The Rise Of The British Royal Family ｜ Our History)

As the band strikes up to welcome Her Majesty the Queen to Matlock, Derbyshire, there's no sense that the British monarchy is in any kind of trouble. Her Majesty is still cheered wherever she goes, emphasising the remarkable survival of the monarchy in Britain, while most other nations have either lost their kings and queens or made them insignificant. This series looks at this extraordinary institution at a time when the very public problems in the private lives of the royal family have fuelled a new debate about the monarchy's place in British society. But whatever its difficulties today, history shows that the monarchy has managed to survive greater crises in the past. If you go back to the 18th century, and the royal brothers, the Prince Regent himself, couldn't go out in the streets of London without fear of causing a riot and being hissed at and stoned, it can put the present situation in some kind of perspective. The Prince Regent, who became King George IV, brought the already declining reputation of the British monarchy to an all-time low through his greed, extravagance and chaotic private life. In 1821, his estranged wife, Queen Caroline, was physically barred from attending his coronation. And on his death, nine years later, the Times wrote, there was never an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king. Only on the accession of the young and respectable Queen Victoria did the image of the monarchy recover at all. Following her marriage to Prince Albert, the carefully cultivated image of the Queen, surrounded by an adoring family, greatly enhanced the popularity of the monarchy. And for the first time, the royal family established itself as a model for the growing middle class. But royal popularity can't be taken for granted. On the death of Prince Albert, Victoria was stricken with grief, with nearly disastrous results. The only time we've had a very powerful republican movement in England was in the last century, when after the death of the Prince Consort in 1861, Queen Victoria virtually withdrew from public life, and people hardly saw her at all. And it was only when she came out of mourning and started playing a part in the public life of the country once again that that republican movement vanished. So it's very important that the monarchy should be seen as a visible symbol. At her old age, Victoria was to acquire a new symbolic importance as the patriotic focus of the nation and a mother figure of a great empire. At the very end of her reign, in the late 1880s and in the 1890s, she was encouraged and persuaded to appear in public, often as the focal point of grand pageants like the Golden Jubilee and the Diamond Jubilee. And although she wasn't very enthusiastic about that, this almost overnight created a whole new purpose for the monarchy and brought with it undreamed of and almost unprecedented popularity. Partly through these grand spectacles, the monarchy was reinvented and recreated as a symbol of national unity, of imperial identity, and it became popular and acclaimed and venerated in a way that really had never been true before. While Victoria had hated public appearances, her son and heir, Edward VII, was more than willing to act the part of magnificent monarch and figurehead of the nation. He had a love of dressing up and parading before his people and in Elgar had a composer who could write music to stir feelings of pride for king and country. This was the high point of the grand monarchy. Indeed, much of the apparently ancient ceremony we associate with the monarchy was devised or revived in the reign of Edward VII in the first decade of this century. Queen Victoria had scarcely ever attended the state opening of Parliament. Edward VII commissioned a new coach and turned it into the great occasion it is today, the only opportunity, apart from the coronation, that the queen has to act the sovereign and wear the crown and full state regalia. And it was Edward who refronted Buckingham Palace and laid out the Mall to create the perfect setting for the royal spectaculars that remain the hallmark of the British monarchy today. The most magnificent state pageant in which Edward took part was his own funeral in 1911, which he had planned in detail himself. For the first time in British history, the monarch lay in state in Westminster Hall as a quarter of a million of his subjects filed past. George V was now king. He presided over Edward's funeral, the last great gathering of the family of European royalty of which the British monarchy, with its German origins, was an important branch. But in the First World War, these foreign connections threatened the popularity of the royal family, so the king decided to change the family name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to something more British. There was a great deal of xenophobia, anti-German feeling, and the king decided that he would lay to rest any suspicion that the royal family was German. And it was Lord Stamfordham, the king's private secretary, who came up with Windsor. It was a brilliant suggestion. I suppose the profile of Windsor Castle is the best known in the whole of the United Kingdom. This identified the king with something very old and very English and very lasting. Not everybody approved of the change. There was one old Austrian nobleman who said that monarchy rarely had deteriorated when it changed the name of a dynasty because of a mere war. The Great War was to see the old European order swept away. George's uncle, the Kaiser of Germany, was deposed, and his cousin, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, executed by revolutionaries. In fact, the fall of the other great European monarchies greatly enhanced the position of the new House of Windsor. Britain was the only nation which kept a kind of great power imperial monarchy, almost by accident. And so, as the 20th century unfolded, the British monarchy became an essential part of Britain's sense of self-identity and self-esteem, this unique institution unrivaled by any other nation in the world. And almost until our own time, the delight, the pride in possessing this unique imperial monarchy has precluded any serious thought about reorganising the monarchy, let alone abolishing it. Throughout the present reign, the excitement surrounding royal weddings has provided an important boost for the popularity of the royal family. But for hundreds of years, they