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| The Queen hosts a state banquet; from left, Princess Anne; Sophie, Countess of Wessex; Prince Edward; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; Prince Charles; Prince Michael of Kent; the Duke of Kent; Princess Michael of Kent; Rear Admiral Timothy Laurence and Prince Andrew |
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Posted Sunday, April 2, 2005; 09.48BST
To be sure, there is still criticism of the special breaks royals receive. As part of the deal that saw her start paying income tax in 1993, the Queen arranged inheritance-tax exemptions for what she received from her mother, and what she will bequeath to Charles. But disclosure has usefully illuminated the distinction between her personal wealth and the Crown's. She used to be commonly described as Britain's richest person, with a fortune estimated at $7.6 billion by the Sunday Times Rich List in 1993, but last year's list pegs it at $507 million, making her 180th.
What a politician might call "image management" has been spruced up, too. Since 2000, the palace has commissioned annual polls and focus groups to assess how people feel about the monarchy. A research department weighs what kind of trips and events will have the most impact. Press aides labor to plan backdrops so the cameras will take away an image that reinforces the message their boss is trying to highlight that day. A press office whose chief used to be known on Fleet Street as "the abominable no man" now promptly returns phone calls. The Queen's Christmas broadcast no longer has her staring straight into the camera, but uses video clips to illustrate her points. Her Majesty even carries a cell phone inside that handbag. All in all, Prince Andrew says, "I think this organization is very good at change management. We live it, we work it all the time. Change is an almost continuous process" — so much so, "that it's almost imperceptible."
That "imperceptible change" is exactly the sweet spot the Queen is trying to hit, says a senior adviser. Moving glacially, of course, can accentuate the sense that she is out of date. But by background as well as policy, that's the way she wants it. Her "Uncle David," King Edward VIII, loved making waves before he abdicated in 1936, and spooked his successors about playing the reformer too overtly. "No gimmicks!" the Queen has told aides. "I am not an actress!" She wants the monarchy to be a focus for continuity and enduring patriotic values, which make instinctive sense to her. She was never a rebel: she venerated her father, a shy man with a stutter who was thrust into kingship by the abdication but mastered his task through hard work. During her wartime adolescence, the idea of obedience and doing one's duty for the greater good was the norm. She really meant it when she said at age 21 that "my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service," and has not changed her core old-fashioned values. But for the monarchy as an institution, she is averse to risk, not to change itself; she knows staying still has its risks, too.
The Queen has also subtly refurbished the most public aspect of her work — her interaction with ordinary people. She has never been naturally extroverted, perhaps a reaction to growing up so famous that as a child she had a territory named after her in Antarctica and was immortalized in Madame Tussaud's astride a pony. Her early friend and bridesmaid Pamela Hicks noted the unrelenting press of "intimate strangers" always peering in alongside motorcades. But over the years the Queen has learned to make encounters more enjoyable — and memorable. When she grants honors, she studies biographies of each recipient and writes down a few words which an aide reads to her as the person approaches, allowing her to start an informed conversation — one she knows will be repeated to family and friends. (She reads fast and has a flypaper memory.) Dinners during regional trips used to strand her at the top of a long table with predictable dignitaries; now she will be at a round table with perhaps a nurse, the leader of the local Sikh temple and an entrepreneur. Parties at Buckingham Palace are increasingly built around themes, like honoring transport workers and members of the emergency services after the London bombings of July 2005. She has aligned the palace with the modern world in other barely perceptible steps: relaxing the rules for the 30,000 invitees to her garden parties so that men needn't spend money on a morning suit, and chucking out the old rule that restricted state banquets to married apparent heterosexuals. Malcolm Ross, a kind of chief of protocol in the Lord Chamberlain's Office for 14 years, says the Queen takes a seriously pragmatic approach to ceremony: "Ceremony is meaningful only if it is relevant. It must make sense."
What does the Queen herself have to do with these changes? Does she benignly preside while staffers take the initiative, or is she a hands-on manager? Her staff say that she is almost spookily well-informed and observant. "Her memory of detail, her instinct for what is right, is absolutely superb," says Ross. Hunka, the personnel chief, says "she's obviously not immersed in the details of employment legislation, but whenever an issue gets to her, her feedback is never against what I would say as an experienced human resources person. She's always on the beam; it's uncanny." Prince Andrew says, in some awe, "Here's a quote you can have. The Queen's intelligence network is a hell of a lot better than anyone's in this palace. Bar none. She knows everything. Everything. She just knows. I don't know how she does it." The Queen will spot tiny errors in memos, and approves details as small as bedroom assignments and whether a photographer may stand in a corner at a state banquet. She doesn't usually get cross. "Do you really think so?" is usually enough to signal staff they are proceeding down a dead end. But as for changing the fundamental ways the palace works, she sticks with her instinctive pattern and mostly waits for suggestions. Her biographer Lacey calls her "not an innovator, but a sensitive responder, and she is very well advised. Successful monarchs are great listeners."
