I love nothing more than a self-inflicted PR disaster. I just find it soothing, like somehow the easily foreseen public snafu of a giant company makes my own failures more palatable. So while I’ve always liked reading gossip about the British Royal Family (any royal families, actually, it’s just that the British one gets the most coverage), to me it’s the same as reading other celebrity gossip. You know, it’s mildly amusing and you mostly forget about it by the next week.
Royalty is dumb, that’s my starting theory. It’s the 21st century. The continued existence of monarchy is insane and inexplicable. I mean, it always was a crazy idea that some families were chosen by god or whatever to be inherently better than other people or that some bloodlines were meant to rule over all other people. That’s bananas. So while I’m a history buff and can tell you some factoids about the history of the British monarchy, I’m as American as they come in saying that, just for example, Meghan Markle did not have to curtsy to Queen Elizabeth AT ALL. People yelled at me on social media for asking why she would be expected to do so before she married into that family and became a British subject, and I was like, really?
Americans don’t bow to anyone, my friends! Periodt. Meghan was being polite, and look what it got her. Never appease royalists.
But I digress. The point is that PR disasters are funny, and PR disasters caused by one’s own actions are the funniest of all. That is why the British Royal Family has become a sort of obsession of mine over the past year. Sure, it was shocking back when Prince Harry actually quit being a Senior Royal. But I had no dog in that fight, as I was still sort of baffled by the sudden shift in the public’s affections toward him and Meghan AND I was waiting for the other shoe to drop in the salacious gossip tale of Prince William’s affair with his wife’s friend Rose. I had not yet learned to connect the two things.
Anyway, it was a ballsy move on Harry’s part, but I didn’t think it would stick. I imagine most of his family felt the same way. But we were all wrong, because Harry was done. I think everyone on earth now knows why, and if you don’t, it’s not because he hasn’t tried to tell you.
Fast forward to the Queen’s death and it was pretty clear that the situation wasn’t going to magically fix itself. The Queen’s Jubilee earlier that year had not been great for gossip. Harry and Meghan went and seemed to have a fun time, but the tabloids didn’t have many pictures of them because the Royal Family snubbed them. So all the big “balcony at Buckingham Palace” photos were…well, I’m sorry, they were boring. It was a small group of old people and then William and Kate’s family. I don’t know who thinks this is going to keep the public interested in an archaic, absurd institution, but whoever it is should be fired.
So the Queen died, RIP to a true legend. But it was as plain as day that she left behind an enormous charisma hole, and that the sad group of people on the Jubilee Balcony were not going to fill it. Bless his nerdy heart, Charles is where charisma goes to die. Camilla is the woman who cheated on her own husband AND helped Charles gaslight the “People’s Princess.” Nobody loves these two. William and Kate? Sure, okay. She’s gorgeous and wears pretty clothes. He’s Diana’s son who got at least some of the good genes. The kids are cute. But is it enough? Do they…you know, do anything?
Diana shook hands with AIDS patients. She was out there exposing land mines. She hung out with Elton John and danced with John Travolta. The most interesting thing I, a person who reads about the Royal Family, ever heard about Prince William was that he had an affair with Rose Hanbury, and the most interesting thing about that is that her title is Marchioness of Cholmondeley. I’m willing to bet only 50% of those letters are pronounced.
But then there’s Harry. Harry was always good for gossip. He did bad things when he was young. That was good gossip, it got us thinking about him. And then he disappeared, as the royal men all do, to do his military service. But unlike the others, he actually seemed to DO the service. Because one day, out of the blue, this video appeared in the world and suddenly we all realized that Prince Harry had grown up and become a hot and interesting man.
The hotness and the interestingness came from the fact that Harry, Prince of England, tore off his mic without a thought and sprinted away from the cameras when duty called. He put his soldierly work over the nonsense of being a famous prince. That’s what made him hot. William would never, and maybe could never.
Harry started the Invictus Games. Harry started Sentebale. Harry fell in love with a biracial American and introduced a modern love story to the outdated British Royal Family.
Harry and Meghan together have more charisma–love them or hate them–than the rest of his family combined. They were so good for the PR of that terrible institution, it’s hard to even describe how much they could have helped the Royal Family’s colonialist image around the world.
