Family drama
The British royals may have weathered centuries of scandal, but their dynasty keeps on rolling along
The royal family's involvement with the British aristocracy has always been a little edgy--many of them were simply too stylish and fashionably chic for the taste of English monarchs from Victoria onward (exception made for Edward VII and his grandson Edward VIII), and not a few of them felt that the court was somewhat dull and dowdy, as indeed it often was and still is. As for the British lower classes, they could mostly be relied upon to admire royalty unquestioningly from afar--it was only necessary for members of the royal family to wave at the right moments, keep smiling, and stop every so often to admire the occasional baby thrust at them. The middle class, however, expected a royal family in its own image, only more so, dressed in sensible clothes, reading Country Life, surrounded by dogs, and seated comfortably in front of the fire or the television set for the evening. This is a world that has accepted some forms of modernity but that is as profoundly uneasy about becoming "European" as it is about being overwhelmed by the United States, and that remains desperately anxious to preserve what it can of British traditions, habits, and customs. It is a world that above all does not want to lose the things that make Britain different --whether that means driving on the opposite side of the road or retaining a firmly entrenched class system, or, perhaps most important of all, preserving the royal family and all the things that go with it, from the "Silver Stick in Waiting" and the "Trooping the Colour" to the obsession with horses and dogs, the tweedy clothes, and even the trademark silk scarf around the head of the queen herself. For the bulk of the British public, the idea of modernizing the royal family is not only unthinkable but a contradiction in terms. Parker Bowles is, in fact, ideal for this view of things. To paraphrase Voltaire's comment about God, "If she did not exist, we should have to invent her."
One can only admire the artistry and economy of the arrangements for accepting Parker Bowles into the royal family. Happily, given its long history, there is hardly any situation that hasn't occurred before in some form, and therefore a precedent can be found for almost anything. The queen seems to be particularly good at this. Her father, King George VI, moved quickly to turn his brother Edward VIII into "the Duke of Windsor" and at the same time to prevent the American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson from being addressed as "her royal highness" --a useful precedent of which the queen took full advantage when it came time to deal with her about-to-become ex-daughters-in-law the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York. Fortunately, no new title needed to be invented for Parker Bowles--the Prince of Wales is the Duke of Cornwall; it is merely one of his many "courtesy titles" --at most, it will involve re-engraving the crests on a certain amount of silverware. And the title of "consort" was of course first produced for the marriage of Prince Albert to Queen Victoria (Albert had hoped to be "king consort" rather than "prince consort," but much to his chagrin it was not to be).
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