Kiwis’ enchantment with the royals
As the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee is celebrated, long-time royal enthusiast and former magazine editor Wendyl Nissen writes about the enduring fascination with the Windsors
Recently I was told I look a lot like Princess Diana. Which years ago, when she was alive, would have surprised and delighted me. My son-in-law told me this after looking at a photo of me from 1986 lying on the grass with my baby son.
I took a look and agreed wholeheartedly because for me and many other royal enthusiasts Diana was our gateway drug. Through her we discovered the British royal family meant more than gumboots, tartan skirts (even on the men), tweed, Range Rovers, dogs and horses and the fact that they talked funny.
Diana from the very start was a “bit of alright”, as the British tabloids would say.
For me she was a style icon as we were about the same age and both blondes so I changed from my postpunk/Op Shop attire to something more like a Sloane Ranger — vests, shirts and long, sometimes seethrough, skirts. Not the knickerbockers though. At the Auckland Star newsroom where I worked at the time one of my colleagues rocked the knickerbockers to mixed reviews and I admired her for it.
Little was I to know as a young reporter on an evening newspaper that my future held for me a job as editor of Woman’s Day — then an enthusiastic tabloid magazine. I would read every sentence written about Diana, scour every photo of her and gleefully put her on my covers because she sold magazines.
Through Diana we learned you can be sexy and grand. You can be grumpy too if you want — who can forget her sitting alone and thinlipped in front of the Taj Mahal?
But I learned a big lesson during that time. When it comes to the royals there is always a femme fatale. A woman chosen to be criticised, picked on, invaded and excoriated.
Diana was this person and editors like me should have learned the reason she sold magazines and newspapers was because she was so demonised by us for content.
Before her was the American Wallis Simpson who dragged poor King Edward VIII, who by all accounts was a promising king, off the throne to France and was famous for saying “you can never be too rich or too thin”.
After Wallis was Princess
Margaret with her disobedience, smoking, drinking and affairs with younger men.
At the time of Diana’s death I had sent to the printers an issue of the New Zealand Women’s Weekly with a cover of Camilla who was planning to marry Diana’s ex Prince Charles. I had asked some local designers to design a Camilla wedding dress and was asking readers to vote.
Because, as Diana got better at hiding in the Mediterranean on superyachts, Camilla was the next in line for a good bashing.
Fortunately we managed to pull that cover and replace it with something much more fitting to the death of the people’s princess. But as I was doing that I was also watching my staff melt down in tears as our phones ran hot with people abusing us for killing her.
Even though the dear old Weekly was hardly a tabloid we had run our fair share of Diana stories and the story put about by her brother Earl Spencer that the media had killed her seemed fair game to many readers.
Sarah Ferguson, or Fergie as we came to know her, was another we invaded. I was delighted with my Woman’s Day cover featuring her getting her toes sucked by someone who wasn’t Prince Andrew.
And, of course, now we have Meghan — another American — who has taken our Harry away from the royal family and is therefore a devil woman.
Last time I looked, Harry seemed to be a grown man capable of making his own decisions and with quite a lot of trauma to deal with from the fact he lost his mother in a car crash when he was 12. He’s a bit angry with his family for obvious reasons.
For a while it looked as though Kate Middleton, who married Prince William, would be a good target when early photos showed her modelling a seethrough dress revealing a black bikini underneath not to mention the mini sequin dress and yellow hot pants. Kate’s legs were good and she wasn’t afraid to show them.
Today, after 11 years of marriage to William and time to absorb what works and what doesn’t, she dresses more Queen-like in sensible long dresses, below the knee skirts and only occasionally in a nice pair of mum jeans.
As the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee is celebrated this weekend we will see the one woman who hasn’t been thrashed by the media — ever.
It was a bit touch and go when Diana died and the Queen was so caught up in protocol that she publicly took her grandsons William and Harry to church just hours after they had heard of their mother’s death and then took five days to acknowledge Diana’s passing.
It has also been a bit strained lately as she tries to manage the fact that her son Prince Andrew hung out with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And that he had to settle a large sum of money on a woman who accused him of having sex with her when she was underage.
I doubt we’ll see much of him until his death and a quiet funeral is held.
After 70 years on the throne, the Queen has worked out how to carefully manage her public image. Her fashion sense is obstinate in its
50s sensibilities and her hats, well obviously they are works of art by a milliner called Rachel. No one wears hats anymore, but they remind us the Queen is special and does what she wants.
When I was aged 6, I had a fight with my grandmother who wanted me to dress like Princess Anne in a tartan pleated skirt with a green twinset. I raged and howled. It was
1968 and I wanted to wear a mini shift dress.
But herein lies our connection to the royal family. It encompasses generations of our family and here in the colonies it gives us something to look up to in the way we believed fairytales in childhood.
The princess will wake and marry the prince, the prince will climb up the princess’ long hair into the tower and marry her and better still the poor neglected girl will fit the magic shoe and wed the prince.
The Queen has ensured that in her life, at least, everything has a happy ending and at the age of 96 she seems determined to keep that story alive for the best part of a century.
Whether we really believe all is well in her palace with her nightly gin and Dubonnet, her cuddly corgis and her hanging out with horses is up to us. She might be embroiled in daily confrontation with Prince Charles, who at 73 really would like to be king if she wouldn’t mind.
She might be unbearably lonely. We don’t know. But I’m betting most of us will raise a glass to the Queen, maybe wave a flag or something and be happy for her.
At 96, she deserves it.