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Royals
May 2022 Issue


THE QUEEN, HER GRANDKIDS, AND THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY

A quiet, decades-long effort has pared down the official House of Windsor
dramatis personae with irreversible consequences. What’s a royal 30-something to
do?

By Erin Vanderhoof

April 19, 2022
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COUSINS CLUB The royal grands, from Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie to
lesser-known littles like James, Viscount Severn, and Lady Louise Windsor, are
an important aspect of the future family façade.Illustration by DEWEY SAUNDERS.
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In February 2003, an outstanding 21-year-old junior equestrian named Zara
Phillips announced that spread-betting company Cantor Index would sponsor her
first senior season on the riding circuit. The arrangement wasn’t unusual for
her peers, but it made national news outside of the trades. At the time,
Phillips, Princess Anne’s second child, happened to be 10th in line to the
throne. By signing the deal, she became the first British royal ever with a
corporate sponsorship for a sport. Eventually, Phillips would marry rugby star
Mike Tindall, compete in the 2012 London Olympics, and become a sports
influencer, securing many more sponsorships along the way.

In hindsight, Zara Tindall’s career can be seen as the rumbling that predicted
the seismic identity shift she and her millennial cousins—including Prince
William and Prince Harry—have navigated throughout their young adulthoods. For
the queen and Prince Philip, the greatest generation incarnate, being royal
meant foregrounding duty, tradition, and sacrifice, while their four children,
the royal baby boomers, have doggedly pursued individuality under the dual
pressures of the crown and tabloid scrutiny. The state of the monarchy that the
elders are leaving behind—as popular and well resourced as ever, yet still so
scandal-prone—ensured that the next generation of Windsors would have no choice
but to improvise.

Princess Diana’s Dance With the MediaArrow

Though they differ in title, formal relationship to the palace, and proximity to
the throne, the millennial royals—five cousins born between 1981 and 1991—all
grew up in the shadows of their parents’ very public divorces. Tindall, William,
Harry, Princess Beatrice, and Princess Eugenie all bear the scars of the era but
have responded with their age cohort’s quintessential can-do attitude and
hustle. (The three cousins in their generation who are not technically
millennials, Peter Phillips, born 1977, Lady Louise Windsor, born 2003, and
James, Viscount Severn, born 2007, aren’t too far away in age or approach.) With
a bit of social media savvy, the royal millennials have sought to balance
financial stability, respect for the queen, and desire to wield their influence.



Their ranks are also, officially at least, growing smaller. Thanks in part to
social change and the queen’s and Prince Charles’s own shifting interpretations
of the institution, the monarchy has spent a generation contracting in ways that
probably will be irreversible. With the mindset of a neoliberal CEO, Charles has
long been sensitive to the fact that government support for his extended family
is an unpopular proposition. “Would it not be better to sit down and examine how
many members of the family you need to fulfill the monarchy’s objectives?” he
rhetorically asked in 1992, according to his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby,
before suggesting they bring in a team of consultants to think strategically
about the issue.



As veteran royal expert Sally Bedell Smith recently told me, Charles has already
drafted the royal team for his reign, and none of the royal cousins is on it.
“He said some years ago that he really wanted it to be himself and Camilla,
William and Kate, and Harry, and that was it. I think of the balcony appearance
after the diamond jubilee. Prince Philip was in the hospital, but his siblings
were annoyed that they weren’t included,” she said. “Harry and Meghan are out of
the picture.” (She added that Charles will in fact rely on Anne, Prince Edward,
and Countess Sophie more than he had originally intended as the older generation
of minor royals retires from public life.)

With the mindset of a NEOLIBERAL CEO, Charles has long been sensitive to the
fact that GOVERNMENT SUPPORT for his extended family is an UNPOPULAR
proposition.

Though the plans for a slimmed-down monarchy are often discussed in the context
of what we can expect when Charles becomes king, these ideas have already had an
effect on the family’s day-to-day life. Of the eight grandchildren, only William
and Harry have ever been working royals, a far cry from the years when the
future monarch’s cousins could secure a plum position and a grace-and-favor
living space.



During the queen’s reign, the monarchy transformed from an auxiliary unit
melding the aristocracy and the government into a business with annual reporting
requirements and a mandate to be self-sufficient. Royal commentators have
predicted that Charles will be a transitional king. Part of that means clearing
liabilities from the balance sheet in order to leave his own successor with as
few potential headaches as possible.