She is a consistently popular boss — which has not always been true for all members of the royal family. "There's a lot of esprit de corps here," says Ross. "People stay a long time, and they don't get rich. It's because she's wonderful to work for. You cannot bluff, you cannot pull the wool over her eyes. You get clear direction, never ambiguous, and once a decision is made, it's not changed. The hardest thing about the job is ever letting her down." Hunka says the palace "is almost without politics. I never have to write a memo to cover myself. There's no top job to compete for, and no revolving door of ceos you have to please." Reid, who climbed to the top of KPMG, calls the Queen "the best person I've ever worked for. She lets you get on with the job, but she and her husband see things with great clarity. Sometimes we look at every conceivable angle; she'll just cut through it all."
And what does she make of it? Does she like her job? Does she never tire of the grind, the rigid code of behavior, the deluge of small talk? Her diaries, carefully tended, may give the answer, but they will not be seen until after her death. She once said she would have liked to be a woman living in the country with lots of horses and dogs. Even today, one of her greatest pleasures is owning racehorses and nipping out to watch the 2:35 at Cheltenham on TV. Most likely, the concept of liking her job would seem odd to her. Prince Andrew explains: "People say to me, 'Your life must be very strange.' But of course I've not experienced any other life. It's not strange to me. The same way with the Queen. She has never experienced anything else. That life, that knowledge, that wisdom is purely natural to her." Pamela Hicks agrees that the Queen, while gratified if people respond to her work, does not seek a conventional sense of happiness in it. Duty is its own reward: "She is very religious, but she is also philosophical. She feels she must do the job she has been given and that it will be for others to judge whether she has succeeded."
She is naturally curious about people, and observant; this, "plus her fantastic memory, means she is not bored," says Hicks. A dry sense of humor helps. On a walkabout in Scotland, one person told her, "You look just like the Queen!" "How reassuring," she replied. When a visiting head of state managed to slip out of Buckingham Palace overnight, she quipped: "Has he taken his wife?" She can laugh at herself too, as when a new footman pulled back her chair as she stood up after a family dinner, but then immediately went to sit down again to continue a conversation and hit the floor. The whole family found this uproarious (but she also made sure to reassure the mortified footman).
As a child she was upbraided for saying something as racy as "my goodness." But "she's very modern," says Reid. "People don't realize it. Some people who work for her don't." Her granddaughter Zara Phillips has had a tongue stud, lived in sin with a jockey, posed for Hello! magazine and sold the rights, but the Queen is very fond of her. The monarch who said in 1955 (following the government's decision) that her sister, Margaret, could not remain a royal princess if she married a divorced man has had no qualms about her grandson William living with his girlfriend. A senior aide says she is fundamentally an optimist, "a glass-half-full" kind of person, who would endeavor to do a good job even if she did not like the country Britain had become — but "she is very comfortable with modern Britain." One thing she definitely dislikes: people who come to see her when they have colds. She does not want the people depending on her, in a program arranged six months in advance, to get messed around by her having to stay in bed.
If she lives as long as her mother, she will preside until 2027. "She is incredibly fit and agile," says Andrew. Watching her hustle down a corridor to a meeting in an electric aqua dress, a rolling mass of corgis and dorgis in tow, she exudes surprising energy. In the country, she rides (helmetless) or walks the hills every day. Her staff is organizing her schedule to keep her visible and active with less strain by hosting more events at Buckingham Palace, and when she travels, seeing more people at slightly fewer venues. Her children will pick up more of her duties. But all who know her say that barring physical collapse, she will not abdicate in favor of Charles.
Given that she intends to remain firmly at the helm, where will she steer the monarchy now? The polls reveal some directions in which imperceptible change — or more — is needed. Asked whether the monarchy reflects today's multifaith Britain, only 21% agree; 49% disagree. The palace already works to include more ethnic minorities and representatives of non-Christian faiths in the Queen's events, but can be expected to do more of this. Another area the Queen can develop is what Frank Prochaska, a Yale historian, calls the "welfare monarchy": the royal family assisting charities and groups that help the disadvantaged. British monarchs have been doing this since at least Victoria; the Queen is already patron of 620 voluntary organizations. The trick for the royals here is to avoid a patronizing air of noblesse oblige, as well as political controversy. But "they're very good at it, and very good about doing it, but they don't get credit for it," says Worcester. More focus here will help the broader strategy of keeping the royals' work in public view: "The more familiar people are with them, the more favorably they feel."
And what, in the end, does she want as the legacy of her Elizabethan Age? In the way of monarchies, one part of the answer is already determined: Charles, then William. At this stage they appear to be a good bet. But, as the 1990s proved to the Windsors, human bloodlines can be as fickle as horses'. "Self-destruction is their biggest problem," says Prochaska; and that, in the end, will depend on choices the future Kings themselves will make. As for the institution of the monarchy, the Queen's track record reveals what she wants to leave behind: a Crown relentlessly pragmatic enough to stay popular.
Prince Andrew says the legacy question is simply foreign to his mother. It is not in her nature, he says, to intellectualize, to consciously design what her reign will mean. She did not ask for the duties that fell to her, but she has done them, conscientiously, and she will keep doing them for as many days as she is given. "Today is reality. Yesterday is history. Her desire is not to change the future, but to be there, today. Today is what we've got."
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