bank of England nominees which can only be used by heads of state and is uniquely exempt from disclosure laws

And in 1965 when a labor government introduced capital gains tax they declared that the queen is exempt under these Arrangements immense and unknowable riches were built up she has for example 600 works by Leonardo da Vinci we’re told these riches are not really hers because she’s not free to sell them

But most of the royal collection is never publicly displayed why whose interest is being served it obviously means the monarchy can put on a heck of a show that goes far beyond their demand on the public purse and they don’t need to run the risk of

Asking us to fund the whole thing from taxes we each contribute 61 Pence a year at the last cut that money just over 36 million pounds is not enough to put on the grand Regal show which the British Monarchy seems to be about certainly for a very long time it was

Simply not permitted to suggest that the monarchy should be anything less than Grand in 1957 Lord Altrincham wrote an article arguing for a modernized monarchy he called the court complacent and out of touch said the queen was a priggish schoolgirl and said that the monarchy should not be as it was intimately

Associated with the upper classes wow the Duke of Argyll said that he should be hanged drawn and quartered and the BBC immediately dropped him from any questions in fact alteringham had got it wrong lavish Splendor was just what most of the public wanted from their monarchy

They would have despised a queen on a bicycle they wanted to be deferential they probably still do and there were 20 more years of this kind of thing to come in 1977 the year of the Queen’s Jubilee The Sex Pistols Anthem God saved the queen and her fascist regime was banned

From being broadcast even when it outsold all other records the puzzle becomes even more intriguing when you look at the Apparently shrinking role of the crown in public affairs the Imperial title had already disappeared in the days of George VI when India and Pakistan became independent the Empire became the Commonwealth and

Of the 58 past and present members of that vague organization only 16 have Elizabeth as their head of state and falling why did it matter so much to protect and sustain royalty partly perhaps it’s more to do with the queen herself than the institution of monarchy Elizabeth the First Victoria

Elizabeth II the rule of elderly matriarchs seems to be particularly proper to the English and it may provide important social glue as the population of Britain became more heterogeneous with substantial immigration from commonwealth countries by people who feel excluded from political life and often from the legitimate economy perhaps there was a

Hope that the queen would be a focus of patriotic attachment after all she’s the linchpin of the Commonwealth it’s graciously enthusiastic figurehead and promoting the image of a glamorous and golden royalty above and outside politics that is synonymous with Britain may be a very useful way of creating

Legitimacy for a state that might otherwise look rather shabby The last great moment of this ceremonial Royal progress through history came on July the 29 1981. the wedding of the heir to the throne Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer over 700 million people watched the 20 year old princess descend from a glass coach to marry her 32-year-old prince The wedding had been arranged by the Queen Mother and Diana’s grandmother each of them felt for their own reasons that it was the best arrangement possible it turned out Charles was having an affair with a married woman Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles Alice keppel’s great-granddaughter Diana said that on the honeymoon he was

More interested in Reading eight books by Lawrence Van de post than in her and he wore Charles Camilla cufflinks and when she became distressed she felt strongly that the royal family turned against her in 1992 it all blew apart in what the queen called her anus horibilis her

Second son Andrew separated from his wife Sarah Ferguson who was pictured topless being kissed by her financial advisor her daughter Princess Anne divorced Captain Mark Phillips Charles and Diana split up with spectacular accusations being made in the press and on television and Windsor Castle caught fire that was

When the ground really began to shift at least when it was explained that the 40 million pound repair bill would be paid by the public there was a huge Collective breath of no it won’t and so the queen decided it would be much the wisest thing to offer to pay 70

Of the cost she opened up some of her homes to the public to raise the cash there was still astonishingly little direct criticism of the queen in an age when television and the Press have the power to pull down anyone the queen and her mother were treated with respect even devotion

But the rest of the royal family had become fair game and were subjected to a ferocious assault of public humiliation why did we support the royal family and all their wealth why were we giving them all this money the Press pact was baying at their heels that’s when the queen agreed that she

Should voluntarily start paying income tax and refund the Parliamentary allowances received by other members of the Royal Family but things didn’t get any better and the queen herself began to be criticized in 1997 when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris we’ll remember the shock and horror and

The debate about the lack of public reaction by the senior members of the Royal Family there was a widespread feeling that at that moment they were not in fact part of the nation was the program started by George V of integrating the monarchy into the life of the nation coming unraveled

Instead of the Monarch playing the role of warning and Advising the Prime Minister which is supposed to be her constitutional role the Prime Minister warned and advised The Sovereign to take public action she had to be seen to grieve or the monarchy itself might be in danger

And now we wait to see what happens next the heir to the throne and his mistress are forever tainted with the image of the princess that was publicly destroyed the queen is an old lady with a rain that begins to rival victorious in length can anyone be certain that the

Country would accept her son as king there’s always been a bargain at the heart of monarchy in this country the Monarch has always been dependent on the people that bargain has been the key to survival it began when William the Conqueror realized that he and his friends couldn’t actually run a country where

They didn’t speak the language or know the laws Traditions or even the geography it was restated in a series of crises in which monarchs who tried to rule without consent were simply dumped Matilda Jane gray Richard Cromwell James II and to give that consent people need to

Feel that The Sovereign is entitled to be there and respects laws even though no court can enforce them laws which today probably include having to pay tax partly of course the institution is sustained by the character of the queen herself faced with enormous pressures and a job from which there is no

Possibility of rest she has retained a calm resilience and exquisite constitutional carefulness which guarantees for a respectful place in history then what the British Monarchy is certainly a great addition to the gaiety of Nations partly as a soap opera partly as a walking talking anachronism that makes

Other heads of state visibly uneasy but it does come at a price and whether the price is too high for the continued survival of this most extraordinary form of government well that of course will be the surprise ending