A week ago, the Daily Beast’s Royalist column was an extremely bizarre piece about how Prince Harry was and is desperate for a favorable “peace deal” with King Charles, because the left-behind Windsors are the gatekeepers to charities and global statesmanship, and Harry cannot achieve his professional goals without them. Within the piece, there were several jabs at Charles, and several suggestions that Charles’s reign would be quite brief and that “King William” will be less inclined to make peace with Harry. Basically, William can’t shut up about how he’s going to be king soon and he’s already fantasizing about how he’s going to “punish” his brother. I bring this up because the latest Royalist column is all about how Charles’s upcoming trip to Australia and Samoa, and how Charles feels the need to prove that he’s “not dying.” Gee, I wonder who’s spreading those rumors?? Some highlights from a particularly gossipy piece:
The palace isn’t worried about the royal rota: Charles and his aides know full well that the king’s health will be under microscopic scrutiny as never before for the week of engagements traveling around Australia that ensues. As one former royal staffer told The Daily Beast: “The royal rota [the accredited pack of British royal correspondents traveling with the king] aren’t too much of a problem—they aren’t going to say anything controversial about Charles’ health unless he literally falls down dead in the street. But the Australian media aren’t operating under the same kind of restrictions. If anything goes wrong on the tour—from a bad trip or fall to a canceled engagement or God forbid, an early exit—they will go to town on it, and the British omertà will probably then evaporate in its wake.”
Charles wants to prove he’s not dying: The decision to travel to Australia is, in some senses, a gamble, the former courtier says: “It’s all about proving he isn’t dying, to be blunt. The problem is that if anything goes wrong, people will leap to the opposite conclusion. It’s make-or-break for Charles, I think.”
Charles’s people are concerned about a “Joe Biden” moment: As Duncan Larcombe, the veteran royal correspondent and former royal editor of British tabloid The Sun, told the Daily Beast, Charles hasn’t had any “Joe Biden” moments and there is no reason to doubt Charles’ team’s assumption; he can do this. But, as Larcombe says: “If a wobbly moment did happen, then the tour could backfire spectacularly. It is of course a risk that applies to his general diary, but that is exactly why, when it comes to domestic engagements, nothing is being announced until the last minute. You can’t do that on a foreign tour. My personal opinion is that having said he has cancer, they have made a rod for their own back by not telling us exactly what kind of cancer he has and how serious it is. Wrapping everything up in mystery creates a vacuum that can all too easily get filled with conspiracy theories, as we saw with Kate earlier this year.”
Republic will be staging anti-monarchy demonstrations in Oz: Graham Smith, the CEO of Republic, a British anti-monarchy pressure group, will be in Australia for the tour, seeking to raise awareness of the existence of the anti-royal movement in the U.K. Smith said: “We want to question the idea that he’s representing us. Our message to the Australian audience is: Don’t believe for a minute that the U.K. is a nation of royalists. People are interested to know that we’re doing stuff on this issue, and they want to hear from us.” Smith says interest in Australia, ahead of the trip, is low, with people “barely aware the king is even coming. One journalist told me they didn’t think that the Australians will be all that interested in a couple of old pensioners wandering around Canberra for half an hour, which, I think, catches the mood.”
Smith on why the anachronistic system should be dispensed with: “If you were the president or prime minister, and you were diagnosed with cancer, you would resign and someone else would take the job on. The suggestion that it is totally unreasonable to expect him to step down and let someone else do it makes a mockery of the role. There is something significantly dysfunctional about an institution that demands this kind of spin around someone’s health. They’re so determined to maintain the mythology around this family that they have to bend reality in order to make it fit the situation. He should step down, and while it’s not central to our argument as republicans, it’s yet another illustration of the absurdity of having a hereditary head of state.”
The crack about Joe Biden was unnecessary – while Biden and Charles are both heads of state, the job of an American president is unambiguously more important and demanding than that of a Salt Island king. Biden has nowhere to hide – he has to do the job every day. No one has seen Charles in more than a week, and he disappears regularly because his job is fundamentally unimportant and based in PR. I’m glad Graham Smith is going to Australia and that he’s raising these points across “the realm.” I also wonder if much of this is the palace trying to lower expectations for the trip so that if Charles simply shows up and doesn’t fall down, it will be considered a win. I also wonder about the reception Charles and Camilla will get overall. We’ll see.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Avalon Red.