had taken place in private at the Royal Chapel at Windsor. It was George V who turned these family events into truly popular public spectacles. The wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1923, was actually the first wedding of a royal prince to take place in Westminster Abbey since 1352. In 1932, George V extended the popular appeal of the monarchy still further with the first Christmas radio broadcast, heard by an audience of 20 million people worldwide. Through one of the marvels of modern science, I am enabled this Christmas Day to speak to all my people... And the ability to exercise control over the mass media was to prove essential to the survival of the monarchy at its most critical hour. Edward says she makes him happy. In 1936, King Edward VIII created a constitutional crisis over his plans to marry the twice-divorced Mrs Wallis Simpson. The story was all over the American press and newsreels. But the British press barons and newsreel owners agreed to the royal family's request not to report the story at all. The British press was so tamed by the establishment and by the press proprietors that not a word of this reached the British public until everything was virtually settled and George VI and Queen Elizabeth were just about to take over. The crisis was over, everything was done. Today, inconceivable, but in those days, I think the tame British press was a vital part of the British monarchy. In his new queen, King George VI had someone whose popular touch has proved vital in sustaining the monarchy for over 60 years. The Queen Mother is really almost the best communicator of all the royal family, and for some years now, so she can be seen at her best, and she's one of these people who really realises that you have to look good for the people who turn out to see you, and she very cleverly has in her car spotlights that shine directly onto her face. She leans slightly forward in the car and then people get a perfect image of her. As a new queen, Elizabeth willingly opened the doors for the press and newsreels, which in the aftermath of the abdication literally doubled their output of royal stories. The emphasis was once again on the family. We bring them to you now in the most charming and natural pictures ever taken of our royal family. In wartime, Queen Elizabeth had no hesitation in calling in the cameras to ensure the royal family was seen sharing the suffering of the people. And the knowledge that their king and queen are among them has greatly heartened the people. After the war, because of her father's ill health, Princess Elizabeth increasingly assumed the public responsibilities of the monarchy. Her own accession to the throne in 1952 was to set in motion the most dramatic transformation of the public face of the monarchy through the medium of television. But at first, the establishment opposed the idea of broadcasting the coronation ceremony live on television. It was the Duke of Norfolk who saw its potential. The Duke of Norfolk was very forward-thinking and a lot of people thought he was rather stuffy, but in fact that wasn't so at all. And he had this big responsibility of organising the coronation and I think he felt that if it was televised live then it would be seen by the whole country and this could do nothing but good for the monarchy. I mean there'd been this mystique about the monarchy but why shouldn't everyone see the coronation? I think that was his attitude. And for the first time in history, through the medium of television, the ancient and noble right of a coronation service will be witnessed by millions of Her Majesty's subjects. Now, the Archbishop turns to the west side of the theatre, looking down the full length of the abbey. Wherefore, all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same? So say we! The Queen herself was delighted with the television presentation. The royal visitors went first to Studio E. The Queen came to Lime Grove to see a recording. We didn't have videotape in those days, just a film tele-recording. And she enjoyed it so much that she knighted George Barnes, who was director of television at the time, she knighted him on the spot in Lime Grove where she'd watched the recording. Peter Dimmock has little doubt why the royal family were so pleased. Well, fairly soon after the coronation, when I was talking to Prince Philip about television, I said that I thought the coronation broadcast had ensured the future of the monarchy for at least 30 years. And I think he agreed with me, because he then took on a lot of projects himself and became very interested in television. But the awe-inspiring effects of the coronation had begun to wear off by the 1960s. On Sunday, Her Majesty was 37 and newsworthy as ever, even when doing nothing in particular. It was described by ITN as celebrating quietly her birthday with her family at Windsor Castle. But how do you celebrate your own birthday noisily? Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday, dear Morgan, happy birthday to me! And in 1968, even Prince Philip admitted publicly that perhaps the monarchy was looking boring. You know, we're getting on from middle age, and I dare say we're really ancient. There might be a bit more reverence again, I don't know. I just thought we were entering probably the least interesting period of, you know, kind of glamorous existence. People began to get terribly bored with the monarchy, and that's the one thing that monarchs can never allow to happen. And I think you had, at the end of the 60s, the idea that the British monarchy was sort of vanishing away. Even the Daily Telegraph said the British monarchy will not be abolished in a revolution, but it could fade away in one great collective yawn. Once again, the monarchy was ready to respond, authorising the enormously successful film Royal Family. You see this is strong enough to... The significant thing about that film was that no-one had ever seen the Royal Family in a kind of natural way like any other family. I mean, they weren't like any other ordinary family, of course, but they were human beings, at least, like the rest of us. And I think that caused a great identification with the Royal Family, greater than had happened at any time before. I think the key to the success of the modern monarchy is their ability to be both just like us and not like us, to be both very extraordinary and quite ordinary, banal even. I think that ordinariness comes very much from