The heightened emotions around the coverage of King Charles’s cancer makes sense to me – he’s the head of state, he only became king seventeen months ago, he waited decades to become king, etc. What I don’t get is the increasingly hysterical coverage in the British media about the lack of working royals. Charles and Prince William have endlessly previewed their visions for a monarchy which does fewer events and has a significant decrease in visibility. You think Charles’s slimmed-down monarchy is dangerously tiny? Just wait for William’s version, when he kicks everybody out of the royal properties and demands that people only pay attention to him and his kids. The idea that various younger royals need to be “recruited” into the working-royal ranks is a purely media invention. Charles doesn’t want it, neither does William. But please, let’s hear again how the York princesses should be “given” royal duties.
It is time for minor royals to step up and rally around King Charles following his cancer diagnosis and the Princess of Wales’ health issues, experts have said, amid warnings the monarchy is looking ‘very threadbare’. The departure of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and the disgrace of Prince Andrew means there are not enough young royals to take on public duties and relieve the pressure on senior members of the family such as the Queen and Prince William, experts claim.
It is now feared that unless less senior royals such as Lady Louise Windsor and her mother Sophie and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie step up, the royal family will not be able to hold as many events or support as many charities as they have previously.
‘All of a sudden with these health problems we have it’s looking very, very threadbare,’ royal commentator Phil Dampier told MailOnline. With other working royals such as Queen Camilla and the Princess Royal being in their mid-70s, he fears there are few younger royals able to pick up the slack. ‘It’s all fallen really to a great extent to William and Kate and you do sometimes wonder if the stress of that knowledge and all the problems with Harry and Meghan have contributed to the pressure that Kate has felt under,’ he said.
Mr Dampier said that although Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie could be brought in ‘for minor duties’, their father Prince Andrew’s ties to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein make their involvement ‘more difficult’ for the family. Instead, he praised the Duchess of Edinburgh Sophie for a doing a ‘very good job’, adding he would like to see her ‘upping her game and doing a bit more’.
‘I certainly think there could be a very good role for their daughter Louise Windsor, who has previously chosen not to take a title,’ he added. ‘Everyone who knows her says she’s extremely personable and very intelligent and she would do a very, very good job.’
Richard Fitzwilliam added that there is currently ‘tremendous pressure on Prince William’ as he highlighted the lack of royals able to take on extra work. He said: ‘The dangers of a slimmed-down monarchy are obvious because of what we’ve just seen: Catherine won’t be doing anything until at least after Easter. It’s a tremendous pressure on Prince William as his father has cancer and his wife is recovering from abdominal surgery, and he will be expected to do more engagements. People forget that the royals are humans, in fact they’re only too human as we’ve just found out.’
Lady Louise Windsor is a 20-year-old college student who mostly eschews the spotlight and royal life. She should absolutely NOT leave college just so she can cut ribbons and be the young blood for this cadre of vampires. As for the Yorks… I’ve said for a while that Eugenie already has one foot out the door and I still believe that. I think that’s why they’re barely even talking about Eugenie as a potential working royal. Meanwhile, Beatrice has been auditioning for working-royal status for several years now. She would actually love to be included and I don’t know why Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace both refuse to let Bea take on some bread-and-butter royal events. But yeah… this isn’t about Bea or Eugenie or Louise. This is about an entire royal-media ecosystem facing irrelevance.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.