In 1877, in Delhi, India, Queen Victoria was enthroned as Express of India in a ceremony named the Royal Durbar, not that she turned up for the occasion, staying at home with her German cousins. The day marked the beginning of the campaign for Indian independence when Ganesh Joshi asked in his speech that Her Majesty grant to India the same political and social status as is enjoyed by her British subjects. This lavish ceremony took place during the Great Indian famine caused by an intense drought resulting from crop failure in the Deccan Plateau, with an estimate of eight million deaths from starvation. Although the Indian famine was part of a larger pattern of drought and crop failure across India, China, South America and parts of Africa caused by an interplay between a strong El Niño and its counterpart the Indian Nino, the timing was insensitive, if not brutal.
The monarchy did not feel the need to explain and their subjects should not complain.
Britain was the largest empire the world had seen, where the sun never set. The royalty commanded respect and was resplendent in pomp, pageantry and ceremony. The show looked like it would never end, a succession of episodes in the streaming Royal drama.
Coronation Street, the quintessentially British soap opera, holds the official Guinness World Record for being the longest-running / oldest television soap opera in history. The show first premiered in 1960, and has since aired over 10,200 episodes. It’s set in the fictional town of Weatherfield, based on the real inner-city of Salford, England, and focuses on the everyday lives of working-class people. Prince Charles, now King Charles showed up one day for a quick pint with his people.
The British monarchy has been for the best part of a century – longer some say –politically irrelevant. The prime minister meets the monarch weekly to inform the him of what parliament has been up to, but the monarch has zero influence on parliament, and the prime minister does not need to explain. Not that the monarch ever complains. Boris Johnson went so far as to bypass the Queen in 2020 and close the whole show down for three months went things were not going his way, essentially ruling by diktat – although his parliament deposed him at the first opportunity.
The motto of the monarchy remains never complain, never explain. This leitmotif is considered by the modern royal institution as their secret formula for longevity. After all, does the sun need to explain itself?
The only thing they dread more than having to explain is a scandal, more than they fear parliament voting to transform the constitutional monarchy of Britain into a Republic – not that this is likely to happen because the comfortably numb public fears anarchy and change. The monarchy is terrified of the press which turns on a halfpenny in its fealty to king and country. They do not need worry in that regard because the tabloid press has turned its wrathful gaze on Harry and his troublesome wife Meghan, launching vicious and relentless attacks on Prince Hall and his Princess on a daily basis. The Daily Mail loathes them with a visceral and irrational hatred that seems will only be appeased by blood. One article in Murdoch’s The Sun expressed a desire to see Meghan stripped naked and pelted with shit.
Prince Harry, the spare with hair, has managed to upstage his bald and rather dull elder brother William, the future King when Charles passes on. The monarchy may seethe in indignation at Harry’s documentaries, his Californian lifestyle, and multi-racial and woke wife. The Royalists that surround and support the royal establishments seeth in rage at such lèse-majesté but there is one indisputable fact: the Monarchy has become a globally visible affair after decades of invisible irrelevance. Every soap has a family at its heart as the magnetic force of the series. That family is the Windsors, representing the trials and tribulations of family life in post Empire Britain and impoverished pomp.
More real than the Netflix series the Crown, more pomp than the Kardashians, as dramatic as the Italian Un Posto Al Sole, and longer running than all of the soaps ever conceived with episodes going back to Ethelred the Unready, the monarchy soap is now twitter friendly. With the aid of Harry, the monarchy has moved into global internet stardom, dominating front pages and news cycles. You have to ask yourself, who is writing the script? It can’t be just random soap drama. Or is it a master plan crafted for the internet that never sleeps, and where the sun never sets.
Exceedingly cunning plan or not, Harry has made the Monarchy more relevant than ever in people’s dull lives. Years would pass before people even thought of the royal family who were invisible like the air, which is how they liked it. Now people twitch on twitter and salivate on social media like this stuff really mattered. After the misery of lockdown and solitary walks we can all agree on one thing. Or vehemently disagree. Harry is or is not, according to which side of the road you stand, a hero, a buffoon, a traitor, a weakling, his wife is conniving, a victim of racism, wronged, beautiful, vengeful, with the aloof Alpha Male and the wicked step mother , and a cast of supporting actors and cameo appearances. No wonder Charles pops into the pub in Coronation Street and the Queen Vic to see how they do it.
The Monarchy is not getting another durbar any time soon. It might get an Emmy, though. Barbados might even reconsider its decision to become a republic and invite William and Kate back, this time garlanding them with flowers, instead of pelting them with demands for reparations.
Unlikely, but a monarch can dream.
