a wrist here or a sweater there

expectations on both sides

At the risk of alienating a friend of decades’ duration who happens to be both a keen reader of ACC and a British Royalist, I am completely baffled by how poorly the bulk of the Royal family appears reading their subjects these days. The latest kerfuffle over a doctored photograph is only the most recent sign of a complete disconnect between what is being said versus being expected.

Before I go on, I acknowledge I do add my tag line to photographs so this morning’s sunrise over Eastport is edited slightly. Other than that, I did not add clouds or the sun or Spa Creek or anything else for the record.

For readers not in the United Kingdom, yesterday was ‘Mothering Day’ or their equivalent of Mother’s Day, celebrated fully two months before we send cards to our mothers. When I was a student, it was a remembrance day with far fewer devotees as Britain back then was a less commercial place than America (or than it appears now). I had friends who I mentioned it to—brothers in their twenties—who launched into howls of protest over this non-holiday (I wonder if they encouraged their own kids to send cards to ….. but I won’t go there).

The Firm, as the British Royal Family is sometimes known, issued a photograph on Mothering Day celebrating Catherine, the Princess of Wales, with her children, George, Charlotte, and Louis. It was a standard ‘feel good’ family portrait with enormous (genuine, as I saw them) smiles as if they were the happiest lot that Dad, aka the William the Prince of Wales, shot for the family album. The Princess embraced the two younger children with third-in-line George standing behind mom and siblings.

No one would probably have thought twice, except the extreme Republicans who so vehemently oppose the monarchy in Britain, about this photo appearing had Catherine’s absence from sight for now nearly three months not been treated as such a state secret. I am all for privacy (we didn’t really need to know in 1992 that Bill Clinton liked briefs, people) and goodness knows the Royals, in exchange for their lifetime assignments as ‘embodiments of rule’ in Britain, sacrifice more privacy than most people. But, it truly appears a state secret as to what ‘abdominal’ illness required surgery leaving the Princess of Wales out of the limelight for over three months (she is not expected back to ‘work’ before Easter which is the last day of this month, fully ten weeks after her last appearance on Christmas Day). That was the crux of this problem, it seems to me.

I, of course, have no idea what happened to her but the juxtaposition of acknowledging abdominal surgery, then operating under ultra silence over the nature of her illness borders on bizarre. I am sorry but in today’s world where we know that the King (last I checked he is the main dude, after all) has prostate cancer which is not exactly the most public conversation most men want to have, we should know what her abdominal problem entails to some degree. Catherine is treated as offlimits entirely but not other things. Truly peculiar.

This entire saga seems extremely unrealistic to an American who watches the British press put our media to utter shame by its inquisitiveness and invasive preoccupations. And the tension over what the press knows or should know about the illness only deepens by the week now that we are a year and a half after Queen Elizabeth’s passing. It’s as if the press waited for this new generation to demand a new rule set for everyone while the Royals thought they would select who got that new rule set.

Of course I recall the hideous manner by which that same press a generation ago hounded William’s mother literally to death. They acted with the definition of merciless. Diana was a fragile, calculating woman who played her own game with that media and fatally lost. That scared William and his brother so it is hardly surprising that he and the Royals want to provide a buffer for Catherine, the epitome of another English heroine who is clearly viewed by many as a saving grace for the Firm after Andrew and Fergy, Diana, Charles and his Queen, and other faux pas personalities.

But, then exacerbate everything by releasing an apparently edited photograph in the midst of so much scrutiny was simply nuts. Why did the Wales do anything at all? If the Princess is indeed mending well, then show a shot of her family, all standing together so her entire body is in view, without photoshopping. It would have shut down even the British press since 31 March is a mere twenty days. Let them worry about today’s Commonwealth Service, or the budget, or the poor showing by the two major political parties in the run up to the general election. Or they could speculate on Bojo, after all.

If she isn’t well, then continue not showing pictures—period. If she is truly ill, let the woman recuperate.

The entire episode since December represents the increasing failure of the monarchy in that the incumbents expect a set of rules quite different and self-selected from those of people who owe taxes, who wait months for doctoers’ appointments (much less surgeries), who cannot pay their food costs, and the like. This entire experience shows the chasm between even the young, modern Royals and the public increasingly uninterested, if not hostile.

The KIng is trying so hard to be modern but trying too hard, viewed from our side of the pond. Even the current Queen Camilla still occasionally appears to hit notes off key as she stands in for HIs Majesty or when she is trying to hard to wipe out memories of Diana.

Anne, the Princess Royal, and her youngest brother Edward and his wife Sophie manage without fanfare to illustrate what Britons still grudgingly or thoroughly respect: hard work on an demanding schedule, the ability to laugh at themselves, and the seriousness of professionals. Let people in the media continue paying attention to Anne paying homage to her beloved late mother by honouring her with re-worn (a move I laud) clothing from the Queen’s history. Anne long ago became respected, if not adored, for her quiet and dedicated style after early missteps in her public career. Edward, the ‘afterthought’ turning sixty, appears to accept his role as Duke of Edinburgh as a dependible member of the family carrying out duties of all sorts. I have read that his wife Sophie is especially admired for her no-nonsense, calm but enthusiastic actions on behalf of the Windsors all, even though her husband now stands as merely sixth (if that) in line to the throne.

Britons still wrestle with what they expect the Monarchy to be in 2024 without Queen Elizabeth. The Catherine saga continues signalling how unfinished this national discussion. Coming at a time of on-going political struggles regarding the nation’s future in so many ways, the clumsiness of the photoshopped picture had precisely the opposite consequences of those intended by whomever originated the idea.

Actions create consequences, don’t they? Not that we don’t have our own, of course. Recycling stories from one administration to another in a country not our own can have its ill effects across the political divide.

Thank you for considering these thoughts. I appreciate your time. Please circulate this if it offers something of value to your friends. I greatly look forward to hearing how you view the topic.

Be well and be safe. FIN