the times | Monday February 21 2022 27
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Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826Royals ignore Princess Anne at their peril
The Queen’s wisest child would be a more respected adviser than her brothers and could help secure the monarchy’s future
child malnutrition to lighthouses.
Interviewing her about the Mission
to Seafarers (she visits ships, talks to
often-ignored international crews
about their lives) I incautiously asked
her to define her value to the charity.
Eyebrows raised, she delivered a
staccato “Fig-ure-head!”.
I deserved that, but the point is she
totally understands both the oddity
and the usefulness of royal work.
Like her late father she is brisk,
practical and attentive but not
unfriendly. A steady blue gaze, but
more stimulating than unnerving to
meet. Moreover, unlike the Duke of
York she understood the dangers,
refused titles for her children and
urged them to serious careers. In her
private pursuit as a rider she won
international medals and made the
1976 Olympic team; in personal life,
unlike two of her brothers, she
divorced and remarried
unobtrusively and without public
rancour.
In a less stubbornly fossilised
country you would think that the
2013 revision of primogeniture would
have included righting the wrong
done by history to all women. You
would certainly think that the role of
counsellor of state would have been
quietly returned to Anne when the
Duke of Edinburgh died, while a
sensible royal house retired Andrew
and Harry from it. It might yet
happen. It ought to.the flummery and Zadok-the-
Priestery, a constitutional monarchy
has to move gracefully with the
times and be seen to belong to its
century. Scandinavian and Dutch
royal houses grasped this long ago,
but our progress is more hesitant.
We have had female premiers,
ministers and leaders in every field;
the science and business logistics of
vaccine creation and rollout were
largely owed to brilliant women. We
are not a backward sexist country.But in this royal area we are starting
to look that way: a respected Queen
in her Platinum Jubilee year is
officially backed by counsellors
including a discredited sleazy
playboy and a petulant transatlantic
psychobabbler, neglecting a dutiful
daughter senior to both of them.
It feels particularly raw because
the Princess Royal is a clean bright
gem in the battered family tiara.
The hardest working in actual
engagements, she is also properly
engaged with her charities. I have
encountered her often in such
contexts — I sat on a victim-support
committee she chaired — and she is
always sharply across any brief, fromfunctions but like it or not the
monarch is part of the legal
machinery of British government
and assumed to be always available.
It would be rare for both Charles
and William to be abroad or ill at
once, but all the same it is shocking
to note that of four counsellors of
state one is a disreputable sleaze
and another a commercially
compromised émigré, legally able
only to hold the role because he has
a “UK address” rental at Frogmore
Cottage, despite considering it
“unsafe” to visit Britain.
But what grates more, in a free
21st-century country, is that this
group omits the Princess Royal,
Anne (who held the role before
William reached 21). Older than
Andrew, infinitely more dedicated
to Britain’s interests than Harry,
the Queen’s daughter is bypassed.
Nor is she even decently placed in
the line of succession. In 2013 — not
before time — government ended
male royal primogeniture but
insultingly didn’t backdate it: only
girls born after 2011 count. Thus
Anne, one of the most intelligent and
diligent members of the family, is
only 17th in line. Ahead of her lie not
only Prince William’s three children
but Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-
Windsor in Montecito, plus the Duke
of York’s baby grandchildren Sienna
Mozzi and August Brooksbank.
I think this matters because for allO
ne asset of the British
constitution is how
rarely we have to think
about it. Law by law we
wrangle but some old
rivers flow smoothly by, turbulent
only when someone chucks in a
rock: parliamentary sovereignty,
independent judiciary, constitutional
monarchy.
The last of these is today’s
preoccupation, so devout republicans
turn away — you are one in five of
us and may triumph one day but
probably not soon. The nation still
overwhelmingly votes the Queen as
our most popular public figure, the
Cambridges not far behind.
But at some point we will have a
new monarch. HM herself has been
visibly, unfussedly smoothing the
path for this, with the sangfroid of a
nonagenarian Christian unafraid of
mortality. So if the useful system of
constitutional monarchy is to carry
on, elegantly representing national
identity beyond politics and avoiding
ghastly contests for an elected head
of state, we should pay attention to
how it works. Especially right now.
For heredity is at monarchy’s core,
and families include problems.
Of the nine nearest in line to the
throne five are small children and
two of the others unthinkable. The
Duke of York is disgraced, barred
from royal duties and deleted by
charities and regiments. The Duke
of Sussex has emigrated, rejecting
royal duty and reticence in favour of
Californian showbiz contracts and
an exiguous PR role as “chief impact
officer” for a coaching business.
Yet despite these two squeaky
wheels and the grating matter of the
senior heir having his pet charity
investigated by the Met, the royal
carriage creaks on. An unappreciated
aspect has it that after the Prince ofWales and his son William, the
renegade York and Sussex are the
other “counsellors of state”: half of
a quartet deemed able, under the
1937 Regency Act, to take over
responsibilities from the Queen if
she were incapacitated. This means
granting royal assent to bills,
summoning parliament, appointing
judges, QCs and others.
These are of course ceremonialOther European royals
move with the times,
but ours are hesitant
She refused titles for
her children and urged
them to serious careers
Libby
Purves@lib_thinks