Royal hunting - the last blood sport

February 28, 2005

Chasing foxes may have been banned in Britain, but the monarchy is still fair game for the media, writes Paul Sheehan.

Allow me to introduce a young woman who will become queen of one of the most civilised societies in the world - Victoria Ingrid Alice Desiree, Crown Princess of Sweden. She is 27, single, and begins her first visit to Australia in 10 days. It is the longest state visit she has undertaken.

Suddenly, it's royal season in Australia, and we might even learn something about ourselves in the process. It began over the weekend with the arrival of the future king and queen of Denmark, Frederik and Mary. The future King Charles of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth arrives today. The future Queen Victoria of Sweden arrives next week.

If the name Princess Victoria is unfamiliar, it is because the royal family of Sweden, like those of Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium, gets on with the job with a minimum of fuss. The job is to contribute to social cohesion, historical continuity, cultural tradition and constitutional stability in a way that transcends the often divisive squabbles of democracy.

This is exactly what the British royal family is also designed to do and for the most part does well. But unlike the royal families of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium, the British royal family must deal with some complex residues of empire and, far more arduously, with the demands of a large, omnivorous, ruthless, class-ridden, hyper-competitive news media.

Royal blood means something altogether different to the British media. While fox- and hare-hunting have just been banned in Britain as blood sports, after enormous social ructions inside and outside Parliament, there is not and never will be any such relief for the royal foxes.

The packs of paparazzi never sleep. The tabloids must be fed every day. The British royal family has devolved into a subsidiary of Omnimedia Inc, serving as never-ending, high-rating, high-circulation media fodder, another reality television show. For all the pomp and circumstance and privilege of royalty, for all the lands and castles and wealth and pampering, the royals have become a hunted and exploited species.

If you think much of this has been self-inflicted, ask yourself how you would perform under such scrutiny? What would the media have made of your own youthful excesses, career stumbles, social indiscretions and failed relationships? How long and how well could you maintain your composure under the glare of constant observation and dissection? It is little wonder that three of the four marriages of the Queen's children ended in failure, each accompanied by an orgy of media voyeurism, in an almost self-fulfilling cycle.

It was also no coincidence that the greatest tragedy to befall the royal family in this era, the death of Princess Diana after a car crash in Paris in 1997, took place as a result of a high-speed media-avoidance exercise. The unrelenting pressure from the media is a constant theme in the 2003 book, A Royal Duty, by Paul Burrell, former butler and confidant to Princess Diana and footman to the Queen.

Although I was biased against this book before I read it (factotum gets his 30 pieces of media silver by betraying the trust of the family that employed him), A Royal Duty proved surprisingly lucid and honest. Despite an intense loyalty to Diana, Burrell portrays a fundamentally decent and productive family, especially the Queen and the redoubtable Princess Anne.

Armed with notes and letters written to him by Diana, he captures the sense of vulnerability that lay behind the glamour. He quotes a particularly poignant letter from Diana in October 1996, less than a year before her death: "I just long to hug my mother-in-law, and tell her how deeply I understand what goes on inside her. I understand the isolation, misconceptions and lies that surround her and feel very strongly HER disappointment and confusion. I so want the monarchy to survive and realise the changes that it will take to put 'the show' on a new and healthy track."

Burrell observes several times that Diana thought of moving to Australia, far from the royal family and the British press: "'Would you ever consider living there?' she asked ... I looked at her as if it were a joke. 'I'm serious!' she added." That all stopped after a visit to Australia in 1996: "She returned and waved goodbye to dreamy thoughts of living down under ... She felt it was 'primitive' compared to London, New York and Washington, and said she would have felt too isolated there."

Primitive would describe some of the patronising free-for-all directed at Prince Charles since plans for his marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles in April became mired in a bog of technicalities derived almost entirely from the unique legal and cultural status of the royal family. For years, Charles has endured a wildly disproportionate share of condescension from the media, much of it ideologically driven.

In Australia, every sneer directed at Charles or his family in the name of republicanism has served to cheapen the cause rather than advance it. In Australia the constitution itself, not the symbolic role of the royal family, has defined the republican debate. Until the republican movement can offer reforms that would improve a constitution which most Australians believe is in sound working order, republicanism will remain dead at the political box office in this country. That applies especially to calls for a directly elected president.

The republican movement still lives off the events of 30 years ago, when the Queen's representative in Australia, the governor-general Sir John Kerr, sacked the Whitlam Labor government. It is worth noting that in December 1975, while Australia was still awash with media-driven hysteria over the sacking, the government of Sweden embarked on reforming the monarchy. It moved to eliminate the vestige of feudalism in which precedence in the order of royal succession was given to male heirs.

Sweden ended this royal discrimination against women by passing the 1979 Act of Succession. Princess Victoria was two when the act became law. She is heir to the crown ahead of her brother, Prince Carl Philip. When Princess Victoria arrives in Sydney on March16, she will be promoting greater trade and contacts between Sweden and Australia. Having reached productive age, she's been put in harness in the service of her country.


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