‘Today’s Royal Family is stuffed full of people from lessthan regal backgrounds.’
Jayne Dowle
I’VE FINALLY got around to watching the Julian Fellowes film Downton Abbey. It’s an instructive couple of hours for anyone baffled by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex versus the rest of the Royal Family soap opera.
Dame Maggie Smith, playing the elderly Dowager Countess of Grantham, sums it up perfectly when she says that whilst her generation was different from that of her own parents, and her grand-daughter’s generation will be different again, some things remain – namely grand houses and respect for the order of things.
And so it is with the Royal Family. Curious as to the provenance of Princess Mary, the daughter of George V, who appears in the film (played by Kate Phillips) as the wife of Viscount Lascelles of Harewood, I did a bit of research.
If you’re buying into the theory that the current Royal Family is outdated and anachronistic, you should take a look at 1927 when the film is set. In those days it was virtually unheard of for a royal to marry someone who wasn’t also royal. Princess Mary’s match with Lascelles was considered almost beyond the pale, because the Yorkshire landowner was a mere aristocrat.
It was however, a pragmatic union; after the First World War and the subsequent overturning of the old order across Europe and Russia, there simply weren’t enough princes to go round.
That said, even 50-odd years later, when the Prince of Wales chose to marry Diana Spencer, the daughter of an Earl, in 1981, eyebrows were still being raised at the fact that he hadn’t hunted down an actual real-life fairytale princess to keep it – literally – in the family.
Nothing like a bit of historical context to remind us just how far the Royal Family has come in terms of adjusting its remit when it comes to marriage.
It might have been useful for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to think about this before they embarked upon their mission to prove a point.
And what point might this be? That Meghan wasn’t accepted because she wasn’t ‘the right sort’? Sorry, but until I see incontrovertible evidence, I just don’t buy that.
Until their divisive decision to up sticks to Canada, all the evidence was pointing to the kind of general evolution the Dowager talks about.
Why didn’t they open their eyes and look around them? Today’s Royal Family is stuffed full of people from less-than regal backgrounds – their sister-in-law Kate Middleton, the daughter of a Leeds dynasty of lawyers and aeroplane crew for a start.
It might surprise Meghan to learn that she’s not the only beautiful transatlantic one-time actress to marry one of Her Majesty’s grandsons.
Autumn Kelly, who happens to be Canadian of Irish extraction, came with an interesting family background involving parental divorce and half-siblings, appeared in various TV series and films, and has been married former naval officer Tim Laurence.
Very boldly for the time – Peter was born in 1977, Zara four years later – she made it quite clear that her children would not be styled HRH, Prince or Princess, but would grow up as ordinary citizens.
Mike Tindall is on record as calling her a ‘legend’. She is certainly one of the hardestworking royals – she’s involved with 300 charities in the UK and overseas, including serving as patron of Save the Children.
And this week, the Princess Royal, who will be 70 in August, received an honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen to recognise a lifetime of charity work – from her sisterin-law, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who is the university’s chancellor.
Camilla, who knows a painful thing or two about cracking the Royal mould herself, joked there would be ‘no talk of rivalry’ as she presented the honour. A sense of humour, tolerance and a healthy dose of ‘live and let live’. If only Harry and Meghan had looked to their family for support and ideas instead of fighting them, the outcome could have been so different.