A (3:57)

Well, thanks, Bianca. A bit of both. I mean, yes, it is unprecedented in the modern era to have a senior member of the royal family arrested, dragged off by the cops. I mean, that just hasn't happened. But at the same time, I think we are slightly guilty of treating this as the sort of gravest existential crisis ever to hit the Royal family, or indeed ever to hit the royal family since the abdication. I mean, if we just go back, really, a century or so. I mean, if you go back to the Georgians, I mean, you know, they were in another league. I mean, you have one of the sons of George III being accused of murdering his valet and incest and suing everybody for libel and. God, what. I mean, the Georgians were properly crazy, but let's leave them out of it. Moving into the early 20th century. Yeah, you hit the abdication in 1936, and I mean, that is seismic because that is. That's the end of a sovereign. I mean, that is literally a heir to the throne becomes king within a year, he's out. So that's. That's in a league of its own. And then really, for something comparable we get up to, you could argue in constitutional terms. I mean, things got quite ugly in the 70s, actually, very briefly, when there was a select committee into the royal finances. And suddenly, rather, as you have at the moment, with Parliament demanding, to be able to sort of poke into the affairs of the royal family. There was, for a matter of months, a period when it had been authorized by Harold Wilson, but it was actually under Edward Heath. Parliament was examining royal funding. It was only to do with the finances, nothing else, but, I mean, it got quite uncomfortable. And then really, you get up to the beginning of the 90s and what the Queen called her Anna Cerebralis, and that I would argue the 90s were a graver threat to the monarchy than the situation we have at the moment. Obviously, the subject matter was not as tawdry or revolting as the whole Epstein business, but the Epstein saga is something that involves one fringe member of the royal family who's going nowhere fast except, you know, out of Siberia in North Norfolk. Whereas in the 90s, we were talking about a series, a cumulative series of very bad news stories involving the direct line of succession to the throne, the Queen's Annus Aribilis 1992, when lots of marriages fell apart. There were rows about royal taxation culminating in the fire at Windsor Castle. And that was then a five year. What was known in the tabloids as the War of the Wales is between Charles and Diana. Diana's famous Panorama interview that really did sort of rock the monarchy to its foundations. And then, of course, her sad death two years later in 1997, that period was, it felt, at any rate, more of a major, major threat to the monarchy. I think what we have at the moment is a monarchy that's not as popular as it was in the heyday of Elizabeth II being buffered in by a scandal that is really a crisis, but not quite as big as the crisis we had back then.

B (7:21)

Now, Robert, you rightly tried to keep us disciplined there when you mentioned the Georgians and said, you know, let's move on. However, it's history uncensored, and you mentioned the murder and possible incest. So I've got to redirect because I actually think this is a really important time for us to discuss for a second, because when we consider the behavior that's associated with that period and what followed, which was the Victorian cleanup of the image and when moral expectations of royalty began to change again. Can you talk me through that? And how people regarded royalty and what behavior they expected of them in the Georgian period and then what happened to correct it, to end up with what we expect now?

A (8:03)

