Kate, Princess of Wales waves as she and Prince William visit the Royal Liverpool University Hospital. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
Hospitals are generally not places you find a giddy crowd.
Terrible coffee, hard chairs and hand sanitiser for days, sure, but a swarm of phone-wielding, cheering people trying to blag a selfie with a couple of visitors? Nope.
Except that was exactly the scene that greeted William and Kate, aka the Prince and Princess of Wales, on January 12 when they went to open the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
Now, this sort of outing is exactly the bread and butter of royalty, the shaking of hands and the Opening of Something. But here’s why this moment matters: this was the first time they had stepped out in public since Prince Harry’s corrosive Spare had been released.
By the time the Wales walked through the hospital’s doors, the world knew that the prince had once clobbered his younger brother in an altercation over Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s treatment of their shared staff and that the princess had had the audacity to not want to share her lip gloss with her sister-in-law.
Moreover, by the time the couple had rolled into the northern city, the royal family had been coming under sustained fire by the one-man PR Panzer division that was Prince Aitch, with his non-stop, seemingly never-ending series of interviews with everyone from US’ 60 Minutes to What’s Up Albuquerque! (Okay, I made that last one up, but you get my point).
Sure, Spare is largely lacking any real gotcha moments or truly shocking incidents aside from that 2019 altercation when Harry’s necklace was yanked by Willy (a moment of royal-on-royal violence that doesn’t quite match Elizabeth I having her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots’ block knocked off). But still, the book’s contents have bruised Buckingham Palace, right at the point in time when they want everyone to be getting excited about the coronation.
Broadly speaking, Spare is a book that paints a fairly incriminating picture of not only the characters of the HRHs but also of the culture inside the palace gates. Charles is an emotionally negligent parent, William is stippled with jealousy and ego, and Kate is something of a prima donna who chucks a wobbly a few days out from the Sussex wedding over bridesmaid dresses.
Meanwhile, of the actual institution, Aitch tells of a viperous outfit where rival offices brief the media against each other and there is enough scheming going on to impress the most devoted disciple of Machiavelli.
With Harry’s bookish blood-letting, he has dealt the first real reputational blow to the prince and princess in years, if ever.
Sure, over the years Kate has come in for an occasional pasting for her supposedly workshy ways; she and William only turned their soft hands to full-time royal work in 2017. But since then she has been something of a sacred cow, a sort of beatific, adored creature whose ability to turn out heirs and spares and smile ever-so-nicely has won over the UK. (And really, what is the job of the future Queen but to ensure the line of succession, charm pensioners in the home counties and do her bit to prop up the popularity of pastels?)
But Harry’s memoir offers a much less flattering view of the 41-year-old. She and William, we are told, moved place cards at the Sussexes’ wedding, to the newlyweds’ chagrin; she got stroppy about those dresses at exactly the point that Meghan could have done with a huge G&T, dealing with the fallout from father Thomas Markle being caught staging paparazzi pics. Oh, and she is a bit frosty, getting upset when the former actress told her she had “baby brain”.
Hardly devastating stuff but far and away the most negative portrayal we have seen of the princess since she became a bonafide HRH.
And that brings us back to the hospital scene in Liverpool earlier this month. It would be easy to imagine a much more muted reception, with gawking, curious onlookers and maybe even an awkwardly yelled question about Harry from the throng.
Instead, William and Kate were met by, according to reports, hundreds of patients and staff that had gathered to catch a glimpse of the duo doing nothing more extraordinary than waving.
If anyone in Team Wales had been worried about the sort of reception the couple might receive, then the jubilant scenes that greeted them should have cheered them up no end.
At one point, 81-year-old Sylvia Staniford gripped the prince’s hand and told him: “Keep going, keep going. Scousers love you”. William’s response? A smile and “Yes, I will”.
(Mrs Staniford told the Telegraph later: “Of course, that was a reference to Harry. He knew what I was talking about.”)
(Hardly on the same level, but also interesting, is the fact that last Sunday, as Charles walked to church at Sandringham, a surprising number of members of the public, based on photos, had traded their warm beds to stand in the winter weather to spy the King.)
What the outing in Liverpool showed was that despite Spare’s best efforts to take the House of Windsor down a few pegs, the royal family has largely come through this storm on a relatively even keel.
That’s not to say that Harry’s autobiography hasn’t taken the sheen off.
The most recent polling done by those brave souls at YouGov found that post-Spare’s release, 68 per cent of people had a positive view of the princess, down from 78 per cent this time last year. However, the current lower figure is in line with Kate’s previous approval ratings.
What is more noteworthy is the change in the percentage of people with an unfavourable view of her as of this month (18 per cent) - a significant jump from 8 per cent last year.
Likewise, William, who is viewed negatively by 21 per cent of Brits, as opposed to the 9 per cent recorded in September last year.
Overall, for both of the Waleses, they are sitting on their lowest net positive numbers (the total positive minus the total negative) in the last 12 years.
Of course, this is not exactly great news for the Prince and Princess of the School Run or anyone whose professional fortunes are tied to their success (they are currently looking for a new social media whizkid if you know anyone) but nor is this anything like the devastation left in the wake of the brutal War of the Waleses in the 90s.
In 1994, after now-King Charles admitted to having cheated on his wife Diana, Princess of Wales, one poll found that two-thirds of people thought he was unfit to rule. As of this month, nearly the same portion (62 per cent) of Brits say they have a positive view of him - a slight increase since before the publication of Spare, as opposed to only one-third (32 per cent) who have a negative one.
My point is, the history of the crown is a history of the (literally) ancient House weathering innumerable crises, controversies and the occasional family member going off to marry a dodgy German. Yet it has endured, with approval ratings ultimately rebounding.
Since the beginning of December, when Netflix decided that the world needed six hours of watching Harry and Meghan marinate in their victimhood on camera, the royal family has been having a right time of it, for sure, but ultimately, this is a blip in the extraordinarily long history of the British crown. For better or worse, they are the cockroaches of monarchy, having survived the seemingly unsurvivable for centuries, while their various European cousins were being politely deposed or done away with in brutal fashions.
The King is generally held to be a classical music nut but right about now, if he’s feeling perky and Queen Camilla is on her third glass of shiraz, it’s probably time to put a bit of Aretha Franklin on the Clarence House record player and awkwardly bop to the only appropriate tune right now. To misquote Ms Franklin, the Crown will survive.
· Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ of experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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