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Will Prince Harry's autobiography 'Spare' bring down the monarchy? You really underestimated the British royal family.

2023-01-17T14:10:57.526Z


The word "Spare" means "spare tire" in English, highlighting Prince Harry's dissatisfaction with his destiny to be number two and "being brought into the world just in case something happens to William". although king harry


The word "Spare" means "spare tire" in English, highlighting Prince Harry's dissatisfaction with his destiny to be number two and "being brought into the world just in case something happens to William".

From Harry, Meghan Markle's Oprah Winfrey interview, to a six-part Netflix documentary to the publication of Spare, Prince Harry insists he does not want to bring down the monarchy. As well as Harry's "advertising" interviews in Britain and the United States, and Meghan's memoirs to be released in the future, this series of negative content pointing at the British royal family is hard not to be regarded as a "prince's revenge".


From how Harry himself was "like a stallion" by an older woman, to how his genitals suffered frostbite before his brother Prince William's wedding to Kate ("I penis oscillating between very sensitive and traumatized"); from how King Charles III and Queen Camilla leaked news about Harry's drug use to the tabloids today to change themselves The public image of William, to how William handles himself in the "heir mode", and in 2019, he even fought and pushed Harry to the ground...

This more than 400-page memoir is full of sensational details unknown to outsiders of the palace, completely breaking the tradition that royal reporters and authors often only rely on gossip and insinuations to weave narratives.

Walter Bagehot, a British constitutionalist in the 19th century, once said that the mystery of the royal family is its life, and people cannot let the sun shine on magic.

If this is the case, Harry himself, and all the royal family members (except Meghan) in the book (except Meghan) are undoubtedly the sword that stabs the essence of the royal family. .

British royal family: The picture shows on September 23, 2021, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and her husband, Prince Harry, waved to the people present when they visited the One World Trade Center in New York.

Harry said that the original text of his manuscript was 800 pages long, and many details were deleted for fear that his family would not forgive him.

(Reuters)

The late Queen Elizabeth II once said "I need to be seen to be believed".

She probably did not expect that her grandson would allow outsiders to see through the royal family.

Andrew Marr, a well-known host who plays an important role in British political opinion, recently pointed out that the inside story revealed by Prince Harry has made "the monarchy itself a problem now."

"If Harry is right, I'd rather not have the royal family."

After the death of Queen Elizabeth II, people have long questioned whether Charles could maintain the support of the British people for the monarchy.

Charles has only been in power for a few months, and Harry continues to expose the royal family's shady affairs, which not only frustrates Charles, who has spent more than 20 years recovering from his own extramarital affair scandal, but also destroys the perfect image of William and Kate as members of the royal family. The coronation of Charles in May 2009 cast a shadow.

Everyone knows that the British royal family is an obsolete product. Will Harry's "Prince's Revenge" create an opportunity to send this obsolete product into the torrent of history?

British royal family: Prince Harry pointed out in his memoirs that he begged his father Charles not to marry Camilla.

Camilla is accused of destroying the third party of Charles and Diana's marriage. Camilla has been the object of accusation for a long time in the UK.

The picture shows on September 19, 2022, Harry (back row left) and Meghan (back row right) attended the funeral of their grandmother, the Queen of England, and saw off with their fathers Charles (front row left) and Camilla (front row right) next of kin.

(Reuters)

Why does Britain still need a royal family?

Among all the western democracies, the United Kingdom is still formally a state-religious regime: the British monarch is the supreme leader of the Anglican Church of England, and the British Parliament also begins with prayers before meetings.

Now these, of course, have become almost religious rituals.

As part of this historical relic, the fact that the British royal family continues to exist must be supported by rationality other than the "divine right of kings".

Bagehot mentioned above believes that the British constitutional government consists of two levels: one is the "dignified parts" and the other is the "efficient parts".

The former has nothing to do with the daily affairs of the government, but it is the foundation of government power, and the latter is the framework for exercising this power.

According to Bagehot's idea, although the "noble part" represented by the British royal family seems useless, what can be admired by ordinary people and make people willing to sacrifice for it is not any useful thing, but "some kind of honor, A vague dream of an empire, a country, a nation", "a certain idea", "a certain attraction that seems to transcend reality"-this is where the value of the royal family lies.

In Bagehot's eyes, what the royal family needed was a "drama" that appealed to the senses and attempted to embody the greatest ideas of humanity.

This kind of drama is "mysterious", "dazzles the eyes, can only be seen clearly for a moment, and then you can't see it again", and is "fascinating yet plausible".

19th century British constitutionalist Bagehot (Walter Bagehot).