Well, I mean, in the Georgian period, you had the sort of evolution of the very earliest stages of the modern monarchy, of what you really could call a constitutional monarchy after the departure of James II and the late Stuarts, Parliament was asserting its primacy. And the sort of Georgian era, I always think, really got going under George iii, who was an extraordinary monarch. I mean, he was, while he lived, he was the longest reigning monarch in history. He was very Serious, very clever, probably the most cultured monarch that we have had until the present one, really very musical, well read, uxorious, utterly faithful to his wife. And yet they had this extraordinary brood of children, some just truly awful sons and some much put upon daughters who were not allowed to get married until very late in life. And the sons, two of whom died in childhood, the rest were nothing but trouble, notably the Prince Regent as he became when his father had his mental impairment in 1810. And yet the public sort of accepted it. The public just expected it was, it was fully understood that, you know, a country is run by a monarch and they can be good and they can be bad. And George III was known as Farmer George and he was quite, you know, he was seen as an avuncular figure. His sons were seen as wastrels. The cartoonists of the day were very unsparing in their criticism. Parliament of the day was very critical, but it was. It was just a totally different society where, where royalty, aristocracy, politicians just got away with it, because that's life. And compared to what you had on the Continent, where you had Napoleon, Britain was a sort of paragon of liberty. And George iii, ultimately, yes, he lost America. Yes, he went mad. However, the British sphere of influence expanded way over all around the world, in Australia and India and Asia. It was the sort of the start of the empire as we came to know it proper. And he saw off Napoleon and he died in his own bed. You know, other kings were being bumped off. Napoleon was in exile. I mean, extraordinary things happened under George iii, but his sons were, as I said, a bunch of reprobates. And then after his son and heir Prince Regent, became king, King George iv, he had one of the most disastrous royal marriages in history. Famously, he locked his own wife out of the coronation. He produced one daughter. She tragically died in childbirth. And at that point there was. That race was on among all the brothers to try and produce an heir, because despite having dozens of illegitimate children, none of them could, up to that point, produced a legitimate heir. And finally the King's, the late King's number four son, the Duke of Kent, produced Victoria. And the rest is history. So we suddenly went from the Georgians, George IV died. He was succeeded initially by his younger brother, William, Duke of Clarence, who again had sighed, I think, getting on for 11 children by the actress Mrs. Jordan. But none of them were legitimate. So his reign was. Was short and he gave way to a very young Queen Victoria. And suddenly that coincided with all sorts of other changes. I mean, I'm not, I'm not a great constitutional, sorry, social historian of that period. But I mean, you know, we all know that in the 19th century you had the sort of the British Empire expanding, you had the Industrial Revolution, you had huge changes in society. And with that came the rise of a middle class that liked these sort of wholesome values that Victoria espoused. And the Victorians, Georgians were absolute sort of debauched party animals. The Victorians were sort of straight laced churchgoers. And that, that really was the template for the monarchy we have today. The idea of a family that behaves very well, very correctly, very beautifully. And that in a sense sort of sets an example to the rest of the country. And that's what the Victorians left us. And I think we still labor under that misconception to this day. Somehow the Royal family are meant to be exemplars and they can't be and they're not and they feel, you know, we're not perfect, we're not infallible, we're not the Pope. But a lot of people expect, expect us to be beyond reproach.

B (13:12)

When you look back from the earlier monarchs of England and considered the behavior, the murder of Thomas Becket or the coup to depose King Edward, like you say, the raunchy and full of reprobate Georgians onto Victoria, what value system or benefit sustains the monarchy now? If initially it was divine right of kings and then they were governing, then Parliament was emerging as a force trying to sort itself out. What is the prevailing reason today?

A (13:47)

Well, that's a really good question, Bianca, because I think one unique role which befell the late Queen Elizabeth ii, there was a complete change in expectation up until her reign, all through, you know, beyond the Victorians, into the Edwardian era, onto George V, George VI briefly over the 8th. All through that period, Britain was imperial and was a world power. And the monarchy was seen as the sort of representation of that power. You know, the words of the land of hope and glory, why does still a moider shall thy bounds be set? That was the sort of the maxim the monarchy was expected to operate under. You know, Britain was big and the monarchy was all about consolidating in a benign way, as everyone thought at the time. You know, people thought it was a force for good, but very much the idea of expanding and or holding on to territory was what Britain, the empire and the monarchy was all about. And then you had this, this vital change just after the Second World War, 1947, India becomes independent. It's broken up into India and Pakistan. The British Empire at that point ceases to exist. And a new two years later, the new Commonwealth comes into effect with a thing called the London Declaration, and that essentially sets a framework for the dismantling of the Empire. And just three years after that is signed and Elizabeth II comes to the throne. So she's the first one who comes to the throne in the expectation, not that she will make things bigger, stronger, better. Not that I am the, you know, this great Empress, but rather I am in a benign, amicable way. We are going to break this thing down, people are going to go their own way, but we still want to be friends. And that was the sort of the thinking behind the modern Commonwealth, to which she kind of devoted so much of her life and sort of managed decline, if you like. No one ever called it that, but, I mean, that was a sort of strong theme of her reign. And I think that we could argue now that decline is sort of overnight, really. Everyone who wants independence from Britain has got it. I mean, obviously we still have our overseas territories, but they're still. And let's leave the Chagos Islands out of this. But I mean, places like Gibraltar and Bermuda and the Falkland Islands are all very happy and keen to remain British. But for the King, that sort of driving purpose, if you like, to monarchy is to represent the nation to itself, to unite a pretty fractious United Kingdom. There aren't many things that kind of bring the UK together, and you could argue they are, you know, the armed forces, the BBC and the monarchy. We live in a secular world now. When the late Queen came to the throne, everyone went to church. Almost everybody believed in a Christian God. I mean, clearly that's when I live in a secular society. It's very multicultural now. So, I mean, the role of the monarchy is in terms of uniting the country. I mean, that hasn't changed, but it's just a very different country that King Charles finds himself uniting. But I think central to it all is that idea that monarchy is irrational. I mean, if you were starting a country tomorrow, you wouldn't suddenly say, oh, we need one family. We're going to give them everything in perpetuity in nice houses.

