“There can seldom have been an event that has caused so much general delight and so little pain.” So Evelyn Waugh wrote about the abdication crisis, then at its height, on 8th December 1936. Now, over 80 years on, Britain and America have found themselves reluctantly conjoined in another Atlantic-spanning royal saga. If one believes the media coverage, the line to take is that the departure of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from the Royal Family, however reluctantly it has been undertaken, now represents nothing less than an existential threat to the very institution of the monarchy. But is this remotely accurate, or is it simply an example of media hyperbole that will soon be proved wrong when the scandal dies down?
In his self-serving and often inaccurate memoir A King’s Story, in which he described his thoughts and feelings during the abdication crisis, the former Edward VIII took care to paint his own actions in terms of “duty.” He wrote of how “the guiding principle” of his life was his family’s motto “Ich Dien,” or “I Serve.” He explained: “I could not go on bearing the heavy burdens that constantly rest on me unless I could be strengthened in the task by a happy married life and so I am finally resolved to marry the woman I love when she is free to marry me.”
Initially prevented from delivering this apparently simple message to his subjects through his desired medium of a broadcast address, the King even contemplated at one point delivering it outside Buckingham Palace to a crowd of well-wishers, later musing: “The spotlights playing on the façade, the lonely figure of the King pleading his cause—the scene could have been extremely effective.”
In this, the Duke of Windsor’s understanding of public relations techniques, especially in the presentation of himself as a humble petitioner to his subjects, prefigured the extraordinary interview that his great-great nephew Harry and his wife Meghan gave to Oprah Winfrey. Edward’s behaviour during the abdication crisis was petty, vain and utterly selfish: an unprecedented piece of royal petulance. He sought to place responsibility for the complex mechanics onto the exhausted shoulders of a few loyal courtiers. But he also understood that most important in the context of how his actions were received was the court of popular opinion.
He was therefore allowed to make a final broadcast on the night of the abdication, despite the wishes of his mother Queen Mary and his private secretary Alec Hardinge. In it, he spoke emotively: “At long last I am able to say a few words of my own. I have never wanted to withhold anything, but until now it has not been constitutionally possible for me to speak.” He shied away from any criticism, implicit or explicit, of his family, particularly his brother Bertie who had now reluctantly assumed the mantle of George VI, but made a pointed reference to how “he has one matchless blessing, enjoyed by so many of you, and not bestowed on me—a happy home with his wife and children.”
Edward left in the dead of night. His parting words were: “I now quit altogether public affairs and I lay down my burden. It may be some time before I return to my native land, but I shall always follow the fortunes of the British race and empire with profound interest, and if at any time in the future I can be found of service to his majesty in a private station, I shall not fail.”
He was at this point still a hugely popular figure, with crowds cheering him and spontaneously singing the national anthem in the streets after his broadcast. Unfortunately, his audience with Hitler the following year led to him and Wallis Simpson, who he had finally married earlier that year, becoming deeply unpopular figures. His Nazi sympathies, as well as the public’s accurate perception that he would have been happy to return to England as a puppet ruler with Wallis as his Queen, meant that he became persona non grata with the Royal Family and the British people. He and Wallis spent much of their lives in a state of exile, in which the acquisition of money for the measured spilling of various titbits of gossip about his brother and their peers became their major aim in life.
There has been speculation as to what has motivated Harry and Meghan. Although it was explicitly stated at the outset of the interview with Oprah that they were not being paid for their participation, Harry also made it clear that, after he had been cut off financially by his father, he was in a similarly penurious state to that in which Edward believed himself to be. As with Edward, the exiled royal rolled up his sleeves and began to graft. (Meghan, like Wallis, continues to occupy a more dramatic position in the public imagination.) This was met with approval in America, but with distaste in Britain, where the exchange of secret information for money has always been seen as infra dig.
As, perhaps, the Oprah interview, with all of its scandalous associations, will be. The allegations of institutional racism and callousness towards Meghan’s mental health seem to be the most structurally damaging to the Royal Family, but the warm praise for the Queen that both the Duke and Duchess offered suggests that any reforms will take place after her death. This is no immediate moment of existential crisis for the monarchy as existed in December 1936. What the interview has demonstrated is that the institution, simultaneously so fascinating and opaque, is a hidebound one that depends on public regard for its continued existence.
Should a subversive element from its core threaten to shine revealing light onto its dusty and cobwebbed corridors, it will be that much harder to remain above everyday concerns. The famous motto—“Never complain, never explain”—will be unfit for purpose as the monarchy struggles to remain relevant in a new and unforgiving era, one in which likes and retweets are the new, rapid currency of success and where the old, comforting traditions of noblesse oblige will find themselves inadequate.
