Exclusive to all newspapers was the news that Kate and Wills have finally “laid Diana’s ghost to rest at the Taj Mahal.” They posed in the exact same place that Prince William’s mother did all those years. This proves to the Daily Hate Mail’s Jan Moir that “Kate will always be in Diana’s shadow.” It does? Really?
It could be the social circle in which I mix, but conversations about the royal tour of India have been non-existent.
Many of us are aware that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridgeshire are rushing around India, shaking hands with people and pretending to play cricket and I guess some people somewhere in this country must really be interested, but I am not sure that many folk are desperately concerned about whether Kate is in the shadow of someone who is sadly dead.
I suppose I see the royal family as the lesser of the sins that are available to us. In my ideal world, I would probably get rid of them, a view not shared by the majority of folk in this land and whilst their role these days appears to be largely ceremonial most people like it that way. In terms of societal priorities, scrapping the royal family is not all that high, so let’s just leave them to it.
To the media, the royals are a soap opera, albeit with story lines that are created by the media because the lives of the Queen and her entourage are generally dull behind words. I am doing my best not to decry them because it is not their fault that they have been born or married into these non jobs. There is no job description for any of the royals, no competencies to be fulfilled and how could there be? Can you imagine the job advert: ‘The winning candidate will need to be able to wave and smile simultaneously, as well as to shake hands with numerous people and pretend you are interested in what they are saying.’ I am interested in a few things, but I am not interested in everything. If I was Prince someone and had to visit, say a B&Q store, it would represent a serious threat to my mental well-being given how much I detest DIY stores. The royals need to be interested, or rather look like they are interested, in nearly every damn thing on earth.
If I put my cynical head on – it’s never far away – I can only begin to imagine Wills and Kate contemplating their trip to India, knowing that they will spend most of their time being driven around and the rest of it in photo opportunities. Granted they will get to see the sights, like the Taj Mahal, but they can’t, as I would do, slope off for a quick curry and a few pints once the formalities are out of the way. As lifestyles go, being a royal is out on its own.
I know that the country went completely bonkers when Princess Diana died back in 1997, but most folk have hopefully gotten over that by now. Ms Moir’s comments about Diana’s shadow are laughable since, just before she died the people’s princess was being vilified left, right and centre (but mainly right) in the newspapers for permanently being on holiday in the summer of ’97 and not spending any time with her children. I think the public liked her, mind you, and a good few people liked her rather a lot which partly explained the bizarre scenes following her death.
Diana’s son and his wife are just a pleasant young couple doing one of the strangest non jobs in the world, almost permanently in the public gaze. They can never escape that lifestyle and for that I feel genuinely sad for them. It seems a horrible life.
