REUTERS: Only a minority of Britons under 50 support the monarchy

[TallerSally]

The chart below, along with the unprecedented level of social media (and even royalty!) mocking around Katespiracy and Katephotogate, could send a chill down the RF's spine.

Whilst 70% of those aged 65+ and 50% of the 50-64 (the demographic on MN?) support the monarchy, this drops to 30% among the 25-49 and ONLY 19% among the 18-24s - YouGov Jan 24 data.

Some will say "that's nowt new!" But with TikTok, X and other SM having unprecedented reach (far more than mainstream media) and cultivating literally thousands of GenZ and Millennial mini-influencers, and with the RF in its current state of turmoil (some of it illness-related, some not, incl. Prince William being largely MIA, the RF's reluctance to deal with Prince Andrew and his grifting ex-wife, Rose Hanbury and extra child (!!) rumours, the casting-out and continued vilification of M&H, the embarrassment that is uncle Gary, etc etc), are comparisons to a decade ago going to be helpful in predicting what this means for the RF in the future? I doubt it.

We all know the billionaire RF continue to sustain their taxpayer and IHT exemption-funded luxury lives thanks to the public's goodwill, hence they employ loads of professional PR people to do their comms. But if there's anything recent events have shown, KP in particular suck at it, with the KP comms team the subject of derision and ridicule around the globe.

It's easy to say "they've weathered worse", but the past isn't a guarantor of the future. I'm sure Boris Johnson also thought he could lie to the public forever... until one day, the tide turned. Not saying this is an identical situation, but the recent lies emanating from KP (I'm sorry, issuing a fake 'proof of life' photo is equivalent to telling a lie) are part of a culture of secrecy and public manipulation.

And consider this: last August, the above numbers were:
80% of those aged 65+ and 67% of the 50-64s support the monarchy, versus 56% among the 25-49s and 37% among the 18-24s. So a drop of 26pp (percentage points) for the 25-49s, and 18pp for the 18-24s.

And who's to say what the numbers will be post-Katephotogate?

https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/uk-monarchy-suffers-an-impairment-its-goodwill-2024-03-13/

I was born here but my parents weren't. I had thought that maybe with more people moving into the area, it might have become less narrow minded but obviously not(!) I have always found the mentality weird. My daughter much prefers the town where she is for university.

Good point about The Crown. There was also the film "Spencer" relatively recently too. Pop culture has not forgotten Diana, far from it.

Her sons are keeping her memory and legacy alive in their respective ways,

There's also the ongoing investigation into the BBC's conduct over the Martin Bashir interview.

And of course all the books and TV programmes and our own personal memories. She has been far from erased.

But the RF is allowed to move on. Charles is allowed to move on. They were divorced a good while before Diana died. She'd never have been queen, and if Charles had not married Camilla, he may have married someone else. William is allowed to love and honour his mother whilst forming a different bond with his step mother. Bonded families are more normal now that they ever were, and I am sure many can relate to their efforts to get along and move on from past hostilities. I don't see any concerted effort on the part of the RF to erase Diana, and her sons, one of whom will be the future king, are never likely to want that to happen. What are the others supposed to do other than get on with their lives?

The sainthood thing was ridiculous and a media creation. And people keep bringing it up against her as if it was something she could help. When tabloids spun it that way!

Sorry to disagree with you but I think the reason her memory shouldn’t slowly fade is because we should be reminded of what was done to her by the institution of the monarchy as a young woman of twenty.

In a nutshell, Diana became collateral damage so that the monarchy could continue with suitable heirs.

I don’t expect anyone here to agree on this thread but people feel that she was badly used as a very young woman. And that has never been acknowledged which is why people still keep bringing it up.

And sorry but personally I don’t think Charles or Camilla behaved honourably when young children were involved. In Camilla’s shoes, I would have done the decent thing and gone and lived in France somewhere and absented myself from the whole situation. Honestly, what decent person would stick around in those circumstances?

And before I get ten responses saying “well Diana had affairs too” yes we all know that but I am talking specifically about what happened to her when she was engaged at nineteen, married at twenty, and Charles was in his thirties and she married him in good faith.

