Last time there was a crisis, the Royal Family time-travelled back to the ... trends now
The Royal Family is no stranger to a crisis.
It has been been rocked by scandals, extra-marital affairs and what felt in the mid-1990s like a never-ending stream of divorces that all but shattered the fairy-tale ideal of the modern royal marriage.
Despite these upheavals, however, royal life, as a whole, continued as normal.
This is not the case today, when the difficulties are not just a matter of reputation but are practical.
The Princess of Wales pictured at the Design Museum in 2023. Catherine has stepped away from royal duties while she undergoes treatment for an unspecified form of cancer
King Charles is also undergoing treatment for cancer, which had been found following a prostate proceeure
An image from the Catherine's video message to the nation, in which she disclosed that she had been diagnosed with cancer and would require treatment
Queen Camilla and Prince William remain healthy but face the considerable struggle of balancing their duty to the public with the private obligations of supporting an ailing spouse
Two of the four most senior members of the dynasty are rocked by health crises that have taken them out of action for what we can only imagine will be a lengthy period of time.
The two remaining healthy members, Queen Camilla and William, Prince of Wales, face the considerable struggle of balancing their duty to the public with the private obligations of supporting an ailing spouse.
After seven decades of certainty and of a monarch who was an unwavering physical presence on the landscape of British national life, the future suddenly looks less than clear.
But the Royal Family will know this is not without precedent.
Anxiety such as we are experiencing now was rife the days, weeks and months that followed the abdication of Edward VIII to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson in December 1936.
Then, the Royal Family recognised the danger of the moment, made a plan – and eventually found a way through.
I’ve no doubt the events of the late 30s will be on the mind of the king and his advisers today.
Then as now, it was a family as much as a constitutional difficulty.
‘I don’t think you realise what a frightful shock you gave the whole Empire and the rest of the world in giving up your job,’ George VI told his disgraced brother in a letter on 3 July 1937.
‘How do you think I liked taking on a rocking throne, and trying to make it steady again?’
Edward, who viewed his decision exclusively from the prism of personal fulfllment, was left reeling by his brother’s forthright assessment - completely oblivious to the existential struggle the Monarchy now faced.
His own reign, though it lasted just short of 11 months, had promised a decisive break with his Father George V’s style. His informal, democratic approach, combined with his movie-star good looks, seemed perfect for a monarch who, as his
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin remarked, possessed ‘the secret of youth in the prime of age.’
Edward had viewed kingship as an opportunity to create ‘a modern version’ of an ancient office, as he later wrote.
The abdication, a collective trauma for his family, forced them to a very different conclusion.
Believing Edward’s attempted amalgamation of modern flair