B (17:31)

Unless you were that family.

A (17:33)

Unless you were that family. Yeah, but that's the way it's evolved. And it just so happens it works and it is irrational. I mean, all sorts of things are irrational. And in. In, you know, in life. I mean, why do we drive on the left and the rest of Europe drives on the right? Why. Why isn't everything in a straight line. And why isn't, you know, why, why do we have sort of, you know, higgledy piggledy medieval cities? And what way? Why, why do we have Father Christmas? I mean, you know, things don't have to be rational to be popular or indeed to work. And, and it just so happens that this thing works and it has its critics and its by no means faultless, but it's better than the alternatives. And periodically, it's fascinating actually, but whenever you actually put the monarchy to the vote in a proper democracy, it's remarkable how resilient it is. I think particularly back to the last sort of what I would call really serious referendum on the crown, which was in Australia in 1999 at the Tail end of a disastrous decade for the monarchy, at a time when monarchy just wasn't popular in Australia anyway for all sorts of reasons. It had never really been terribly popular, been on the slide ever since Britain joined the Common Market. But you know, it was coming up to a new millennium. 2000, Australia was about to host the Sydney Olympics. This was a great moment to show a new nation in charge of itself, in command of its destiny. And you had the entire political, entire media classes, all the national papers in Australia, everybody's saying it's time to get rid of this clapped out relic of a constitutional system and let's move forward with a homegrown Australian president and rise up and be a nation, all that sort of stuff. And I think everyone thought that's the way it was going to go. And I mean everyone was completely astonished the morning after in November 1999, including the Queen, including the Republicans, including even actually, and I've interviewed people on both sides of that debate, but including Tony Abbott, who went on to become Australian Prime Minister was running the Royalist campaign. He said he thought, he thought we'd blown it. You know, he had no idea. And suddenly 55 to 45 Australians said no, actually, all things being equal, we'd rather stick with what we've got than have another politician. And so I think that shows the extent to which we may feel that monarchy is in peril, but actually when push comes to shove, it's not.

B (20:11)

You use the example of Australia and part of me wonders, ironically, as the institution of monarchy appears more and more outdated in a faster moving democratic, egalitarian society, that element of presenting continuity amidst such accelerating change probably does have some kind of appeal that people can't fully rationalize. And maybe that explains in part the continued attachment to it, something which is coterminous with what you were describing and the changes of the monarchy and what Elizabeth II did in particular is this notion of the mystique disintegrating somewhat. When we again think back centuries ago when kings and queens had a divine aura, they were curing scrofula into the 20th century. How things have changed. However, Queen Elizabeth II definitely retained some of that mystique and distance just in the way that she conducted herself. I'm curious about what you think the impact of the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor will be on collapsing that distance or that mystique further.

A (21:27)

Yeah, I mean, I think it unquestionably has an effect, it has a corrosive effect, but I suppose the real question is how corrosive. If we look back to the mid-90s and you had things like really embarrassing leaked telephone calls, you had books like Andrew Morton's Diana Her True Story, I mean, which were really, were of a different order of sort of jaw dropping shockingness if you like, to ardent royalists. I mean, I think people have known for a long time that Andrew is a liability, an idiot, increasingly come to the conclusion that he's, he's lied about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and that, you know, he's, he's going from, from just being a sort of a royal buffoon to actually, well, we better be careful what we say legally. But I mean, yeah, a really unpleasant piece of work. However, I think people at the same time understand that, that that's not representative of, of the family as a whole. And in the same way that the, the, the family and the monarchy and the institution. Did it emerge from the 90s, which were a really, you know, a period where you thought, well, it's, it's lost any shred of mystique. I mean you had, you know, people just routinely called it a dysfunctional family, a soap opera. A lot of that mystique had, we thought had maybe had been gone. But still at the heart of it, I still think there is a sense that it acts as an anchor. It, it ties us to a history, to, to sort of stories and legends and that's looking backwards, but it anchors us in the past but also in the present. And it offers an alternative to the sort of the gladiatorial nature of politics. And I think it's not something we sort of think about very deeply. But when you do look at countries like say France or America, where you have an executive president, when things get really ugly, you know, people feel they've got nowhere else to go. I mean, you know, the head of state, they think, well, the head of state hates me, or I love the head of state because they agree with me, with, with the monarchy. Still, you know, there is that sense that it's. It is a part, that it acts as a sort of a referee. You know, the fact is, no one can get their hands on the armed forces or the judiciary or the honor system, because those are in the hands of someone who you can't dislodge. And so, as I say, it's not perfect, it's irrational. And, yeah, I think it's safe to say, I mean, I'm a big fan of Charles iii, but he doesn't have that. So sort of that aura that his late mother did, because, I mean, frankly, by the time of her death, you had to be well into your 80s to remember anybody else on the stamps or the coins. I mean, she'd been around so long, she was just part of not just the national, but global landscape.

