If you’re a royal watcher, you’ll probably know by now that the media loves creating enemies and pitting several members of the Royal Family against each other.
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In recent times, we have the Sussexes vs. the Royal Family, and of course, the usual sweet tales of a King who scorned a not-so-good brother.
No matter how much the Royal Family tries to present a united front – and they are doing such a great job at it too (let’s be honest, every family has their own issues and skeleton-in-a-cupboard type relationship), the media will always see something to turn into a juicy story.
Even though I doubt there’ll be any the magnitude of Charles and Diana’s final years as a married couple, I will credit the Royal Family’s silence regarding the Sussexes’ accusations as the reason this didn’t get out of hand. During the Charles v Diana era, the two sat down separately for an interview and it quickly became a cesspool of marital tension.
However, let’s never say never, especially with Prince Harry’s book on the horizon.
Royal Expert On the Royal Family’s Tumultuous Times In the 80s and 90s
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According to Simon Heffer, the reason the Royal Family went through the dark times in the 80s and 90s was because the younger members at the time wanted deference and respect, even though they’ve done so little to earn it.
Heffer said: “The late 1980s and early 1990s were a bad time for the Royal family; it was a head-on collision between them, and especially a younger generation that expected the respect due to their station without necessarily doing all they could to earn it, and a general public that had largely abandoned the idea of deference (though judging from the sense of public awe that accompanied the obsequies of the late Queen, that may not have been permanent).
“The younger members, especially the Duke and Duchess of York (the latter of whose carnal antics are readily portrayed in the series; God knows what is to come about him) and Diana, Princess of Wales, became viewed by the mass media as members of a soap opera.
“However, members of the Royal family regularly do something that soap actors do not – they cost substantial sums of public money, in return for which, again unlike soap stars, they perform a range of public duties. Any sense of “entitlement”, therefore, plays badly with a public schooled by elements in the tabloid press to find it outrageous, all the more so if the entitled then behave badly.”
Heffer then went on to note that the media has always been careful of how they portrayed the late Queen and her husband, even though it wasn’t always so in the 90s when conspiracy theorists blamed the Royal Family for Diana’s death.
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“There was a proxy civil war conducted by the press in which some members were pitched against others – notably the imperfections of most of them contrasted with the wonder of the late Princess of Wales. The mockery sealed the soap-operatic nature of the exercise and was unquestionably good for the circulations of some of these papers. Their readers did, indeed, find it entertaining; but good judgment was suspended in some editorial offices about the harm this might do not just to the family of the Head of State, but to the Head of State herself and to the international reputation of the country.”
Simon Heffer Accuses Netflix And The Press Of Exploiting The Royal Family’s Lives For Their Gain
In his op-ed for The Telegraph, Heffer described how the press thinks that it’s their right to write whatever they want about the Royal Family.
“This has had a regrettable legacy, in that some elements of the press still do think that it is their right, on behalf of the taxpayers who fund most royal activities, to mock and exploit as they see fit. Those elements will point to their undiluted show of respect when the late Queen died as proof that they know how to behave towards someone who was beyond reproach: but then, with their circulations constantly in mind, they would not have dared do otherwise.
“Similarly, for the moment, they have correctly judged that the new King and Queen Consort have the respect of the public, and are taking care not to run counter to public opinion: but then, with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to kick around, the target needed for royal-bashing is there if needed. And that is the paradox that the media, and Netflix, seem long ago to have discovered.
“As in any drama, there have to be goodies and baddies, and if the baddies aren’t obvious, then you do your best to create them. The Crown unquestionably does that, and in a fashion that ought to make its producers ashamed of themselves. This is our King, our country and our constitution, for pity’s sake.”
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