How will the Royal Family end?

[JoyousGreyOrca]

The Royal Family will end. Not yet obviously. But within the next generation.

People often assume institutions like this fall slowly and gradually. We see a bit of that already happening with the reduction in "working" Royals, far less favourable poll results than when Queen Elizabeth reigned, and the willingness of the media to be more critical of the Royal Family.

I have seen people commenting assuming this means the Royal family will end soon. I think they misunderstand what is happening.

But society is changing and the deference that Queen Elizabeth attracted can no longer be taken for granted. Colonies are no longer happy for the Royals to carry out cosplay colonial tours on their soil, and increasingly they will remove the King as their Head of State. But I think when the end comes it will be sudden and unexpected. Similar to the fall of the Soviet Union. A clear weakening of the institution, but then a sudden, and shocking fall.

The aftermath will be very messy though as the Royal family try and fight for as much of the states wealth as they can, using the courts if they need to.

If they are, they need to get rid of all the staff they have because they must be lazy and not supporting them! They have Private Secretaries, Principal Private Secretaries, Digital experts, aides, courtiers and more. Between them they have a team of staff that has risen from 50 to 66. They will be doing the donkey work.

I'm not pretending anything. I simply do not know how they spend their days and I choose to avoid assuming that they are lazy. I'm not sure what benchmark would be used to gauge their work ethic.

Hate them or love them, they're still top 5 most talked about royals in the world still in 2025. Any publicity is good publicity.

It really isn’t, not on this day and age, social media made that ship sail long ago, just ask Blake Lively for one very recent example. Meghan and Harry are notorious and notoriety doesn’t result in lucrative contract deals as we have seen played out.

You also can't deny that their PR when they were working royals were good. Better than Kate and William's, that's for sure and I'm not even a fan.

Yes the Palace were excellent at their job, their PR has been on a downward trajectory ever since.

The only benchmark we have is when the press yearly present us with the number of engagements each member of the Royal family do. It is interesting reading and always Anne at the top followed by Charles.

I agree that sometimes criticism is taken as hate but I don't think that is true of every poster, or even the majority of posters.

Thank you @MrsLeonFarrell
I really don't mean everyone, I know that

It's a bit frustrating because I don't think it's a good benchmark. It's a hangover from a more traditional, protocol driven and deferential age. I hope that one thing that changes is a move away from the Court Circular and towards some kind of annual report so we can discuss facts not interpretations of an inaccurate record.

Yes as a frequent poster I know you are aware of the range of comments. I was making the point for people who dip in and out. I don't want anyone to be painted with a broad brush.

I am sure some Royals want to move away from the Court Circular. The Court Circular reveals the Royals counting a phone call or an hours internal meeting as an engagement.
An annual report could just be a glossy PR brochure telling us nothing that we can use to assess their performance.

I have said on here, I think William and Kate have a poor work record (before Kate's diagnosis) I appreciate there is young children in the mix, but it does not take two doing little. I especially think this of William given his father is 76 with ongoing cancer treatment. I don't know why he doesn't do more. That is not 'hate'.

Although I am a strong supporter of a constitutional monarchy I do think posters have a point regarding William and Kate’s work ethic and I have commented on it in the past (before the cancer diagnosis) for me the being there for the kids is wearing very thin, apparently they are not attending the BAFTA’s because it’s half term, it did make me 🙄.

A bit like William and Kate's foundation reports which make this into an art form

It would be brilliant to have a report that actually assessed their impact. I don't think the palace could be trusted to mark their own homework though

Gawd, I do many phone calls and internal meetings in my job. Does this mean I'm not working? Who'd have think it.

That's the only way to really gauge the value of what they do though. An annual report by an independent investigator.

I can't see it happening soon but until it does I'm fine thinking the best. Probably because I would absolutely hate being royal!

@JoyousGreyOrca do you have a source for this?

"They routinely have a very low number of engagements, even before Catherine's cancer. Apparently it takes two of them to do the daily school runs."

Or are you just floundering ?

i don't dip in and out . I read all threads but don't often comment.
But it is blindingly obvious that some people consider H and M to be able to do no wrong whilst doing all they can to rip W and K to pieces.
It is tedious!

It's a bit like Meghan's account of Papa Garry doing his Invictus work on the phone at breakfast time ? So it's not really " work" ?

I would rather have some proper accountability myself but it's nice that you want to assume the best

We are constantly told they do so few engagements because they are active parents. Both William and Catherine have mentioned the importance of doing the school run.

That is true but there aren't as many as there used to be and I find that the majority of posters are more even handed about both couples.

They put back in more than they take out. A net income benefit.

I'd like some accurate data to go off, as I said upthread, but as we don't have that we are left with assumptions.

Again, I am a supporter of a constitutional monarchy but they are not above criticism. I would like them to be more financially transparent and I do except the Waleses to do more engagements when the kids are out of school.

That being said, I really don’t think they are going anywhere any time soon. As previously stated, William and Catherine are both very popular, even with the usually disinterested younger groups. It’s going to take a hell of a scandal to bring them down. Even the accusations of racism didn’t do much in the end. Omid Scobie’s Endgame was definitely not the end game that he was expecting.

Maybe the Royals should have KPIs to meet, like most of us do. For example, amount of additional funding raised for charities. Increase in number of people contacting a charity for help after a Royal visit.

Again - why are you pretending otherwise? You have no clue or certainly no greater knowledge than the rest of us. It's all meaningless really.

The fact that Endgame was anything but always makes me laugh. He was so pretentious and grandiose in pre launch interviews it was hilarious to see that the biggest scandal was about translations!