He stood at the altar and publically made vows as future head of the CofE which he knew not to be true. I have a twenty year old daughter and I would be outraged if she had been manipulated in that way. It wasn’t right what was done but somehow because it happened in royal circles people try and justify it.

<waits for post to be reported and deleted simply for disagreeing with majority>

Yes well said and my thoughts too Artapplicapplications787 Had to copy and paste user name😊

You're entitled to your opinion, @Artapplicapplications787 - has anyone on here said you aren't. Those things you've posted? They've been discussed many times over the years, proof that nothing is erased, or deleted from discussion.
You weren't in Camilla's shoes. Maybe you're a better person. Maybe she thought that marriage was the right thing. It certainly hasn't been an easy road and she's been vilified in the media (and on here) a lot.
I just think that perhaps it's healthy for people to move on from this narrative.

I agree with a lot of what you have posted here.

But I think it is important to fully recognise and acknowledge past mistakes before moving on.

And of course it’s good that bonded families can behave in a cordial way.

I do think Charles and Camilla behaved very poorly but my criticism, as usual, is more strongly focused on the institution of the monarchy itself and what it requires of people, rather than the individuals within it.

What did they want the RF to do, dig her up and crown her? even if Diana had been alive when Charles became king, she wasn't his wife any more and she wouldn't have been queen consort.

Why on earth would your comment be deleted? Please don’t create discord where there is none and please don’t put my name/post on your post and then come out with a comment like that. I am not that person @Artapplicapplications787

The marriage was ultimately unhappy - for many reasons on both sides by the sounds of it.

Having been in a horrendous marriage which nearly ended in my death, I would never advocate that people stay or muddle through - and sometimes marriages are actually doomed from the start due to problems we can’t always anticipate.

Are affairs great? Absolutely not.

But there was more damage they both brought in from the get go.

And her family told her to stay when she already wanted out allegedly. Who is to blame there for not supporting her to leave when she expressed doubts about the wedding.

There are many to blame for the failure of the marriage. Not just Camilla.

I don't think anyone thinks, with the benefits of hindsight, that Diana and Charles' marriage was anything other than a disaster. But that 19 year old in 1980 was an independent woman who had been working for several years, was from an aristocratic family (more royal in their blood line than the Windsors) whose expectation was that their daughters would marry into high up families, and Diana wanted that too. And I do think Charles loved her, but they had little in common to sustain the hard yards of marriage. Wanting marriage, wanting kids, wanting the fairytale without having the foundations when things get choppy, wanting other people, wanting a different life that you can't have in your current marriage - none of that is unique to the RF. If you strip away the institution, they were just like many other couples who get together too soon and have too much at stake to separate easily. Add in the institution, and you get the added pressure of people wanting to do the right thing by it, cackhandedly perhaps, but that is their job - to sustain the integrity of the institution. It was an impossible ask.

I also think it's somewhat misogynistic to suggest Camilla should have gone to live in France and not remain with the man she loves and who clearly loves her and draws a huge amount of strength from her. Why don't you just go full nunnery for wanton women?

Edited for typos

Thank you for saying I’m entitled to my opinion. I mean that genuinely (not being sarcastic)! I feel like a pariah on these threads sometimes.

To be fair, the opposite arguments are often repeated too! I won’t specify here but members of the establishment continue to make the odd nasty remark about Diana in public so it’s obvious the powers that be still consider it necessary that a certain narrative continues to be spun around her, which I find interesting so long after her death.

I still think it’s important to remember how ruthless the monarchy can be when it comes to its own survival.

I agree with some of the things you say about Camilla. All of the main players were victims of circumstance to some extent. The pressure on them must have been huge. But those circumstances bring great privilege too and as such should be borne responsibly imho.

Good points have been made in to the investigation about Bashir and the Diana awards. I’m glad those are happening.

I’m going to leave it there as I have work to do and don’t want to disrupt the thread further.

My comment about deletion was not directed at you specifically but it was a general point ArcaneWireless as so many of my previous posts on here were reported and deleted. I am sorry for not making that clear.

I am not interested in spreading discord. I am interested in putting across an alternative view to the majority on here.

