What do the English Dopers think of the royal family?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am reading a book called The Royals by Kitty Kelley, which tells the history of the Windsors. Of course it tells of the problems faced by them since the marriage of Charles and Diana and how the question of whether the monarchy will/ought to continue has been raised. This includes discussion of how changing times have undermined the royal family’s efforts to keep embarrassing private business out of the press.

We in the U.S. have a different take on all of this, I’m sure, given our history. Since we are not the Queen’s subjects, we are not expected to hail these people as being somehow more than ordinary folks. I am curious to hear what English Dopers think about the members of the royal family and the monarchy in general. Do you think the monarchy will last another hundred years (if that long)? Is there any kind of a movement there to have Parliament dissolve the monarchy? (Cecil once wrote that the Queen offered to step down if Parliament asked her, though this is not in the book.)

Are you loyal to the monarchy? Do you feel more strongly about any particular members of the family – say, the Queen or the Queen Mother but not the Queen’s children? Do you feel you are getting your money’s worth out of the monarchy? Do you follow news of their appearances on television? Do you feel proud to be one of the Queen’s subjects when you hear “God Save the Queen”? Is there a significant difference in attitude among people of different generations?

Scottish and Irish Dopers are welcome to respond, although I expect you might look at things differently, of course.

2

I’m not a British/Irish/Scots Doper, but can I just say that the current Royal family is pretty tame compared with some of their ancestors? Everyone tries to hold them up to the standards Victoria and Albert set, but they quickly forget her uncles, the Hanovers, and many others.

3

Not much.

I consider them interesting, understand why the Brits idolize them, look with a certain fondness at all of the pomp and circumstance and cannot avoid anything they happen to do because of the news.

Other than that, nothing, really.

I was displeased when Diana died, because I thought she was a good kid, was being given the royal finger by Charles and family and was on her way to finding a new life when it all ended. Other than that, not much. She was born in a privileged section of society, with far more power, wealth and resources than I’ll ever have, living a life most people dream of, never having to actually want for anything.

Same with the Royals.

They want for nothing, are catered to, wield enormous power, get the best of everything, are loved by millions, live in homes the average person can only see in books, and even in a castle, for cripes sakes! They get gifts of incredible value, though most become the property of the Nation, they still have use of them for a life time.

I once saw a National Geographic spread on the Queens Playhouse, an absolutely stunning series of fantastically hand crafted miniatures of the Castle and everything in it. Including a tiny gas powered car that fit in your hand and actually ran!

I’m more in tune with elected officials, who are restricted by laws, not born to the position and, even if they buy their way into office, have to fight like heck to get there.

I don’t dislike the Royals, by the way. I respect the traditions of the English.

4

I’m not British either, but tonight I saw a commercial for Benny Hill videotapes, and wondered what the British thought of him.

My stepfather was born in England, and his mom (a sweetheart) was from Scotland. He had a very reverent attitude toward the royal family and at every opportunity would talk about how some of them stayed in London during the Blitz, rather than move somewhere safe.

Grandma always acted like she wasn’t worthy to speak of them. Later, after I knew her better, I realized that she thought we (my mom and me) weren’t worthy of hearing about them.

5

I am a Irish Doper and the royal family have as much to do with us as they do to you FYI :wink: We fought a War of Independence like you.

As for Kitty Kelly I wouldn’t have much confidence in what she writes AFAIK she’s in the Andrew Morton school of BS.

6

I think it is fair to say that the younger and further away from London you are the less enamoured Brits are with the Royal Gravy Train.This is something of a generalistation of course but plenty of older folk in round me, this is a mining community, have no time for them either.

There is a view that without them we would have to resort to a presidential government system but not in the sense of most nations that have this. Our preseident would have no political power at all since this is nearly all in the hads of the House of Commons which whose composition reflects the opinions of the general population during an election.
Much of the fawning publicity on the heir William is just so cloying as to make me feel queasy.We get force fed a media diet of Royalty, it really smacks of propaganda.

I hope you get a view from someone that does like the Royals for a balanced view but to me they are worse than irrelevant, they have totally unjustified privelidge and wealth.