The day QEII died, I said to my husband, “If Charles is smart, the first thing he’ll do is call Harry and fix that whole situation.” Bring Harry, Meghan and the kids back into the “Senior Royal” category and give them the half-in, half-out role they originally wanted when they quit. Or, even simpler, just call the rabid UK tabloids and tell them to Back. The. Fuck. Off. with the racist, sexist bullying of Meghan. Give Harry whatever he wants, and as a tradeoff Harry cancels his upcoming memoir and Netflix documentary. The Crown could afford to buy out those contracts. Just think of how much embarrassment could’ve been avoided! We wouldn’t know about Camilla’s nastiness. We wouldn’t know what a terrible father Charles really was. We wouldn’t know how utterly rage-driven William is. We wouldn’t know that todgers can get frozen. Hell, even the tabloids would have been better off because we wouldn’t know about their habit of bullying royal children or trading stories between different royal press offices. We wouldn’t even know that the real war was between Harry and William all along!
The Queen didn’t need Prince Harry and his family. But King Charles the Boring? King Charles the Cheater? He needs all the publicity help he can get. He needed smooth sailing to begin his reign. If his first move was to show some strength toward the horrible UK tabloids that tormented Diana? To settle the squabbling in his own family? To be a competent CEO of The Firm by re-engaging the most talented members of the company? Now THAT would show that he was a good king who understood what his role in the 21st century actually is.
And all he had to do was call his son and talk it out like a normal human being.
Anyway, he didn’t. For me, obviously, this is a huge win. Elizabeth at least had an understanding of a certain sort of old-fashioned public relations. Charles thinks PR is beneath him and so he ignores it. It’s DELICIOUS.
So now here we are with Charles’s coronation coming up in a month. Nobody cares about this. A coronation in a country facing a massive cost of living crisis in a world rife with inequality. Moreover, a coronation for an old man nobody has ever much liked. When Elizabeth was crowned, the world was a different place. Monarchs were still respected, colonialism was still taught in schools as being a good thing, and most importantly for the PR angle, Liz was young and pretty. I will never understand why the Brits don’t get this–the world wants women in pretty dresses! We don’t care about balding men cosplaying in marching band uniforms with fake military medals. (Put Harry there–an actual soldier–in his fatigues? Yes, please! But William and…I’m gonna say his name is Prince Edward? in their fancy uniforms with all their unearned pins? No thanks.)
Nobody cares about two rich old codgers getting crowned with gold. Most of the news about the coronation has been who isn’t coming, how many musicians turned down the offer to perform, and overwhelmingly, whether or not Prince Harry and his wife will be there.
God, I’m so sick of reading about whether or not Harry and Meghan will go to this stupid event and how badly they’ll be snubbed if they do. The two of them haven’t done any press in months but it’s all we hear about, and that’s coming from the Royal Family and their flying monkeys in the UK tabloids. It’s insane! What are they doing? This all makes Charles look terrible. Yes, it’s the only way to get anybody interested in the coronation, but again, he could have just fixed this entire thing last September when the Queen died.
Charles is really, really bad at PR. He’s so bad at it that even I am getting bored. If the British monarchy isn’t fun for gossip anymore, what’s the point of them?
Anyway, now we all know that Harry is going and Meghan is staying safe in California with the kids. Good–why go to an event where they’re literally outlining how they’re going to humiliate you in public? So here’s the plan, because Harry is the only one in that family who understands how the media actually functions:
Harry goes, and he brings Pippa Middleton as his date.
Sure, they’re both married now, but that’s never bothered the Royal Family! He brings Pippa, and gives his family and the vicious UK tabloids what they’ve wanted all along: the extra prince who does just what his More Important Older Brother does, only in an ever so slightly lesser way. And he reverts to form as the official fuckup they liked him to be by making out with her in the church at the crowning. Bonus points if he’s visibly drunk. Maybe he can even start a fight or use a slur of some sort while he’s there! That’s the Harry they all preferred.
Can you imagine anything better? It’s the only way that this lackluster coronation will land on every front page in the world the next day. Do it, Harry! Someone in that family has to show a little PR savvy. Just don’t forget to send your dad a bill for your services once you return to your real life in America.
