Which was a rather clever solution to the problem of what the senior members of the Royal Family wore. The senior male members of the family with peerages would traditionally have worn coronation robes. But although not actually banned, this time peers were discouraged from wearing those. Peers currently sitting in the House of Lords instead wore their parliamentary robes. But the royal peers no longer sit in the Lords, so they didn’t have that option. Moreover, the princesses would traditionally have worn long ermine trains, which require pages to carry them. Instead getting those who are members of one of the chivalric orders to wear the robes of that order sidestepped the whole issue. For most of the senior royal women, that was the Royal Victorian Order.
The four Knights of the Garter who held the canopy for the anointing wore similar outfits under their robes as late as 1953. It was what Garter knights used to wear whenever they wore their full outfit.
Knights of the Garter, Knights of the Thistle, Knights of St. Patrick, and Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath all wore the pseudo-renaissance costume. There were slight variations: Garter and Thistle wore slippers with big satin bows on the instep, St. Patrick and Bath wore buccaneer boots (blue cuffs for St. Patrick, red cuffs for Bath).
As far as I can tell from a really quick search, the lower-ranking orders only wore the mantle, over modern formal wear.
Well, he looks miserable in it. LOL! Seriously though, the darker blue, and longer, broader ribbons look much better than what she had to wear. It seriously appeared to be double knit polyester. (I’m sure it wasn’t, but whatever money they spent on that fabric was wasted.)
This is certainly what appears to be going on, but at a level that seems to be stress testing the institution.
Charles and Kate are unwell and thus have stepped back from normal duties.
William and Camilla have apparently stepped up but they both have an unwell spouse to care for, Camilla is 76 and so having stepped up has now stepped back down again, exhausted, and William is trying to cover both King and Prince of Wales (the latter without a partner). Princess Anne has apparently stepped up but she is also no longer of an age for full time travel and speech-making.
The whole institution is creaking. I admit, as someone with a very jaundiced view of monarchy, I am more than a little curious to see what happens when the Royal Family as an institution simply ceases to function. Will we find we can get along ok without them? Or are we going to find that something is missing? The functions that are being missed right now are of course symbolic and ceremonial rather than practical or constitutional but the argument has always been that the symbolism and ceremony really matter in important ways. And we seem to be getting to the point where that idea is going to be put to a hard test.
A lot if the various public-presence “duties” are going to inevitably have to be pared down anyway as royal broods become generationally smaller. The prolonged reign of Elizabeth II of course had the effect that her successor is quite aged, and Charles and Wills fathered their own heirs in their respective 30s so the 2nd/3rd/4th in-line right now are still children.
Currently the King and Queen are both in their mid-70s and of 18 “princes(ses)” in right, 5 are over age 70, 5 are very young children, and Andrew and Harry are not “active”. So yeah, they’ve been spread thin for a while now.
That was by Charles’s and William’s choice. They wanted to “pare it down” and now they are welcome to their consequences. As for bringing out Andrew, that’s just a slap in the face of any organization he visits. I hope he is still getting the boos he deserves.
I don’t wish them any long term ill health, I just don’t feel sorry for them having a lot of work to do after the way they cut out the cousins, and then Harry and Meghan.
It was a memorial service rather than a funeral. But it was for someone to whom he was as closely related as any of the current British Royal Family. It was also, as is now the norm with his public appearances, a chance for royal officials to use the finer details of protocol to snub him in the most subtle ways possible. Technically, he was the second most senior British royal present, outranked only by the Queen. But the seating plan shunted him further along the front pew, implying that the Princess Royal, Sir Timothy Laurence and even the Gloucesters also outranked him. That wouldn’t have been an accident.
When Prince Philip died, I remember reading that he was patron or president of hundreds of organizations. I expect that most of those appointments were as a figurehead and don’t imagine that he was too involved in the day-to-day management, but even so, I’m sure the fact that he was involved with an organization gave it considerable credibility. (Presumably the royals don’t get involved in organizations without having them carefully vetted.) So I’m guessing his involvement helps the organizations with fund-raising and such. (Lots of people are like Hyacinth Bucket and would be eager to attend an event attended by a royal.)
Presumably Kate will recover in the next month or two. Longer term, when William’s kids come of age and eventually marry, that will ease the burden on him. I think they will still be able to manage in the meantime.
Precisely. The organisation gets a celebrity speaker/greeter for their big occasions or any other publicity opportunity that can be fitted into the royal’s timetable, and the royal concerned gets their public image polished with the “good cause” association.
[hijack] Mr. Rilch and I watched The Crown start to finish. In Season 3, when Tobias Menzies was playing Philip, he mentioned that he had to attend a meeting of the British Concrete Society, and that cracked us up. First of all, WTF is a concrete society? A society of…concrete manufacturers? To what purpose? And second, because he said it so forcefully and pompously: “The British CONCRETE Society!!!” Since then, it’s become a catchphrase with us, like if we see a road being paved. “Oh look, it’s the British CONCRETE Society!!!”[/hijack]
Topic: So…I don’t know what’s going on with Princess Kate’s very long absence from the public eye. I wish I did, so I had an answer for all the conspiracy theorists, and the people asking me, because I’m the royal-watcher in my friend group.