B (24:49)

And if Elizabeth II specialized in containment and restraint, one of the key focal points of King Charles III's reign so far has been modernization. What do you think modernization and adaptation actually requires from the King in a moment like this?

A (25:09)

Well, I think it clearly requires a sort of a frankness and an ability to move fast. And I know people have sort of said, oh, well, he's. He was too slow to react to Andrew and all that stuff. I don't think he was. I mean, when he announced last, what it was tail end of last October, that he was stripping Andrew of everything, I was. I was genuinely surprised. I was amazed. I didn't think it would go that far. I mean, I thought maybe he might, you know, lose his. Might, stop being Duke of York. But I never thought he, you know, he'd be. He'd be stripped of everything, including being Prince, particularly he'd been born a prince. He. What the King showed was, I think, at the start of the reign, and this is all with reference to Andrew, but at the start of the reign, people thought, well, now the Queen's gone, Andrew's lost his security blanket, he's in trouble, the King's going to come down hard. And actually, the King had so much on his plate that he was. I think he took a sort of fairly conciliatory view at the start of the reign. I mean, suddenly you started seeing Andrew and interestingly, Fergie, who'd been very much out of sort of the royal limelight for years because Prince Philip couldn't stand being in the same room as her. She was sort of gradually being readmitted to the fold. And you thought, well, this is interesting, this is a sort of new. There's no question of Andrew returning to public life after his disastrous newsletter interview, but you just felt that perhaps the family were coming to some sort of arrangement. But Andrew behind the scenes has been very difficult. The King wanted to move him out of his big house because he could see that was going to be trouble. Having a essentially one man and occasionally his ex wife living in this vast house didn't look good and that thing was starting to get dilapidated. But Andrew refused to budge and the King kept saying, come on. Offering him perfectly sensible alternative accommodation, but in his usual pigheaded way just said, no, no, I'm going to stay here, I'll pay the bills. And that was how things continued up and until there wasn't much the King could do about that because, I mean, Andrew had a lease on Royal Lodge. He might be King, he's not an autocrat. He can't sort of tear up, you know, titles of property and that sort of thing. And then suddenly the Mail on Sunday revealed that actually he'd been lying. He'd been lying about his links to Epstein and all that stuff. We know what happened subsequently, but I mean, that was the break, that was the moment where the King's patience just snapped. And having gone from at the start of the reign being really quite charitable towards his brother, he suddenly went, you know, nuclear. And it took Andrew completely by surprise. I think Andrew thought he'd just sort of bluster his way along. So suddenly he was told, no, you're moving, you're out of that house. We're calling in the lease. He'd already removed any sort of allowance that Andrew had. I mean, Andrew was still getting a sort of an allowance to pay for his staff. And what really wounded him was and were taking away all your titles and all your honours. And that really hit him hard because all Andrew really had left were these sort of occasional opportunities to sort of dress up and be royal. So I think what we've seen is that Charles knows when to act and when to be decisive and has been. But at the same time, you know, he's got. It's very interesting how I think we in Britain, we tend to look at the monarchy as sort of sort of shrinking force on the world stage. But he's still very much. He's very highly regarded, the King overseas. You know, it's still a big deal when he. When he turns up. You know, I've been on, on his first day visit to Germany and it was, it was a, it was a really big deal in Germany. It wasn't just a big deal for him and, and it was the same when he went to France, when he went to Italy. He's going to go to America fairly soon. And as we saw when, when he brought Donald Trump for his state visit to Windsor last September, you know, the monarchy still has that capacity to help Britain, which is a, you know, fairly diminished, denuded world power. It's not a world power anymore. We're a sort of, you know, middle ranking, half power. But it still enables us to punch above our weight. I think people realise that.

