In this dream that I've had two or three times now, a couple of Hermes-draped debutantes abduct me and have their wicked, landed way with me for a whole weekend.
At the end of each dream I find myself, clad in a smoking jacket, being conducted from the bedroom into a large drawing room, where a woman with her back to me is sitting on a vast sofa. It is the Queen. "Ah, David!" she says, smiling and petting a corgi. "I've heard a great deal about you."
For a lukewarm quasi-republican, this is a disappointing dream. Though reveries featuring the Queen are incredibly common in both Britain and the United States, I had been immune to them until recently.
I'm not susceptible to the mummery and nonsense of coats of arms, ladies of the chamber pot or all the other Victorian inventions that the ignorant take to be thousands of years old. And I have nearly no interest in the members of the royal family as the cast in an improbable international soap opera. Yet I keep having thoughts and dreams about the Queen and - in a slightly different way - her eldest son, the Prince of Wales.
I half thought that 1997 was the end of them, and I wasn't really sorry. The floral revolution that followed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the applause in the park on the day of the funeral, and the tabloid savaging of the older royals plus poor old Camilla, seemed to presage a collapse in popular legitimacy for the Windsors. In the eyes of the people, they had become a freeloading bunch of emotionally stunted playboys and adulterers.
My own preference had always been for a bicycling monarchy: a modest, homely, citizens' monarchy, where the children became primary school teachers rather than Royal Marines. And they had let me down.
In addition to the Queen dreams, an event I attended three weeks ago prompted the beginnings of a rethink; a rethink that came to feel urgent with the 25th anniversary of the Prince's Trust. The event first.
Because of a piece I had written at short notice for Radio 4 on The Archers, the long-running radio serial set in the countryside, I found myself with a number of other journalists, celebrity Archers fans and the cast members themselves at St James' Palace.
We were being handed canapes in a very red room decorated by full-length portraits of 18th-century chaps in enormous wigs when, through a set of double doors, Prince Charles emerged and began to mingle. When the mingling was deemed to be sufficient, there was an entertainment from the Dead Ringers comedy team. This featured, among other skits, an impression of Prince Charles no more flattering than the one you can hear on radio.
Then Charles began to speak. And it sort of dawned on me that - disguised by the tortured accent and the unnecessary palaces - he has been metamorphosing into a Belgian, bicycling prince.
Part of this impression was down to the way he spoke: simply, without exaggerated self-regard, and with an adequate humour. Part was due to the etiquette advice offered to guests. We could - it was suggested - bow, scrape, curtsy or bob if we wanted to, but if we didn't want to, that was fine as well. The effect was spoilt slightly by the recommendation that he be addressed as "Your Royal Highness" or "Sir", but the alternative Mr Windsor does seem a tad pedantic.
There was no lofty, nose-in-the-air "majesty," you see - no attempt at the distance thing. Charles could have been a best man at a wedding, a head teacher at the school play, or an MP opening the constituency bingo night. It wasn't us and them, it was us and us.
I know some of the more robust republicans among you are muttering "sell-out" or "Stockholm syndrome" now, but there were lots of sceptics there that night, and Charles did get it almost exactly right. You could see what the royals' own "way forward" group had been doing with its time.
Consider the Prince's Trust, too. This organisation has become a valuable part of the remedial services offered to British young people. It is a mobilisation of the small battalions. Local programmes and initiatives - the sort that actually tend to work - offer mentoring for kids coming out of care, or practical help for youngsters setting up businesses or bands.
Think about what Charles has endorsed. His commitment to multiculturalism is clearly genuine, and his tolerance of different lifestyles must be a great source of irritation to the curtain-twitchers of Fleet St.
The most notable photograph from the Prince's Trust celeb's bash was Charles's enthusiastic and physical greeting for Elton John and his partner. His description of himself some time ago as wanting to be defender of all the faiths has been verified by his subsequent connections with, and obvious sympathy for, those of other religions.
And there is also the sense of a man who has been scarred by the experiences in his private life, and is therefore disinclined to judge the rest of us, even if he thought he could get away with it, which he couldn't.
But I most certainly do not envy him his growing up - without choice - as public property and, latterly, as a sort of permanent, renewable meat dish for the red-top piranhas. I don't think he envies himself.
There's much that I'm not sold on. He is a bit of a mystic, and probably believes that dangling a pendulum over your scrotum will work better than Viagra. This New Age tendency leads him to demonise science and technology, and falsely polarise the "natural" and the modern.
He inhabits the architectural Jurassic, and too often hearkens back to golden ages of traditional English teaching and traditional (if not slightly brutal) ways of imparting knowledge. He hangs out with some silly people, holidays on the wrong boats, and has sent his sons to the wrong school (but that may have been his wife's call).
But even if I find him on the wrong side on some issues, I'm usually content that he should speak out on them. I don't find his manner of debating either strident or unreasoned. We can cope with princes who have opinions.
And this is the point to make the next leap. It is an article of faith among republicans that a democratically elected head of state must, of necessity, be a superior animal to one who inherits the job from a dead or abdicating relative. But is it true?
I am, in general, for electing everything. I want regional assemblies, elected school boards, elected police chiefs, elected mayors, an elected second chamber and local referendums on key issues.
But a constitutional monarch with no political power (but some moral influence) need not be an inferior beast to a powerless elected president. At the very least, as the Scandinavians agree, such a person offers a continuity between the past and the uncertainties of the future.
Election is not the only process that confers or maintains legitimacy. The recent changes made to the monarchy have made the royal family more responsive than they were. They now actively seek for legitimacy beyond the accident of birth.
There is still a fair way to go. There should be more bicycles and less polo, more commoners and fewer debs.
But, on the whole, I find myself contemplating the prospect of King Charles III with a surprising degree of equanimity. I look forward to finding him on the sofa in the night.
- INDEPENDENT
Prince Charles - a thoroughly decent chap
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.