Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Andrew arrive for a Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Prince Philip. Photo / AP
OPINION:
In its 1000-plus-years of history, Westminster Abbey has been the site of a number of royal dramas of extraordinary proportions.
When William the Conqueror was crowned there in 1066, his Norman soldiers (who only spoke French) thought the clamouring of the crowd outside was an assassination attempt, so they promptly ran outside and burnt down some of the Saxon houses that surrounded the Abbey. When the smoke from the fires filled the church, the congregation fled, sparking riots.
In the 19th century, George IV staged a coronation there that was so extravagant and overblown it cost about the equivalent of NZ$50 million today.
Then, nearly 200 years later, as Lady Diana Spencer walked down the aisle, she spied her soon-to-be-husband's longtime paramour in the pews and knew their marriage was already doomed.
It is somehow fitting then that it was at the Abbey overnight that our current Queen chose to stage what will have to go down as one of the most provocative and extraordinary moments of her reign.
On Tuesday morning, UK time, Her Majesty re-entered to the public eye after five months tucked out of sight and chose to do so on the arm of her bilious son Prince Andrew.
The Queen chose not only to travel from Windsor to London with the excommunicated Duke of York but also chose him to escort her to her seat in the Abbey for the thanksgiving service for Prince Philp.
That sound you just heard? The jaw of every royal correspondent, biographer, and two-bit palace watcher hitting the ground in abject, total shock. (And that other sound? That would be Prince Charles and Prince William grinding their teeth in total fury.)
The service marked the Queen's return to the spotlight after months of increasingly furrowed-brow reporting about her health woes.
However, rather than choosing to use the occasion to project strength and family unity, rather than ensuring the focus remained wholly on her late husband's legacy of often largely thankless toil, she instead chose to squander this moment on a tin-eared show of support for her disgraced son.
(It would seem to have been an 11th hour change of plans and was also contrary to what was printed in the Order of Service, which detailed that the Duke of York would enter with his daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie and their husbands.)
It's hard to find the right words here to express how monumentally and catastrophically stupid this was, and how angry you and I should be about it.
Such was the shock over her Andrew intervention that it actually knocked the war in Ukraine off the UK's front pages.
While there were a few solo covers of the Queen, most of the UK newspapers opted to feature both her and Prince Andrew. #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/4BehJMdw5w
— Gert's Royals (@Gertsroyals) March 29, 2022
Ahead of the event, the biggest question had been whether the 95-year-old, who is suffering from mobility problems, would be up to the 40-minute service, even with proceedings having been shortened and logistical provisions put in place to minimise how strenuous it would be for her.
And then on the morning of the service, news started to appear on social media: The Queen had been spotted sallying forth to the capital in her specially made royal Bentley, not kept company by a throw rug and a devoted lady-in-waiting, but by the son who last month paid millions to a woman who has accused him of sexually assaulting her on three occasions. (He has vehemently denied the allegations.)
What the hell?
This was not a bold move of defiance or a risky, throw-of-the-dice gesture but an egregious flouting of public feeling. Get right down to it and this was Her Majesty giving her subjects the two-finger salute. One will do what One wants and who cares what those waving masses outside my Bentley think?
Watching the history-making monarch, who is currently celebrating her Platinum Jubilee year, so bluntly use what should have been a moment of celebration of Philip's life and instead render it into a transparent stunt to try and prop up her son's battered public image is astounding.
(As longtime royal biographer Clive Irving in a piece for the Daily Beast wrote, "How many people can you offend in one gesture?")
If you get right down to it, what the Queen has just shown us is that she does not give a fig (or in her case, a vastly overpriced Fortnum and Mason bonbon) about what you and I – and the 151 million people for whom she is our head of state – think.
Being a devoted mother to her second son clearly trumps being a monarch who is willing to listen to her people.
What she has just shown us is that even after the events of the past two years, after Andrew went on TV and showed the world what a self-serving, entitled, contemptible lump he really is, a man who had no hesitation about enjoying the hospitality of a convicted sex offender, she is more than willing to put his delicate ego ahead of the public she is meant to serve.
Don't worry – her family was equally appalled by Andrew being given such a starring role by all accounts.
"Prince Charles and the Duke of Cambridge are among those who are understood to have voiced concerns when the idea was first raised by Andrew," the Express' royal correspondent Richard Palmer has reported.
"The family [was] horrified to see the Queen accompanied into the Abbey by her disgraced second son."
Elsewhere, the Daily Mail reported that the royal family had been "dismayed" to see Andrew enter the Abbey with Her Majesty.
"The issue of the Duke's role had been aired and batted around late last week. It was accepted, perhaps reluctantly, that he would be accompanying her to the abbey from Windsor by car. It is fair to say there have been raised eyebrows at him being so front and centre," one source told the Mail's Rebecca English.
"There was no suggestion beforehand that he would be supporting her in that way [walking down to her seat]."
Earlier this month, the Queen missed the Commonwealth Day service but put out a message saying: "In this year of my Platinum Jubilee, it has given me pleasure to renew the promise I made in 1947, that my life will always be devoted in service."
How does that devotion to duty and service tally with her readiness to essentially exploit a moment in a total futile attempt to buoy his abysmal image?
The service was a family event, meaning Andrew's attendance was never in doubt. So why not just have him discreetly take his seat and have Prince Charles escort his mother from her car to her seat in the South Lantern? (An extra pillow had been added on one of the Canada chairs for her comfort.)
And that's another thing. Her Majesty's choice to place Andrew front and centre of the service also translates to a very obvious rejection of her oldest son and heir. Logically, the starring role in proceedings should to the next person who will be crowned inside Westminster Abbey and not to a failed trade envoy and middling golfer who occupies no official role.
In the past two weeks, the monarchy's reputation has come in for an unexpected battering with William and Kate, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's fiasco of a Caribbean tour seeing them forced to confront the ghosts of Britain's violent colonial past and traipsing from one nation to the next only to be told at each stop the royal family was about to get the sack.
The monarchy could really have done with heartwarming family affection being the defining image today and not of the head of state being helped to her seat by a man who has been accused of abusing a teen sex trafficking victim.
Of course, Andrew has never been charged nor has there ever been any suggestion he might be, either in the US or the UK.
But a sovereign is meant to serve their people. That's the bargain that we, the unwashed masses, have with the monarchy. Part of that service is an expectation of a certain attunement to shifting standards and political and social currents and the MeToo movement has ushered in a profound recalibration of thinking about sexual assault.
What the Queen has just very sadly shown us is that she is willing to prioritise her son's bruised pride over what subjects very, very clearly think and feel about her son's choices and behaviour. Even after everything. Even after the Andrew imbroglio brought the most grievous and horrifying of allegations to the palace's front gates.
One might be happy to indulge Andrew but Your Majesty, We do not approve.
• Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
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