The Guardian view of a pandemic royalty: The Crown is more truthful
Oliver Dowden, Britain’s culture secretary, thinks that Netflix’s portrayal of the royal family in The Crown makes the House of Windsor look so bad that the series should carry a health warning. In real life the monarchy is drama; the problem is often that the show falls flat. The latest plot-twist has the éclat of a wet firework.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge thought they would boost morale with a trip around the UK in the royal train. The couple wanted to thank people on the frontline for their contribution during the pandemic. The trouble is that Covid restrictions require most people either not to move around or to reduce non-essential journeys. By travelling, the Cambridges made it look like the rules were only for their subjects.
To rescue them from embarrassment, the prime minister said that they had received a “warm welcome”. That was fiction. Both Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, and Vaughan Gething, Wales’ health minister, were frosty about the royal jaunt. There was no need for the Cambridges to be out and about, other than they wanted to look relevant. They could have Zoomed or appeared on television as they have done in the last few months without bringing people out for the grip-andgrin routines of royal visits.
There’s an element of tragedy in the often farcical tale of Windsor family life. Prince William’s brother and his wife are no longer officially working members of the royal family. While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex landed in Los Angeles in March, the pair have been prepared to bat for Britain’s Covid response. The Sussexes have star power. They are free to pursue claims against the press and purpose their celebrity to cutting-edge causes in a way the Cambridges, restrained by their role, cannot. This and many other reasons keeps a rivalry of soap opera proportions bubbling away in the press.
Hereditary succession is an anachronism in the modern era. But what troubles monarchists is that The Crown is closer to the truth of the ill-starred marriage of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer than the tale the public was told. The Victorian thinker Walter Bagehot wrote that Britain’s constitution was divided into two branches: the “efficient”, represented by the government; and the “dignified”, represented by the monarchy. What alienates the public are self-inflicted wounds such as Prince Andrew’s association with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The Queen offers stability in an unstable world. The Crown aims, like its royal subject, to cast a spell over the public with a story rather than reality. But the messy divorce of the Prince and Princess of Wales was not invented. The Queen’s handling of Diana’s death looked cold to her subjects. While the extent of Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles may be exaggerated, the heir to the throne’s determination to marry her was not. These episodes undermined the monarchy’s claim to unify the country through dignity – not the historical accuracy of a Netflix show.