I hope we can agree to disagree?

I also think it's somewhat misogynistic to suggest Camilla should have gone to live in France and not remain with the man she loves and who clearly loves her and draws a huge amount of strength from her. Why don't you just go full nunnery for wanton women?

How very Victorian of whoever suggested that. Smacks of the erring wife being packed off to live in a boarding house on the continent so the sight of her didn't affront decent people.

It seems like Charles and Diana were / are both needy people and therefore not suited. Both of them grew up in a less than loving environment.

You're not disrupting the thread, @Artapplicapplications787 . Post what you want to. I don't know who the establishment figures are still being nasty about Diana in public?
We don't know what's going on with Charles. Maybe, like most of us, he's made mistakes he regrets. Maybe when he seeks the company of the Archbishop of Canterbury, or kneels before the altar, he's asking for forgiveness. Maybe he prays for Diana's soul. We shall never know, and he is not a man to share things, at least not now, not in this respect.
I think the whole Camilla - Diana thing is a bit virgin - whore territory. If you're a woman, you're one or the other.

Trying to be very measured and don’t want to cause a bun fight simply by having a different opinion so this really will be my last post for today.

To be clear, what I meant by that comment was, if I happened to be in love with a man who was married with young children, I would personally absent myself, and allow the marriage to fail or thrive without any influence from me. That’s all.

Did your stricture apply to Diana and her affairs as well, or just Camilla?

They should never have married but I always felt for the boys in this situation

Their parents separated when they were so young, it then became a public battle ground with mud being thrown in both directions , it must have been so hard for them

I agree with quite a bit of what you’ve said. I thought so at the time and despised them both for years. Over time I’ve softened. What they did was wrong in my eyes but also what was done to them. I am glad not to have walked in their shoes.

This too:
“I don’t expect anyone here to agree on this thread but people feel that she was badly used as a very young woman. And that has never been acknowledged which is why people still keep bringing it up.”

You’ll find no disagreement here. I think that has been talked about and is common knowledge, at least among my generation and older. I think Charles was a victim of expectations and demands but Diane far, far worse and he handle the entire thing terribly. But I don’t think that’s who he is today.

"I don't think that's who he is today"
I agree, @AliceOlive .

I was a little girl when they married so it all seemed exciting but I’ll lay odds my mother, around 40 at the time, thought it was all awful.

Different times, @AliceOlive . Being 19 then meant you were a fully responsible adult. Many people still left school at 16 and found full time employment. Diana was regarded as a consenting adult to the situation and it's only later that this was revised.
It was clear that she was thrilled to bits and looked happy in the wedding and honeymoon pictures. It was only later than negatives started to emerge. All in all, it's a sad story and regrettable that so many mistakes were made and people hurt.

Yes I think that’s very fair AliceOlive I agree that Charles has improved with age and his first steps as King, visiting Germany and France, were impressive imho (despite my Republican leanings 😃). I do think C&C could have handled the situation better but my objections are not really aimed at the individual players so much, who I agree found themselves in an extremely difficult position.

<It’s good to have found some points on which we can agree at long last! 😄. Really, truly, bowing out of thread now!>

I don’t think that’s true - if you go to Kensington Palace now, for example, there are always clothes that Diana wore in the exhibitions there, and they have wallpaper hanging on the walls of part of the public area that was specially commissioned with hand drawn pictures of her. Plus the memorial garden and (dubious) statue.

Plus she will always be in the history books as the first wife of the King Charles III and the mother of his heir. As time passes however, that will be less important - everyone but a very few fade from prominence over time. Who really remembers other royals who died young, but not within living memory? Like Edward VII’s oldest son Eddy, who died of typhoid aged 28. Or the Duke of Gloucester’s older brother William, who died in a a plane crash on the 1970s aged 30.

@Artapplicapplications787 do you remember what a horrible reputation the RF had before and after Diana died? I think their popularity was at an all-time low for many years because of how she’d been treated.

@Artapplicapplications787 Sorry, just saw that you are moving on. Have a good day and a happy Easter/long weekend/whatever you do if I don’t bump into you elsewhere. It’s actually nice to chat and share opposing and common opinions.