Rex shares his thoughts on Prince Charles and Camilla's royal Canadian tour, as well as his feelings about the rest of the royal family.
Read a transcript of this Rex Murphy episode
If you blinked you missed it. The Royal Jubilee Canadian visit.
Charles and Camilla made a Canadian drop-by, but jubilee year or no jubilee year, their visit only showed that with very few exceptions - and Charles is eminently NOT one of them - the Royals in general have lost their luster.
It was less a triumphal tour than a "wave and dash." Three provinces in three days. Prince Charles, putative heir to the throne - one of the longest heirs apparent since the famously carnal "Eddy" who stretched out his idle days in the long, revered shadow of great Queen Victoria. Charles may be the least charismatic, least approachable, most stiff-lipped of the entire current lineage. Flowers do not blossom on his approach.
We should not, however, be too particularly hard on him, since, in general, the elders of the House of Windsor are greatly "out-celebritied" by the younger, more fashionable, less dour and preachy, princelings and their hangers-on.
The real supernovas of Buckingham Palace are the latest Royal bridal pair: William and Kate summon the paparazzi of continents; television cameras melt from gush and fawning on their approach - but this attention, even for them, is more a gift of our People Magazine, and reality-TV culture, than a residue from the great ceremonies and traditions of the ever more anachronistic crown. Take the satellite royal, pert pretty Pippa Middleton. She gets more attention merely from turning around, than Charles or Camilla generate in an entire tour. In the great test of high-celebrity: Pippa Passes.
Poor Charles and Camilla are even making a visit to the United States, which last I heard was an outcrop of thirteen rebellious colonies. Is Charles now wooing the anti-Royalist Americans? He even went on national TV there last tour. And now the slavering Katie Couric has snatched for one of her patented séances, the nestling princes Harry and William.
Alas, today's lackadaisical Royals will go anywhere people might care to gawk at them. Some have even visited Hollywood.
There is really only one royal oak in this field of shrubs and alders: and that is Her Distinguished Majesty Herself: Elizabeth II. Dutiful, never flashy, unfailing in her presence: patient with the times she has had to serve; somehow through persistence and industry triumphing over the vulgarities of many of her lesser kin. She is Buckingham's one true bulwark: Elizabeth - solid, enduring, always composed.
To be fair, it was nice that Charles and his wife dropped by on Canada, but mainly because they were engaged in celebrating a greater person. Elizabeth the Second is in every sense The Queen; perhaps the very last of the great, real English Monarchs. And the glory and charm of the Monarchy is mainly hers: very little of this luminescence is transferred. For Elizabeth in her diamond year - well - the words are already written, "long may she reign over us."
For the National, I'm Rex Murphy.
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