Sorry, long post, ignore at will. I wonder how much of the current row about Harry and Meghan is partly about a misunderstanding of the role of the UK monarchy – there seems to be a romantic idea in the U.S. media that they have powers which they don’t, based more on a Disney idea of kings and queens than on reality, and heavily influenced by celebrity culture mythologies of being who you want to be.
As pp have said, the British monarchy now are people whose only job is to embody and represent the British state. They have zero independent power (which is why H & M’s apparent plan to be some sort of independent branch of the monarchy was impossible) – their titles are just made up, no-one can use old titles the nobility had as anything but symbolic decoration any more, you can’t go into a shop and say ‘Serve me first, I’m the Duke of Wotsit’, people would laugh.
I think it’s very desirable to have a symbolic head of state disconnected from the party political system, because you want to be able to freely throw rotten fruit at the current government in power while having someone different do the ceremonial bit. Ideally the appointment of the symbolic head of state would be as free from lobbying and electioneering and financial influences as possible. That’s not enough of a reason to continue with the monarchy though.
Because we have this purely symbolic family as representatives of the British state, and because we live in a (social) media celebrity culture age, what they say, do and appear to believe has become exposed in a new way, whether we like it or not. The days in which the royals could be somehow quietly ‘representative’ seem to have gone – that’s why everyone is so upset on all sides I think, because ‘they’ are ‘us’.
I don’t think the issue with the Meghan and Harry publicity is about H & M ‘personally’, it’s falling into the celebrity culture trap to think the solution is about whether they are personally sincere or ‘right’ or hypocritical or not. It doesn’t matter, any more than it matters what the Queen is ‘really like’. It doesn’t matter whether ‘in real life’ the royals are dull, upper-class old buffers with all the prejudices of their social class or whether M & H are self-indulgent and mistaken.
They are all symbolic and the system is designed like that. So it’s momentously awful to think that any Black British citizen might be looking at the publicity concerning the royals in the last few years and believe at any level that their own state representatives have rejected a family member because of the colour of her and her children’s skin. It doesn’t matter what the individuals in the drama ‘actually think’ (and you will never really find out).
I can’t imagine there is much appetite to depose the 94-year-old Queen, and she has been an important figure in the lives of especially the wartime generations but I don’t know what the supposed next generation of a ‘slimmed down’ monarchy can do to repair things. This is before we consider Andrew or Scottish independence. I don’t see how this family can bear the continuing burden of representation.
I feel for them in a way because it’s a weird life from birth, not like being ordinary wealthy / privileged private citizens and I’d support continuing security for them and a gradual transition but I wonder how long they can continue.
I don’t want their replacement to be some kind of celebrity, though, or ex-politician or corporate grifter. I’d like our heads of state to be polite, ordinary and with a deep appreciation that it’s lovely to get a biscuit with your tea but you shouldn’t expect more.