The reality is a little more nuanced.
In such situations, the national broadcaster is often stuck between a rock and a hard place. It has a duty not only to cover national events, but to focus the nation’s attention on them. At the same time, it deals with an audience that consumes the media in an increasingly fragmented way. Simply postponing the shows, rather than broadcasting them on a different platform, seems an obvious answer, especially for younger viewers.
It is noteworthy that Philip was given an understanding of the power and importance of the media and how it could be used to maintain the relevant queen. Perhaps most famously, he was behind the urge to have her coronation televised, allowing the entire nation to share the moment.
The monarch still enjoys enormous personal popularity. However, despite its efforts to be more accessible, the public these days may want even more. Her younger relatives have for decades shown signs of understanding the demands of an even more open and accessible royal family.
“Every time the public is asked who their favorite members of the family are, excluding the queen, it is often William and Kate who come out on top, in general, Harry and Meghan still proving to be popular with the youngest,” he said. said Joe Twyman, director of public consulting Deltapoll.
These four, of course, were active activists in destigmatizing mental illness, combating climate change and striving to appear as normal people.
Prior to the recent problems with Harry and Meghan, this multi-speed monarchy actually served a useful purpose. Younger and approachable kings, who made the institution less clogged, played a role for the extremely popular, publicly trusted queen in fulfilling her constitutional duties with integrity. The golden years of this intergenerational team were undoubtedly in the early 2010s, when William and Kate’s wedding was celebrated with national street parties and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
However, this success could be the catalyst for a series of difficult constitutional questions that will be asked when the Queen is no longer with us.
“Philip’s death is truly the beginning of the end of an era. It is a story that reminds us that the Queen is a person, not just an institution,” said Catherine Haddon, a constitutional expert at the Institute for Government. “The irony is that her younger relatives have so far been little more than personalities and it is unclear how well this will translate into becoming heads of the monarchy.”
The person for whom this is most immediately problematic is Prince Charles, the first in line to the throne.
Charles has an unenviable act to follow not only because of the queen’s popularity, but also because of her public image that has grown over her decades in the royal waiting room. He has been a climate change activist since he was popular, directly interfered with government policy and, of course, was hated by the general public after the divorce of Princess Diana. The queen, on the other hand, was 25 when she was appointed to the throne on the death of her father.
“In a way, Charles is caught between two worlds. It is not clear that he will enjoy the respect his mother has shown for his interventions with governments over the years, so that traditional monarchists may not trust him to do the job with the same level of integrity. On the other hand, his personal brand has been successful enough to be more personal and more accessible he may not attract in the same way as William and Kate, ”Haddon said.
Twyman said that “the public is used to having an opinion about Charles and Camilla, for better or worse, in a way that they simply never have with the queen. For the first time in centuries, the monarch will have a personality beyond their public role. . It is very difficult to predict what they want from him, but it seems unlikely to be a repetition of his mother’s leadership. ”
The comparative public support for William and Kate is extremely high. Countless opinion polls show that the public would prefer to jump over a generation after the queen’s death, placing William on the throne in place of his father. This is very unlikely outside of a voting question. But the level of support for the younger couple suggests that the public feels comfortable with their public personalities being taken to the top of the institution.
The contrast of affection for Charles and William could be a problem in itself. Charles is 72 years old. If the queen lives at the same age as her mother, Charles will take the throne at the age of 79. If Charles lives as long as his father, William will not become king until 2048.
At that point, public sentiment about the monarchy could change drastically again, especially if Charles’ popularity did not increase after he became king.
“No one still knows what Charles will be like as king. But the job has gotten harder since 1953 and will no doubt continue to get harder,” said Ben Page, executive director of Ipsos MORI. “The monarchy must increasingly turn to a more diverse country, from ethnicity to age to wealth. No product on earth is published to anyone between the ages of zero and 100 or with no money for millionaires. ”
In a short period of time, an institution averse to radical change will have to evaluate its next steps. The full continuity of Queen Elizabeth is already impossible, given the public roles her successors currently hold.
And, as Twyman points out, these conversations “will take place in the context of the first coronation in the lives of most people of an elderly king about whom many already have strong opinions.”
Complaints about BBC coverage are important to remember, probably not out of disrespect for the queen or her late husband, but for the amusement of a younger generation on the cover who seemed to belong to another era.
“The idea that institutions like the BBC and the government are entering days of mourning and a public-oriented listening role clearly confuses many people,” Haddon said. “And the fact that I’ve heard personal memories from family members suggests I probably know that.”
It is almost no stretch of the imagination, given how much the world has changed, to understand that the public’s relationship with the royal family is not the same as it was seven decades ago. It is obvious that the British public will want something new when the time comes for Charles to become king.
The unanswered question for now is whether the monarchy – and the institutions around it – are prepared enough to modernize beyond the footsteps of babies in recent years, once the leader, whose leadership has barely changed since its coronation all those years ago. , is no more around.