The Death of a Duke

Which way is the wind blowing ?

When I heard that Prince Philip had died, my first thought was “Christ! I hope no one asks me to write about it”. I was trying to have some quality time with my family.  Also, I am proudly republican.  My youngest texted a message so rude I cannot repeat it but off we went down to the sea and it was freezing and bright and so very English. 

A toddler on the beach is a joy because every single thing, a chalk pebble, a slash of seaweed, a dead crab is a wonderment. 

By the time I got home I realised that a 99 year old man who had died at home was not a small story, whatever your position. Some kind of madness was already happening. Either we should not give a moment’s thought to this “rancid old racist” or this was a truly historical passing. And now the Queen was all alone. 

The BBC went bonkers and the usual suspects were producing pages and pages of tosh. Is there a market for this stuff? Not judging by piles of “supplements” I have seen left over in garages, but I know that anecdote is not data.

Everyone who had ever met Phil the Greek told us how great he was. Some worried about the strange cargo cult in Vanuatu that worshipped him as a god. Other lunatics immediately blamed all this on Meghan. I watched something in which he was presented as a quasi- James Bond. 

In truth, I felt not a lot and am distrustful of those columnists who squeezed out a tear or two but then I can cry at an advert so you know? I was even more flummoxed to be told he was some kind of “new man”. He didn’t walk behind the Queen because he wanted to, as though he was somehow enlightened about gender roles. He was made to just as Albert was made to walk behind Victoria.  It is the rules.  As if to compensate there was a lot of ‘she may have been queen but he wore the trousers’ stuff to reassure us  that his masculinity was never compromised. There was less talk of the disappearances and rumours that also shored up his ‘masculinity’ and now is not the time to go into all that because it never really is, is it? 

The marriage was long and that is that I guess. 

What struck me though ,was that if our self-image as a nation is that of under-statement, repression and unfussiness then we are more deluded than ever.

If this is a rehearsal for what happens when the Queen dies, then god help us all. That will be a sad day of course. I am not inhuman but Philip had a long life and it is the passing of that generation that has seen so much change that is emotional, not his death in particular.   

The mawkishness around all this though is the opposite of dignity. Rolling news about an individual’s death in the time of Covid? Get a grip. Is it all a displacement I wondered for the quiet lonely losses that that we don’t speak about too much?

A little boy drawing a red heart for the “best grandad ever” on the commemorative wall moved me. Charles speaking about his Papa did not. 

Perhaps I can never forgive the royals for what they did to Diana, who for all her flaws was sacrificed to an institution that keeps its women in captivity.

The natural end of the monarchy should be when the queen goes and part of the national psyche knows that. 

The sudden flurry to stick Union Jacks everywhere  and unite in mourning is a sign of insecurity. This stuff cannot be superimposed on a country that is in the middle of vast changes. Scotland is pulling away, Northern Ireland having been ignored is now every night in flames. One feels genuinely for the flag and the monarchy or one doesn’t. This huge and belated effort at the “manufacture of consent” is sentimental play acting. 

Harry and Meghan after all ,saw what lay before them in this country and chose to leave and whether you believe every word of the Oprah interview or not, they are trying somehow to be free. 

It was Philip of course who in an effort to let some light in on the magic, first put the family on TV. Here was the queen barbequing salmon. Here were the children,Charles subdued  and awkward even then, acting almost like normal impossibly posh people. Later he would be taken aside by his father and told to stop messing around and marry a suitable virgin.

It has always bemused me that the most ardent royalists condemn the family that rules over them to straightjackets of protocol as well as huge privilege. Then ,of course there is Andrew, the Queen’s favourite, now despised by any sentient being. What comfort will he bring? As I wrote in 2019 “Andrew was not the bad apple, he comes from an orchard of them”. Essentially, he has been dethroned.

The family that sits at the apex of this divided country is splitting apart. Their symbiotic relationship with this press fuels their dysfunction, they need each other. Harry understood that but still can’t not escape it.

The Queen is loved. Undoubtedly. She is a billionaire who is not chided for her wealth and is seen as ever dutiful which she is. It is sad. 

Yet this institution, the firm, cannot survive intact what is coming. As we struggle with our colonial past, endless talk about the Commonwealth jars. Leave the Queen to grieve. It is possible to do that without sycophancy or sappy write ups. 

I can’t help but think about the many people who have lost loved ones this year and how invisible their deaths and funerals have been. They were  loved no less than Philip. They were not Dukes or Princes. They were mere citizens.

And that is what I want to be, a citizen not a subject. 

There is a lesson in the reaction to Philip’s death and it is not the polarised one of social media : “I couldn’t care less” or the witless “end of era” takes.  It is somewhere in the middle and that place is a dangerous place to be now for the royals.

While there is sympathy for the wife of a very old man, there is largely indifference. Philip had a good innings. His death is sad because all deaths are sad. No more, no less. 

The United Kingdom is not united. It is beginning to understand itself in new ways. Every conservative force will try and drag us back to deference to hereditary privilege. Some of us will not be dragged though. 

When I was by the sea with young people for whom the monarchy means very little, I wet my finger and held it up

and felt which way the wind was blowing… the cold, cold wind.