Friday, March 04, 2005
King Charles or Queen 'Our-Mary' ?

Royalty, my favourite bunch of people, have been much in the news lately. Firstly, a young rip-roaring, dope smoking, lad called Harry - third in line to the thrown of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the entire Commonwealth apparently – decided to join the National Front.

Then his dad, Charles, famed for talking to trees, bemoaning contemporary architecture and writing crazed letters to Ministers, decided to marry his own horse. This guy is apparently heir-apparent. He is now in a stinking hot Alice Springs, smiling at bare-breasted indigenous women and politely refusing to eat live grubs, during his first visit to the outer dominions for more than 11 years.

Finally, across the North Sea in Denmark, a young Crown Prince has married a Tasmanian bar-woman in a classical fairy tail wedding: a handsome Prince is swept off his feet by an beautiful commoner girl from the other side of the world. One day she is a Cinderella, looking for a job, the next day she is marrying into one Europe’s magisterial imperial dynasties.

All these events have pulled the debate over ‘royalty’ - who they are, what they are for and what they are like – briefly back into the public discourse.

When Prince Harry pinned a swastika to his shirt for a Hurra-Henry fancy dress party, there were screams of rage from the left and right. The sensible centre thought ‘what the hell, he's only a young lad’ but pretty much everyone wished it had never happened in the first place. It was pretty stupid thing for a royal lad to do, if not quite the scandalous page-filler the press wished it was.

Two weeks ago, Prince Charles broke 25 years of speculation and finally admitted he has preferred his horse all along. This, despite fathering at least one child with a blonde woman who liked soldiers, rugby players and retailers. He is now planning to marry his horse at low key ceremony in a pokey registry office near Badminton (or somewhere). After that, she will put out to grass as 'Princess Consort', while he gets to be King of everywhere. Charles's mum won’t attend the wedding and a bunch of constitutional lawyers have bickered over whether it was legal for a future King and Defender of the (Anglican) Faith to get married in anything but a church. Few cared, but again left and right voiced their opposition from differing perspectives.

Now contrast the dim-witted and banal shenanigans of the UK royal family with that of Denmark’s perfectly manufactured version. Crown Prince Frederick’s wedding to ‘Our-Mary’ Donaldson was a match made in media heaven. Both are youthful but mature, attractive, educated, deeply in love (with each other, for once), plan to “have children” and raise horses, rather than marry them. CP Fred even has tattoos; surely that makes him ‘a man of the people’? He probably drives a 'Princess Consort' and surfs.

At the grandiose wedding, shown on television here in Australia, he had a tear in his eye when he uttered the Danish ‘I will’ and they have since appeared on all the right chat shows, holding hands.

Sadly, none of these royal media events has raised the profile of the republican debate in Australia. Since the defeat at the referendum in 1999, it has only occasionally received an odd column inch. Mark Latham inadvertently launched the ‘Latham plan’ in a typical shoot-from-the-hip remark in the run-up to the 2004 election and the ‘cost to the tax-payer’ of Prince Charles’s visit (10c each, can you believe!) has raised the odd-grunt from letters to the editor. But whilst Little-John sits on the throne in Canberra, republicanism is going nowhere.

Or is it?

Ironically, calls for a republic have been gracing the letters page, phone-ins and ABC feedback lines for some weeks, but particularly since the Danish royal wedding. Even more bizarrely, the loudest calls have been from the most self-professed devout Monarchists; it’s just that they have been too daft to realise and unfortuntley their logical failings have not been challenged by either presenters or journalists.

CP Fred and Our-Mary have achieved such celebrity status that many Monarchists have – only half jokingly – expressed their desire to see this model Danish couple replace the clapped-out English version as the new royals for Australia. Especially since Mary was once a true-blue Aussie.

Of course, this constitutional nonsense is not going to happen. But, here’s a thing: devout Monarchists are wanting to change the current and choose a new Head of State.

Now where I come from, that’s called something else, beginning with ‘R’.

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