The Royals, Just Like Us
There are moments when history makes you wonder whether some of Europe's great political catastrophes might have been avoided with better public relations.
I had one of those moments when I recently learned something remarkable about the Prince and Princess of Wales.
They do the dishes.
Kate washes. William dries. They are, Kate tells us, “a good team.”
I had always assumed that somewhere within the considerable machinery surrounding the British royal family there might be a person whose professional responsibilities extended to plates. Apparently not. After dinner, Kate rolls up her sleeves, William finds a tea towel, and together they confront the remains of supper like any other married couple.
Perhaps they really do. Why wouldn't they?
What interests me is that somebody thinks we need to know.
Modern royalty has discovered something that its predecessors understood far too late. If you possess palaces, estates, staff and inherited privilege, you need not actually live like ordinary people. You merely need to provide regular evidence that you occasionally do ordinary things.
Looking back, one realizes how many monarchs suffered unnecessarily from failing to understand this.
What she needed was not necessarily a revolution in French society. She needed a lifestyle interview.
MARIE ANTOINETTE: “I BAKE MY OWN BREAD”
“People imagine that because we live at Versailles, we eat cake all day,” Marie says with a laugh.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
“I actually bake my own bread whenever I have time. And cake? Honestly, that's more of a Sunday thing.”
The Queen is also passionate about reducing food waste.
“If there is bread left over from breakfast, we always find a way to use it. Louis and I were both brought up not to waste food.”
Photographs would show Marie in a simple linen dress, lightly dusted with flour, holding a loaf whose preparation had involved seventeen servants just outside the frame.
France would have been reassured.
Louis XIV required a slightly different strategy. Versailles itself was difficult to disguise. The palace was enormous and the gardens did not exactly communicate modesty.
But the gardens also presented an opportunity.
LOUIS XIV: “I'M HAPPIEST WITH MY HANDS IN THE SOIL”
He may rule France, but Louis says his real passion is gardening.
“Whenever I can find the time, I go outside and work alongside the gardeners,” he explains. “I don't just stand there giving instructions. I like to get involved.”
For Louis, gardening is also an escape from the pressures of monarchy.
“When you're kneeling in the soil next to another man, it doesn't matter whether he's a gardener and you're a king. You're simply two people trying to make something grow.”
His love of spending long hours working outside in the sunshine has even earned him an affectionate nickname among the staff.
The Sun King.
“It makes me laugh,” Louis says. “But I suppose they're right. I do love the sun.”
Henry VIII would have required a more delicate campaign. By his later years, the athletic young prince had become considerably heavier. In our age, however, this would not have been an embarrassment. It would have been a journey.
HENRY VIII OPENS UP ABOUT HIS WEIGHT: “ROYALS STRUGGLE TOO”
Henry has spoken candidly for the first time about his changing body and his efforts to live more healthily.
“I think men are sometimes reluctant to talk about weight,” he says. “There is this idea that because you're a king, you're supposed to be confident all the time. But royals have body issues too.”
He has recently transformed his diet.
“I've cut down enormously on meat. At the moment I'm trying to eat vegan several days a week.”
His weakness?
Henry smiles.
“Roast swan. I'm only human.”
The King says he hopes that speaking publicly about his experience will encourage other men to have a healthier relationship with their bodies.
His marital difficulties would naturally require a separate interview.
The Romanovs faced a different problem. Their son Alexei suffered from haemophilia, something the family kept intensely secret. This secrecy contributed to precisely the sort of rumours and strange arrangements that modern royal communications departments exist to prevent.
A competent twenty-first-century adviser would immediately have recognized the opportunity.
THE ROMANOVS BREAK THEIR SILENCE: “ALEXEI HAS NOTHING TO HIDE”
For years, Nicholas and Alexandra protected the privacy of their son's health. Today they say they have changed their minds.
“We realized that silence can contribute to stigma,” Alexandra explains.
The Imperial Family is therefore launching a nationwide initiative for children living with chronic illnesses and disabilities, with Alexei as its first patron.
“Being different does not make a child less valuable,” Nicholas says. “As parents, this is extremely close to our hearts.”
Alexei would be photographed meeting other children. There would be a foundation, a ribbon, perhaps an annual charity gala.
Rasputin would be kept carefully outside the frame.
This is the great advance of modern monarchy. Earlier rulers believed that an image problem required political action. Today's royal families understand that sometimes it merely requires a human-interest story.
The trick is not even necessarily to lie. Marie Antoinette might genuinely have baked a loaf of bread. Louis XIV might genuinely have touched some soil. Henry VIII could conceivably have eaten a vegetable. Nicholas and Alexandra certainly loved their son.
And perhaps William and Kate genuinely wash the dishes together.
The magic lies in selecting the tiny ordinary truth and allowing it to stand in front of the enormous extraordinary reality.
Nobody writes an article when an ordinary person washes the dishes. If I announce that I cleaned my kitchen yesterday, nobody concludes that despite my elevated position I have remained wonderfully grounded.
They conclude that my kitchen was dirty.
But when someone surrounded by an infrastructure specifically designed to remove ordinary inconveniences voluntarily performs one of those inconveniences, the inconvenience becomes a character reference.
Kate washes.
William dries.
They are a good team.
Perhaps historians have therefore been looking in the wrong places. Revolutions are usually explained through inequality, hunger, war, taxation, political exclusion and collapsing legitimacy.
Maybe Europe's monarchies simply needed better lifestyle journalism.
Marie Antoinette needed homemade bread.
Louis XIV needed gardening.
Henry VIII needed a wellness journey.
The Romanovs needed an awareness campaign.
And William and Kate?
They have finally learned from history.
They do the dishes.