With his taxpayer-funded office, William, the millennial future king, is the
only grandchild left in the palace establishment. From a purely structural
perspective, Harry’s 2020 departure for Los Angeles might have been inevitable.
For years, Harry had been living in limbo. He wasn’t quite important enough to
become a core decision maker in the family or even take part in William’s
childhood lessons in kingship at Windsor Castle. Still, until his wedding, he
shared an office with his older brother and kept a schedule similar to his. When
Meghan Markle married into the family, she shared her husband’s lofty charitable
ambitions, but they chafed against the limits the palace places on the minor
royals—especially the financial ones.

For the rest of the grandchildren, exit planning began much earlier. The British
system was designed to give automatic financial support to a monarch and their
heir through private wealth, but the extended family has received funding at the
discretion of the government since the 18th century. For generations, the minor
royals did play an important purpose in the family and the country’s future,
because an heir’s siblings functioned a bit like diplomatic bargaining chips
when they were married off to fellow royal families across the Continent.

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They were essentially made redundant as the dynasties of Europe fell in the 20th
century. By the 1920s, the royal children were encouraged to marry British
aristocrats instead of foreign royalty. The minor royals, like the queen’s
cousins the Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra of Kent, instead became charity
patrons and people who could appear at independence days or church ceremonies on
behalf of the queen. In fact, history had already done such a good job of
eliminating the purpose of the minor royal that Charles’s enthusiasm might have
been unnecessary. The millennials might be the first royal generation who are
not only encouraged but demanded to work real jobs—of course, their gold-plated
education and instruction in the ways of the Windsors have given them a distinct
advantage.

Even in the face of such historical trends, a cold war has raged inside the
family for decades. For the queen’s grandchildren, the most visible side of this
has been through the dissemination of titles. When Anne married her first
husband, Captain Mark Phillips, he declined to take a courtesy title, and when
their first child, Peter, was born, he became the first legitimate commoner
grandson of a monarch in more than 500 years. In 2003, Edward and Sophie had
their first child, Louise, and announced that she should be styled as the
daughter of an earl though she was entitled to be a princess. When James was
born, he became Viscount Severn, one of Edward’s subsidiary titles, instead of
Prince James. In a 2020 interview with The Sunday Times, Sophie said she has
always told her children that they would need to find careers and life paths of
their own.

For years, Prince Andrew was Charles’s main adversary in the debate over titles
and the size of the royal family. He and ex-wife Sarah Ferguson decided to give
their daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, HRH titles upon their birth, and palace
courtiers have said that their status as “blood princesses” is important for
him. In 2011, Andrew was reportedly upset when the palace cut off the security
afforded to his daughters. Later that year, Andrew was criticized for bringing
Eugenie on an official visit even though she isn’t a working royal. (When Andrew
lost his royal role over his connections to Jeffrey Epstein in 2021, the prince
himself might have really ensured that his daughters wouldn’t have one either.)

DYNASTY: An Inside Look at the Royal FamilyArrow

Indeed, the 21st century’s royal scandals have come disproportionately from the
family members who have public titles and private business interests. From
Prince Michael of Kent’s increasingly problematic ties with Russian oligarchs to
Andrew’s time on Epstein’s plane, it’s been trouble at times to have too many
family members floating around with a history of drawing taxpayer support or
even an HRH. So the next generation of royals who de-emphasize their titles to
pursue careers and celebrity could be thought of as a clever bit of rebranding.
The minor royals are increasingly able to contribute to the Windsor brand’s
salience while giving the palace license to call any misbehaviors a “private
matter.” It’s also a hedge. If the public wants more royal appearances, there is
a whole roster of 30- and 40-somethings who might come off the bench.

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The shrinking rolls might beg an obvious question about the necessity of any
monarchy at all. But current data suggests no great rush in Britain to flush all
the Windsor brand equity—in 2017, a consultancy estimated the intangibles are
worth about 42 billion pounds—down the drain by becoming a republic.