them being a family. But if you take the royal wedding of 1981 between Charles and I, that was also an extraordinary event. It was named, typically, a fairy-tale romance. And I think it's that constant tension between ordinariness and extraordinariness that is so beguiling about the modern monarchy. But it was perhaps this overwhelming success that sowed the seeds of the present difficulties, setting in motion the evolution of the Royal Family from solid respectability into soap opera. Once you'd actually admitted that the Royal Family were ordinary human beings, ordinary wants, lusts, hates, problems, difficulties and all the other things, once you'd admitted that, you couldn't go back. And I think we'd been lumbered, or the Royal Family's been lumbered with us ever since. I think it was a sort of pact with the devil that they agreed to. Even before her marriage, Diana Spencer excited frenzied behaviour from the press. And after the wedding, the excitement surrounding her every action led in the summer of 1982 to the publication of an infamous photograph. A pair of journalists crawled for several miles through tropical jungle to get their blurred shot of the pregnant princess. James Whittaker, then of the Daily Star, was the man responsible. I don't think that the Royal Family, I'd never believe this, have the right to say, well done, we've enjoyed you covering this official visit or that particular opening or that unveiling ceremony, now please go away until we choose to have you back. Time and again, the Queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales have called in the editors, have tried to explain to them, have asked them to lay off, to just cool it. And they've had no luck on any occasion. The editors have been invited individually to have lunch with the Prince and Princess and they've gobbled up their organic vegetables and gone away and done exactly the same as they've been doing before. I don't know how you solve the problem. James Whittaker is of the view that while the palace may not like the press, they do depend on it. I can assure you that there's only one thing worse for the royals, and the Queen actually has been heard to say this, one thing worse than being harassed, and that is being ignored. They dislike that more. Television too, once largely loyal, now offers an image of royalty that is uncomfortably like the caricature of the early 19th century, and it's claimed this only reflects a change in public attitudes. I mean, the amount of caricature you could do of the royal family in the 16th century was pretty minimal. And I think with splitting image we had to be very careful. We didn't have the Queen Mum on the first show. I mean, I wanted the Queen Mum on the first show, and the producers said, no way. And I think that you do it with really the consent of the reader or the viewer. Gradually you can do more. There must be some truth in the satire. You're doing a little bit of truth in the satire, and I think that you can't just make things up because you think you will. You have to go along with your audience. More disturbing for the palace, perhaps, is the change in the stories of royalty that the public seems to want from mainstream news programmes. To put it at its most simple, in the 80s I think they wanted to see basically happy pictures, if possible funny, but something which would take them out of themselves and put them in the role of these amazing Dallas-like people touring the world at the very highest level. What they want now, probably at the very lowest level, is a confirmation of, is the marriage on the rocks? Are they going to divorce? This sort of basic 90s kind of nitty approach. At the same time, opinion polls show that popular enthusiasm for the monarchy has cooled. Over the decade that we've been studying the monarchy fairly closely, we've seen a high level of support, 77%, drop down to around 56-55% over the last ten years. This means that while they still have the majority of the country behind them, it's a declining share of the market. The palace has tried to direct public attention away from royal gossip and to remind people of the monarchy's essentially serious purpose and of its greatest strength, the Queen herself. In the latest official film, Elizabeth R, the family, once the strongest royal shoot, was practically invisible. I think the point of focusing on the Queen was, and I've not been told this, I kind of have to deduce it, was that it was the job of the monarchy that wasn't really understood. What's the monarchy for? Why do we have a monarchy? People had seen in the earlier film the family as a family, but what's the job? And I think it was the political constitutional role that people felt was, people in the palace felt, that was the one that wasn't really as well understood and explained. The film was a great success, attracting an audience of 18 million. But three weeks after its first showing came the sudden announcement of the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York, and worse was to follow. In June, the royal image was further damaged by allegations made about problems in the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The British monarchy has faced many crises since the beginning of the last century, yet it has repeatedly managed to adapt itself and regain the hearts of the people. But today's problems may be of a different order. That element that has proved most important in winning public support, the family and the great events that surround it, can seemingly no longer be relied upon. In the last decade or so, we have seen all of that literally unravel before our very eyes. Nobody now believes that the monarchy is a happy family any more, and if you don't have a happy family and if weddings end up in the divorce court soon after, why do you want grand weddings either? So, in a sense, that whole basis of the 20th century British monarchy seems to be at risk at the present time. And that has generated a newly intense amount of discussion about what kind of monarchy we have got and what kind of monarchy we ought to have. And those questions are only going to become more insistent as the remainder of the 20th century unfolds. As public support fades, one problem that will increasingly beset the monarchy in the years ahead will be how to preserve its role as the focus of unity for the nation, a representative of all the people, at the same time as being the epitome of rank and privilege.