There have been, I suspect, more enjoyable times in history to be a royal than today. Opportunities for swashbuckling war with France are thin on the ground, and the tutting of the neo-Puritans on social media would take all the fun out of having a measly three wives, let alone six. Instead, we ask our royals to be pleasantly dull. Once, they would have been executing rivals and having affairs with their subjects. Now, they open railway stations.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Even a couple of decades ago the royals seemed to be having a bit more fun (the Duke of Sussex perhaps too much). There was a bit of glitz and glamour to them. My younger years were scattered with royal weddings and babies. And remember when Prince William enrolled at St Andrews and applications to the university went up 44 per cent, mostly thanks to young American women? Those were the days.
Now, when we hear of the poor old Windsors, the news is inevitably bad. Illness has been the primary feature of the past year, closely followed by the never-ending Harry and Meghan saga and the lingering stench of Andrew. The royals are our great national soap opera, and the plot has become rather miserable.
This does, I think, matter. These people are our ambassadors on the world stage. I don’t mean this in a political sense. Rather, I mean that when they look appealing and glamorous, so do we. Does the image of hundreds of sorority girls flocking to the drizzly Scottish seaside in pursuit of our Wills not fill you with patriotic pride? Sure, the Americans’ economy may be better than ours, their houses twice the size, their global influence unmatched. But, despite that, they were all rushing here in pursuit of some posh bloke in a Barbour. Alexa, play Rule, Britannia!.
How can we get back to this golden age? Well, I have a proposal. If the royals are our national soap opera, any scriptwriter will tell you that when things start to drag, it’s time to bring in some new characters. In recent years King Charles has done quite the opposite, bringing in a policy of “slimmed-down monarchy”, whereby only a small number of senior royals engage in public duties. This is, we were told by the papers, an attempt to make the Windsors more efficient, better value for money. And so the KPMG-ification of everything continues apace. How deeply unglamorous.
No, it is time for more royals, not fewer. At 74, poor Princess Anne is carrying a lot of the burden on her shoulders, with her 217 engagements this year making her the hardest-working royal. But she can’t be expected to carry the whole firm. Sophie has stepped up, but let’s bring in a bit of youth and glitz to the whole thing.
I have an idea. Last week some pictures emerged of Princess Beatrice toddling off to church at Sandringham for Christmas. What are she and her sister Eugenie up to these days?
Beatrice, 36, and Eugenie, 34
DAVID M. BENETT/DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES
I know almost nothing about these women. But even if they turn out to be horrors, at least that will give us a new plotline, something to gossip about. Sure, their father may be an old creep, but I don’t see any reason why these two should not step up and cut a ribbon or three. The sins of the father should not rebound on his poor daughters.
In fact, I have just taken it on myself to do some research, and find myself very charmed by the spare princesses. Both, as is the wont of royals, are involved in a lot of charity work. Eugenie does some stuff on preventing modern slavery, and Beatrice works with a dyslexia charity, having received a diagnosis of the condition herself at seven.
My research also led me to Beatrice’s husband, Edo Mapelli Mozzi. He has a very aesthetically pleasing Instagram account, on which he shares photos of the — actually quite pleasant — rooms he has decorated as part of his job as an interior designer, and occasionally throws in a picture of his wife with a sappy caption about how much he loves her. I love it!
In fact I was only a couple of photos in when I started to become emotionally invested in this random posh bloke and his nice wife. “Happy 4th wedding anniversary my love. Every day is so special with you. I love you so much”, read one photo caption. “Look, darling,” I called into the next room. “They’re just like us!” Only with more horses. Wonderful.
This is the function our royals should serve. They should be like us, but a little fancier. This is what I want to see in my morning paper, not another jowly, grey picture of “Andrew in crisis”. This is the image we should be projecting around the world, not a “slimmed-down” monarchy made up of a few septuagenarians who seem a little embarrassed by the whole thing.
The royals are nothing if they are not a little glam, a little exciting. The whole point of them is to add a little bit of sparkle and light gossip in between the stories about war and famine on the news. They should be the shiny, interesting mutual acquaintances about whom we can all gossip in a jovial manner. Without this, I can’t see much point in having them at all.
And so my resolution this year will be to start paying more attention to Beatrice and Eugenie. My modest proposal to King Charles — and we must assume he is reading this — is that he should start doing the same. It’s time to make the royals look glamorous again, and in doing so make Britain look glamorous too.
Camilla Long is away