They are not powerful in any ruling sort of way but they have some influence and their opinions are recorded in the press, the fact that their opinions are rarely backed by their own first hand knowledge but are sometimes given creedence is antoher source of annoyance for me.
Ref Benny Hill - I found his stuff funny when I was like 11-12 years old but now I grew up.
That said there were some sketches he did that are still quite good to see all these years later.

7

I hope we don’t idolise them…I’d be more than happy if they disappeared quietly into obscurity. I have nothing personal against them, and would be quite happy for them to exist in a purely ceremonial role with not even a hint of real powers, used or unused. I think the position of the royals, even in today’s limited capacity, is one of the huge sticking points in the inability of many Britons to give up the post-imperial delusions that we’re a world power and deserve special treatment from other countries. The sooner we realise we’re no better or worse than any other modern, democratic, industrialised nation the better.

8

I never found Benny Hill funny in the slightest, although he was a bit before my time. I can’t criticise too much, though, since he was a product of his time.

9

I personally dislike the Royal Family because they have a vast amount of wealth (they are granted 7 million a year by the government) and they do very little good with it. Apart from Princess Diana who did respectable work for charities I cannot think of any Royal who does a damn thing for any recognised cause. To my mind they are mere parasites and utterly undeserving of any of the trappings of their position.

10

You may be right. But they do generate an amazing amount of tourist revenue. Think of all the American who visit because they love the idea of royalty and we don’t have any handy.

11

The fact that they have huge wealth is not important since there are others who have even greater wealth and I don’t have much of an axe to grind with them.

Much of their assets are not realisable, it would be unimaginable to sell, say Balmoral Castle(if that is truly owned by the Royals) but you get the idea.

The whole Diana thing was distasteful to me in certain ways, for instance she never gained any O-levels despite being sent to a top fee-paying school(this is like your grade school exams at 16 years).This is one hell of a feat to accomplish, after all the whole idea of fee-paying schools is that the best education is being purchased.

How was she selected as a suitable wife for Charles ? It seems to me that Charles was linked with many others that one might construe as being of a similar standing but he dithered and dallied for years.

By the time he married Diana he was considerably older, one thinks that if he had married someone more his age and choice, ie around 40 then there was an increased risk of a child being born with disabilities.

Diana did not have a record of running in the same circles as Charles but I remember that she was examined by the Royal household doctor. Why was this ? If Charles had loved her then her health would not have been such an issue and if she had some undisclosed condition would that have prevented their marriage ?

I assume and possibly wrongly that this marriage had more to do with succession than any other issue.That is my pet theory as to why it failed.

This from the family that was supposed to represent, fairly or otherwise, the idea of family stability and the value of marriage.

So there was Diana, cast into a world where she was always going to struggle with her poor education among the Royal set who knew this, she was always going to be vulnerable.

As for the Spencers, well they were so broke before the marriage that they had considered selling some of their estate to pay off debts, after the marriage they had no such worries - it all seems a bit mercenary to me.

Yes I’ll agree that people may come here attracted partly by the pomp and splendour of royal ceremony but other European states have manged to keep their traditions alive without all the nonsense attatched to our royalty, surely it is not beyond us to come up with something.

I really do not see why myself and others should describe ourselves as ‘subjects’ that is feudal, I do not see why I should hold them in any more esteem than that of my fellows, in fact given their wealth and position they have done amazingly badly as a family unit, yet still they are touted as special.

Parasites might be a prejudicial term but truthfully did they like save humanity from disaster ? Did they write life changing literature ? Are they brilliant leaders in industry, no, none of these things they merely chose to be born of the right parents.

Hardly very deserving, I bet we could hire half a dozen folk who would be far more regal and majesterial, if ceremony is all you think that counts in the UK today.

Maybe we could come up with a few candidates between us, I think Graham Norton would make a marvellous Queen for all sorts of reasons but I suppose his Irishness might count against him.

Sean Connery would be great but he might be a little too Scottish.

12

Along those lines, how about Julian Clary then? He could go around waving to the plebs quite charmingly. And IIRC, his dad is a Chief (or Deputy Chief) Constable of somewhere, so that’s the security sorted out.

