Keeping Royal Secrets

I do hope you will tell us where we can buy signed copies Grany. You really do come out with a lot of specious twaddle.

Royals don't get involved in politics.

Politics is how we decide to share financial resources.

Royals enter the fray, come out on top, and then use their winnings to pay PR Teams to tell us they are not players in the game they just won.

Republic producing a book about monarchy myths

she is Katharine with a K!

Katharine, Duchess of Kent

Aveline

Catherine Kent is indubitably a good egg.
Back to the rest of the Royal Family and their value. How they make people feel is of incalculable value. Obviously, there are those for whom their emotional pull is negligible or even negative. However, there's something about them that makes people pour out to see them, to line the routes of their events and travels and to follow every item about them in the news. Their psychological worth to the country is quite literally beyond price.

OK, I'm really not wanting to start a war and I think this is a good discussion.

I'm one with the negative emotional pull. Is it really a good thing that people want to turn out in droves or follow the details of every dress or pair of gloves that an elderly lady wears?

There are downsides to that as well. The hero worship. That's what it is. We are not allowed to say anything negative about certain members of the family without being accused of all sorts of things. Whereas other members of the extended family are demonised because we don't like how they are behaving, or how they behaved 30 years ago.

And on top of all that, they have a constitutional role that we are not encouraged to question because of the idealisation of their characters.

I do sometimes think those who are interested in the royal family over emphasise the interest generally. . I was listening to someone the other day and he was saying how reassuring it was for the nation when the Queen spoke during lockdown. I had completely forgotten she had spoken and gained more comfort from Joe Wicks.

Thank you for clarification Annie.

According to the documentary of Katherine Kent , Princess Marina was allegedly against the marriage, not the family.

Aveline

Catherine Kent is indubitably a good egg.
Back to the rest of the Royal Family and their value. How they make people feel is of incalculable value. Obviously, there are those for whom their emotional pull is negligible or even negative. However, there's something about them that makes people pour out to see them, to line the routes of their events and travels and to follow every item about them in the news. Their psychological worth to the country is quite literally beyond price.

Exactly, Aveline. That's what I was thinking.

I think this could be very different when she is no longer with us. People are not so enamoured of her successor...

P.S. People like Princess Anne a lot, too. For many of the same reasons, I think. A bit of a tearaway when she was young, but amused them by telling photographers to 'naff off', and falling off her horse in water jumps... But has since been very like her mother. Dutiful.

Catherine Kent is indubitably a good egg.
Back to the rest of the Royal Family and their value. How they make people feel is of incalculable value. Obviously, there are those for whom their emotional pull is negligible or even negative. However, there's something about them that makes people pour out to see them, to line the routes of their events and travels and to follow every item about them in the news. Their psychological worth to the country is quite literally beyond price.

That's a really good post MaizieD.

Maybe the good they do is not monetary. Maybe you can tell me about that.

Thinking about the benefit of the RF and I think it comes down to the innate conservatism of much of the population.

They like the fact that the monarch is ostensibly non-political, they like the pageantry of state events and things like royal weddings and they like tradition. They like the 'smell of wealth and privilege, too (can't get enough of 'historical' series about the 'upper classes') They can't visualise this being replaced by the substitution of any old person as Head of State. It wouldn't be the same.

And I think it also comes down very much to people's perception of our current monarch who, whatever her family's failings, has been unfailingly dutiful and dignified. This has worked to her advantage because her problems with her family then generated much sympathy for her.

Also, she is so familiar to them; few of the UK population can recall a time when she wasn't queen.

I think this could be very different when she is no longer with us. People are not so enamoured of her successor...

Catherine Kent no longer takes part in royal life, but continued her charity work privately and without fanfare. She attends occupational royal occasions such as family weddings, but that is all. I watched a documentary about her on Channel 5 at the weekend, and I was very impressed by the good work she carried out for many years after her withdrawal from public life. According to the documentary the royal family were opposed to to her marriage to the Duke of Kent, but she worked very hard after her marriage and participated in many royal duties. I didn’t see the whole documentary and so I missed some important bits of it, but I think she gave up both her title and royal work in order to persue private charity work, including travelling each week to a school in the north east in order to teach music to the pupils. She was an accomplished musician.

Germanshepherdsmum

Very wise Calistemon. Could be dynamite in the wrong hands.

I think the secret diaries of a teenager have been visited already!

The Embarrassing Diaries of Calistemon aged 15¾ doesn't have quite the same ring to it ?

It is, isn't it maddyone.

I did check out the publication and they don't seem to be biased.

Your comment about Katherine Kent is an interesting one; it seems to me that the good she does is because of who she is, what her character is like, rather than being part of a particular family.

That’s very interesting Alegrias.

www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/giving-evidence-research-shows-no-benefit-from-royal-patronages-for-charities/

It is often reported that charities benefit from royal patronage. I don’t know if this is true. I do think that Catherine Kent has done a lot of good, but she works quietly behind the scenes, drawing little or no attention to herself.

Not for me to prove a negative.

We often get the story of how much tourist revenue they bring in. Just wondering if anybody actually knew how much? Compared to, say, republican France? Or republican Italy?

Maybe the good they do is not monetary. Maybe you can tell me about that.

Tell me about your uncosted assertions first. Of course it's not necessarily a matter of money. My MiL often commented on people who ' Knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing'!

Really Aveline? Maybe you can list the good they do for the country.

Uncosted assertions about tourism and inward investment, and anything that couldn't be done by any well off family with time on their hands, don't count.

A bigger myth is that the Royal family are not good for this country!

Very wise Calistemon. Could be dynamite in the wrong hands.

The biggest myth about the monarchy is that it's good for this country.

No idea what's going on here but Casdon's post made me laugh out loud! So neatly done!