His description of the British monarchy is still widely quoted today.

(Wikimedia Commons)

In the mid-nineteenth century, when Bagehot wrote his The English Constitution, discussions of the survival and abolition of the monarchy were common in England.

Bagehot's essay is a defense for the survival of the British royal family at a time when the religious rationality of the monarchy is gradually disappearing.

The royal family does not have to be "noble"

Today, whenever the royal family is involved, British opinion leaders, whether they support the monarchy or not, often quote Bagehot's words from more than 150 years ago to make use of the topic.

For example, Polly Toynbee, a columnist for The Guardian, deliberately refuted Bagehot’s point of view in her review article on Harry’s new book, saying that “the royal family has never been a “noble” part of the constitution, but has reduced us to childish to the point of being an undignified showman who keeps following its trivial plot", and mystery is not the life of the royal family, "the public must be fed a new royal repertoire with each episode".

It is undeniable that at this moment, people still have a clear impression of Harry and Meghan's various overt and dark criticisms of the royal family. The word "noble" is indeed difficult to describe the royal family.

But does the survival of the royal family really need its "nobility"?

In the past half century, the British royal family has also been experiencing various scandals, from Edward VIII who abdicated the throne in the 1930s to marry twice divorced American women, to Charles, Princess Diana and Cardinals. Mila's triangle relationship and the published pornographic phone conversations with Charles Camila ("I want to live under your pants"), and then the recent scandals and lawsuits involving Jeffrey Epstein related to sexually assaulting underage girls Prince Andrew and more.

For decades, the royal family has clearly not been called "noble".

The fact that it still exists today has proved that people do not actually expect that what the royal family represents must be pure "nobility".

Crown Prince William and his wife Kate visited a hospital in Liverpool on January 12.

At present, the British royal family has given a cold treatment to Harry's disclosure, and has not yet officially responded.

(Reuters)

In the eyes of ordinary people, the presence of the royal family is reflected in its "drama".

This kind of drama is not a drama that is purely entertaining, but a drama that makes the British feel close and follow closely.

"Chasing drama" constitutes a British identity?

American political scientist Benedict Anderson proposed in 1983 that national identity is just an "imagined community" in which people who have no direct contact with each other identify themselves as the same group.

The basis of this "imagined community" is the image, ideology or language disseminated through mass media.

In the United Kingdom, the personal attention to the plot of the royal family members is an important element that makes the British think of themselves as British.

By contrast, Prince Harry's royal revelations have attracted the same attention around the world, but the attention is inherently different from what the British feel - for foreigners, the royal scandal is just another famous story That's all.

Some British commentators pointed out that although Harry has more sympathy in the United States, unfortunately, no one in the United States really cares about Harry.

King Charles of England inherited the style of his mother when he was on the throne, and went out to meet the grassroots people so that he could be "seen".

(Reuters)

Therefore, Bagehot’s description of the constitutional status of the British royal family is only half correct: the royal family does not have to be noble or mysterious, but it is a kind of drama with no practical use. Generally speaking, there is "some kind of attraction that seems to transcend reality".

Of course, he cannot be blamed for this. After all, in the middle of the 19th century, radio and television did not yet exist, and people’s cognition and imagination of royal dramas were of course remote and mysterious.

From the perspective of "royal drama", Harry's "Prince's Revenge" is not an action to overthrow the British monarchy, but to consolidate the survival of the British royal family.

In the royal drama at the moment, Harry is just playing a necessary villain role.

The irony is that Harry, who went to California, thought he had left the royal family, and even his English pronunciation gradually became "American" when he was interviewed, but he was actually "serving" the royal family.

If this drama of national concern is really the reason for the continued existence of the British royal family, the logical conclusion is that no matter the specific plot of each episode of the royal drama, as long as the series can continue to run and continue to receive British It is worth noting that any scandal, even more blatant and shocking than Harry's revelation, will not shake the foundation of the contemporary British royal family.

The only thing that overthrew the British royal family is probably only the British who watched the royal family from the other side, or even didn't care about it.

However, judging from the ratings of Harry Meghan's Netflix documentary, the hot sales of the new book "Spare", and the tireless debate among the British people, it can be seen that the foundation of the royal family is still very solid.

Prince Harry's new book was sold at half price on the first day of its release Publisher: The sales volume is second only to "Harry Potter" Prince Harry talks about publishing memoirs: The British royal family may thank me in 5 to 10 years 1 gift not happy Prince Harry memoir goes on sale UK polls show his popularity hits record low

Source: hk1

All news articles on 2023-01-17

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