As for the OP, I don’t think much of them, and I think about them as little as possible.

There must be some people who are madly in favour of them, but for most people, it’s probably a sort of mental inertia, which is not entirely unfair, because it could always be said that there are more urgent things in the world to worry about.

However, I suspect that some (perhaps especially older people) who quite approve of Royalty will not be so keen when the queen mother dies. She is remarkably good at public relations, and there are some people who may be sentimental about her because of that “staying in Britain during the war rather than boldly buggering off to Canada or OZ/NZ” thing.

It might have been quite amusing had Diana Spencer lived, as the people who like Royalty might (my own unsubstantiated guess here) be the type to like magazines, tabloid newspapers etc., and would therefore have been exposed to a lot of Diana-worship in the media. Might have been funny to watch a section of them demanding that she be monarch instead of Charles.

As for tourist revenue, I’d like to see some true statistics on that. I admit to visiting Versailles, but was far from disappointed to find a lack of live Royalty. Their tourist revenue doesn’t do a hell of a lot for shipyards, mining industry, the state of the train services, … and as for the aqueducts!:slight_smile:

Have already rambled on more than intended, but one more thing - I don’t think Prince Charles of the spaniel ears got more than about 6 “O” levels, which is also pretty damned bad, and should NOT have allowed him entrance to any university.

13

Not only did Charles’ inadequate education get him to university but it got him into Cambridge.

If I’d tried the same thing I’d have had to have at least three straight A’s advanced levels and they would have had to be amongst the highest one percnet maybe even less in the whole country, on top of which I’d have had a slection interview where my family background would be taken into account.

There was a girl who applied to Oxford this year and was refused. She had the highest grades in the country but snobbery about her background resulted in being denied a place.(Oxford denied this ,naturally, but why then did they ask about her family background when entry is supposed to be on merit?)

Royal priveledge has many facets and all of them are undeserved.

14

Brits are funny people. Do away with the pound and join the rest of Europe in an incredibly easier way of handling finance for everyone? Oh no, we’ve got to keep our dear old pound (in a survery over 90% of Britons voted against doing away with the pound, and when Labour and Conservative were opposed in keeping the pound or not, Labour was defeated by a great margin.). Another question on this survery was keep the monarchy. Again, and overwhelming amount of people voted yes. I personally opt for keeping the monarchy, but we don’t really have much choice seeing as this opinion is shared by 90% of Britain.

15

Messy mind, here, but I immediately flashed on The Man Who Would Be King. Actually either he or Michael Caine would probably make a fine–if offbeat–job of it.

Back when Charles was unethusiastically wife-hunting I remember reading a condescending phrase about the “bicycle monarchies”, with the stated opinion that they weren’t suitably regal. Yet in the recent thread about when we feel patriotic, a Swedish poster (I think! apologies; I’ll search) said how wonderful it was to go to an event and see the crown prince, sitting on a blanket and holding hands with his girlfriend. Made sense to me.

Maybe the Diana soap opera is too recent to be ignored, but I truly did pity her. (No one is responsible for the circumstances of their birth, privileged or poor.) Her true talent lay in genuinely relating to all sorts of people, but that gift was largely resented or disdained w/in the royal family. Sad and odd, that they discarded even a homegrown girl who grew herself into a potent international symbol because they were too hidebound to change. The bicycle monarchies had the right idea all along.

Veb

16

Hey, that’s not to say I don’t find royalty in general fascinating. I do, although royals in history interest me more. My favorite English Queen was Queen Alexandra. Now THERE was a Queen!

17

I remember Ch.4 ran a alternative queens speech on x-mas day.

Delivered by Quentin Crisp. Now he was a true queen :wink:

18

John Cleese (a la Basil Fawlty) would make a great Prince Philip

19

You mean he isn’t ?

S’funny, could have sworn when he was in China and his ‘little slitty-eyed’ coments…

Ooooh I’m going to hell for this…

20

YES! What a good idea. But Miguel Portillo would be nasty to poor Manuel.