B (30:02)

How do you think, Robert, that history will remember Andrew Mountbatten Windsor I'm curious as also to what theoretical impact imprisonment might have. There have been members of the royal family who've been imprisoned before. Does that erode the monarchy or does it mark a transition to full democratic normality for them?

A (30:26)

I don't think it takes them to full normality, but I don't think it. People, it's interesting when it comes to monarchy, people can sort of adapt their expectations, manage their expectations quite quickly. And as I said, if you think back to the 90s with things going on then that seemed utterly inconceivable. I mean, the idea of the heir to the throne throne being allowed to divorce than to remarry a divorcee, I mean, these things just seemed utterly impossible. You know, I remember the day that John Major stood up in Parliament. I mean, I'm old enough to have been covering royal matters back then in the early 90s and sort of announced that yes, the Prince and Princess of Wales were going to separate, but that should in no way prevent Diana from becoming Queen. And he thought what? How on earth is that going to work? You know, but in fairly short order, the public kind of got their heads around it because monarchy does evolve. You know, we have this idea that it's sort of cast in aspic, but actually it does evolve, it does things, things change. These perceptions do adjust with time. I mean, one of the, I think the major changes of the new reign as been the way that the monarchy has shrunk and that's quite deliberate. You know, the King feels that there should be a sort of core unit of the royal family that are doing useful official stuff on behalf of the Crown, on behalf of himself. The rest of the family. Yeah, they're family. I mean, he loves them dearly but they're not actually playing any official roles. So they kind of recede from, from view you know, when. When the family come out on the balcony. Now, it's a smaller. It's a smaller unit. When there are official events, you don't see great hordes of cousins suddenly appearing out of nowhere, which she used to. And, you know, the late Queen just liked having all the extended cousins around her at big family events, and she didn't really care about the optics and it didn't really matter for her because she was Elizabeth's second and she could do that stuff. And the King knows that, you know, he's. He's got to move with the times and he's also, you know, he's. He's a king in a hurry. He's been heir to the throne in waiting for longer than anyone in history. But having come to the throne at the age of 73, he knows he's not. He's unlikely to be sort of having jubilees and all that stuff. You know, he wants to get on with it. So, you know, we had different priorities, different imperatives, but the kind of that constitutional role, that idea of a family who just sort of get on with it, who are, as we've seen, the suite. You know, you'll see day in, day out, you know, the Princess Royal will be opening a charity shop somewhere in the north of England or whatever, and Wales will be in Cornwall or wherever. You know, there's a lot of royal stuff that doesn't hit the headlines every day, and that is the royal stuff. That is what keeps the monarchy ticking over. And it's not headline grabbing, it's not particularly glamorous, but it, you know, when it happens incrementally, it just. It holds everything together. You know, I know this is. This is a very dark patch, but history will remember Andrew as somewhere between an utter moron and a monster, but it will remember him as very much the exception, not the rule.

B (34:02)

On that pithy note, Robert Hardman, thank you so much. That was a brilliant interview. I really enjoyed it. Can a prince be removed from the line of succession? It's a good question, and it's a pretty simple answer. So the crown is hereditary, but Parliament defines the rules, so King Charles III cannot simply decide to remove Andrew. Parliament can legislate to alter the succession, though it's done so before. For examp, there was the act of settlement of 1701, which permanently banned Catholics or anyone marrying a Catholic from succeeding. And then the Succession to the Crown act of 2013, which modernized the system and ended a preference for males over female children. But the most relevant precedent is probably 1936, when Edward VIII abdicated, because that required an act of Parliament. So His Majesty's Declaration of abdication act in 1936 gave a legal effect to the abdication and adjusted succession. So if Andrew were to be removed, Parliament would need to pass legislation specifically excluding him. There is no automatic mechanism that removes someone from the line of succession because of an arrest or a criminal conviction or anything that we've been talking about. In recent weeks, the British monarchy has survived regicide, abdication, adultery plots and national humiliation. It endures because it's an institution, not a single individual. When a royal becomes a liability, the institution adapts, distance is created and the structure protects itself. Two things always the scale of the scandal and the proximity of that person to the sovereign. Andrew's legal troubles are unlikely on their own to bring down the monarchy. But episodes like this revive that recurring what purpose does a hereditary institution serve in a modern democracy? And history shows us that institutions rarely collapse because of one scandal. But they do weaken when legitimacy is questioned. Often enough, loudly enough, for long enough. Thank you for watching History Uncensored. I'm Bianca Knoblo and I will see you next time.