Kate Mansey and Peter Conradi From: The Australian
May 15, 2013 12:00AM
Prince Charles's presence beside the Queen at the opening of the British parliament last week suggests he will assume greater responsibility in coming months. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
FOR monarchy, symbolism is everything. So what better place to put the new royal order on display than the state opening of parliament, the glitziest and highest profile event in the Queen's annual calendar?
As she read -- with the occasional uncharacteristic stumble -- the government's legislative program last week, the Queen was accompanied not just by the Duke of Edinburgh but also, for the first time, by Charles and Camilla.
Their thrones, of course, were less grand and were set lower, and the Queen Mother's Boucheron tiara worn by the Duchess of Cornwall was outshone by the 3000 precious stones of the Imperial State Crown resting heavily on the Queen's head. But the message of this unprecedented line-up in the House of Lords was clear: change is afoot at the top of the Firm.
What a difference a year makes. The diamond jubilee celebrations in June last year -- culminating in the royal barge's progress down a rain-swept Thames -- were very much the Queen's affair, even though Charles won plaudits for his speech during the concert at Buckingham Palace in which he paid tribute to "mummy".
In retrospect, however, the four-day warm-up for the Olympics will be seen to have been a turning point in the history of the monarchy and a milestone on the way to the post-Elizabethan era.
Consider what has happened since. First, there has been the inevitable deterioration in Prince Philip's health, demonstrated that jubilee weekend when he was laid low with a bladder infection and had to go to hospital, followed by the abandonment by the Queen of a trip to Italy in March after she, too, was hospitalised suffering from what the palace described as "the symptoms of gastroenteritis".
Then there has been the growing public profile of princes William and Harry, the latter back in the US last week for the first time since last summer's ill-fated holiday in Las Vegas. This time he has remained fully clothed and on his best behaviour. Most significant of all, there was the announcement on the eve of the Queen's speech that Charles would take her place at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka in November.
It will be the first such summit the Queen has missed in the past 40 years and an indication, perhaps, that Charles is attempting to stake a claim to becoming the head of the Commonwealth, a role that will not be his automatically when he finally succeeds his mother.
A generational change is under way in the House of Windsor; the birth this northern summer of the third in line to the throne will add to this impression. Quite how fast this change will happen and what form it will take, only the next few months will tell.
First, what will not happen. The Queen, 87, has no intention of going Dutch. Abdication may have become established practice for the House of Orange -- as 75-year-old Queen Beatrix's departure last month showed -- but Edward VIII's giving up of the throne in 1936 has never been something that his niece would countenance.
Nor, as the Queen's aides insisted last week, can there be any question of tinkering with the rules to allow Charles to take over any time soon as regent, which at present can happen only in the case of the monarch being formally declared incapable of discharging her duties.
The palace is at pains to insist the Queen is in robust health.
"The Queen was out riding last weekend so there is absolutely no suggestion that there are any underlying health problems and she has not ruled out the possibility of taking a long-haul trip in the future," an aide said last week. Still, it was notable that there was not the usual announcement of forthcoming foreign tours at the end of her speech. Could none be planned?
The health of Philip gives more cause for concern, even if he appears commendably reluctant to slow down. During a visit to Canada last month he appeared to have a black eye, explained away by his staff, who said the 91-year-old simply wakes up with bruises from time to time.
A probable scenario, according to palace aides, is a more subtle, creeping change in the structure of the Firm. According to one palace insider, we are looking at the prospect of the royal family changing by a process of "evolution" rather than "revolution". As another insider puts it: it will be "more of a merger than a takeover".
What of the Firm's chief-executive-in-waiting? For years it was thought that the main shadow over the reign of the future King Charles III would be cast by his consort. At the time he married Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005, she was still widely reviled for her role in the break-up of the prince's marriage to Diana.
A delicate PR job has succeeded in rehabilitating the image of the Duchess of Cornwall in the eyes of the public. Following sound advice from aides, Camilla has backed charities close to her heart, refusing to become merely a "letter-head patron" of causes she knows nothing about.
Among many others she chose literacy, because she loves reading and wants more people to enjoy it, and domestic abuse and osteoporosis because she wants to help other women and her mother was afflicted with the latter.
In person, friends say, she is warm and friendly. "She has got a great sense of humour," says one source. "On one occasion she was due to meet Boris Johnson (the mayor of London). When she arrived she came into view riding a bicycle. He thought it was hilarious and took to her immediately."
The duchess is clearly more popular than she was; that being said, only 16 per cent of people questioned in a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times recently think she should be given the title of queen, against 46 per cent who would prefer her simply to be princess consort.
Charles's popularity is on the rise. The same poll shows that 50 per cent think he will be a good king when the time comes, compared with 37 per cent when the same question was asked in May last year.
Nevertheless, questions remain about his behaviour. As the longest serving heir to the throne, Charles, who will turn 65 in November, has had to create a role for himself as Prince of Wales.
The only predecessor to spend anything like as much time on permanent hold was his great-great-grandfather Edward VII, who was 59 when he finally followed his mother, Victoria, on to the throne -- but no one would suggest that his lifetime of philandering had made him much of a role model.
The Queen came to the throne so young -- she was just 25 -- that she had no need to give much thought to her role as heir. As the decades have passed, Charles has considered it his duty to speak his mind and stand up for the causes he believes in.
In the past few years he has toned down his pronouncements. Once he denounced modern architecture and also alarmed the medical establishment with praise for homeopathic medicine.
In recent months, by contrast, he has stood in as a weather forecaster during a trip to the BBC Scotland studios and guest edited an episode of the BBC's Countryfile. Not exactly controversial.
There are, nevertheless, occasional flashes of his old, more combative self: last week he used a speech given at St James's Palace to criticise "corporate lobbyists" and climate change sceptics whom he accused of turning the Earth into a "dying patient".
More potentially damaging are his attempts to wield influence behind the scenes. As long ago as 1979 the prince was reprimanded by Margaret Thatcher, who feared he was creating his own alternative Foreign and Commonwealth Office. During a walk through the rose gardens at Balmoral, Thatcher raised the issue with Charles and the pair came to an agreement.
Today the prince has a member of his staff seconded to the Cabinet Office and one of its civil servants is working for him. This handy exchange means that the government will learn his views and he can better understand what it is working on.
The shadow hanging over him is the spectre of the so-called "black spider memos", hand-written letters dashed off by the prince to ministers through the years containing what are believed to be trenchant expressions of his views. Campaigners have been trying for years to make use of the Freedom of Information Act to obtain access to these letters, described last year by Dominic Grieve, Britain's attorney-general, as "particularly frank".
Last week the battle moved into a new phase: in the High Court. Tellingly, Grieve has blocked the demand on the grounds that publishing the letters may undermine public perceptions of Charles being politically neutral and damage his future role as king.
"It is highly important that he is not considered by the public to favour one political party or another," Grieve has said.
The Queen has kept her views to herself scrupulously during her 61 years on the throne. Charles will probably do the same from now on; the real problem is that pile of "particularly frank" memos already out there that could yet come back to haunt him.
The prince may have looked the part last week, dressed like his father in an admiral's uniform, clanking with medals. But no transition at a family firm, however well planned, is ever completely seamless. This one is unlikely to prove an exception.
Kate Mansey is royal correspondent for The Sunday Times. Peter Conradi's book The Great Survivors: How Monarchy Made It into the Twenty-First Century is published by Alma Books.
