On a scaffold hung with black cloth, on a freezing January day in 1649, the instinct for sumptuousness died in these islands. It was killed alongside Charles I, kingly excess and belief in divine right and, with intermittent exceptions, has never recovered. And so when, time and again since September, we’ve heard about our new King’s plans for downsizing the monarchy, the bulk of the population has calmly nodded its assent. Trim, slim, streamline, skimp. Time to dispense with peripheral royal family members! Farewell to the jostling chorus line of the Buckingham Palace balcony of yesteryear, all oversized hats, Ruritanian frippery and excitable small children! Away with the hangers-on!
A large working family accomplishes more than the same family halved in size; it can be in more places simultaneously, which is important if the monarchy is to continue to act as a unifying force
Good news? I wonder. After all, who are these mostly unassuming folk occupying the balcony’s furthest reaches and what have they actually done to merit the ignominy of being ‘downsized’?
The ‘hangers-on’ in question are the so-called ‘minor royals’, men and women of royal blood whose chances of inheriting the throne are nevertheless impossibly remote: those royal relatives whose identity flummoxes pub quizzers.
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