“Those who are 65 plus...they’re really strong on their attitudes when they say
that the monarchy is a good thing for Britain, compared to the 18- to
24-year-olds, where opinion is slightly more divided,” said Tanya Abraham,
research director of polling agency YouGov UK. “Current polling is showing that
around a third of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t really have an opinion of whether
it’s good or bad for the country.”

Last spring, there was an anomalous result from the youngest respondents: A
plurality said they would prefer an elected head of state—and they rated Harry
higher in popularity than William and Kate. “That shift was quite a new thing
compared to recent years, but it’s something that we’ll need to keep asking,”
Abraham said.

The royal millennials are dealing with the transition at least somewhat
gracefully, if only because the world is much more comfortable with people who
are semifamous for their proximity to fame than ever before. Beatrice and
Eugenie might be the most successful at maintaining the air of royalty while
also snagging some of the freedoms that the working members of the family have
given up. Eugenie’s Instagram handle is @princesseugenie, but neither royal uses
her title in professional contexts. Beatrice is on LinkedIn as “Beatrice York,”
which lists her role at the Boston-based tech company Afiniti as vice president
for partnerships and strategy. On the website of art gallery Hauser & Wirth,
you’ll note that the name of one of the directors is given as “Eugenie York.”

The 21st century’s ROYAL SCANDALS have come DISPROPORTIONATELY from the family
members who have PUBLIC titles and private BUSINESS INTERESTS.

Still, they’ve been able to take advantage of that royal affiliation in other
arenas. Both princesses’ weddings were paid for privately, but because Eugenie’s
had a public component, the British government contributed 2 million pounds for
security. By the time Beatrice was married two years later, Andrew had already
stepped back from public life due to his association with Epstein and no public
component was planned. However, she did borrow a dress from her
grandmother—along with the Queen Mary fringe tiara that the queen wore at her
own wedding—and announcements about both women’s weddings and pregnancies have
been routed through the palace offices.

They both give public support to charities using their HRH titles, but unlike
the royal patronages that are distributed among working family members with
direction from the queen, Eugenie and Beatrice are affiliated with a limited
number of charities that reflect their own experiences. Beatrice was diagnosed
with dyslexia as a seven-year-old, and she has since become a patron of the
Helen Arkell Dyslexia charity, speaking openly about the support the charity
gave her while she was in high school. Eugenie had scoliosis, which was
corrected by surgery at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital when she was 12.
As an adult, she has become a patron for the NHS hospital’s auxiliary
foundation, and the charity says it has raised 3 million pounds in the decade
she has been in the position.

Camilla: A Queen for the Modern EraArrow

Meghan and Harry reportedly had Beatrice and Eugenie in mind when they mentioned
a desire to have a hybrid “working model” like “other current members of the
Royal Family” in one of the statements explaining their royal exit. But the
queen has rules on these sorts of things—you’re either in or you’re out. From
the Chinese commercials where Peter Phillips talks up the milk from Jersey cows
to the details about Zara you can pick up in Mike Tindall’s podcast, the royals
seem to have a lot more fun when they’re not living under palace supervision.
And so Harry and Meghan went the way of their generation, becoming, in their
singular way, content creators in the gig economy.

Yet there is still something royal about them. In 2013, Harry, Beatrice, and
Eugenie all signed on as ambassadors for GREAT Britain, a tourism campaign
promoting the country as a destination and trade partner. For the launch event,
Harry traveled to New York City with then prime minister David Cameron before
touring New Jersey with Chris Christie. Beatrice and Eugenie, on the other hand,
toured Berlin in a Mini Cooper. As Harry travels the United States in the 2020s,
commemorating 9/11 with Bill de Blasio, riding a double-decker bus with James
Corden, or popping up in unexpected places like the Stockyards Championship
Rodeo in Fort Worth, it’s easy enough to see him as a new type of goodwill
ambassador for the motherland—at no cost to the taxpayer.




CONTENT

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More Great Stories From Vanity Fair 

— Prince Andrew Really Just Cannot Seem to Stop Himself
— How Princess Diana’s Dance With the Media Impacted William and Harry
— Prince Charles Commemorates the First Anniversary of Prince Philip’s Death
— Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Visit With Wounded Service Members From Ukraine
— From the 1985 Archive: Princess Diana, the Mouse That Roared
— DYNASTY: The Year That Changed the Monarchy




Erin Vanderhoof is a staff writer at Vanity Fair.




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