What Would It Take to End the British Monarchy?
Anti-monarchy campaigners have launched a billboard campaign against Prince Charlesshowing they see the future king as their best chance for abolition. The royal family has been warned by the pressure organization Republic that the heir to the throne is in their sights. Theyre removing 24 billboards with the next-in-face lines on them, and one early draft had the tagline No man should be King.  While it was not the final, approved form of the advertisement, the term man may point to one of the royals problems in a world when companies, political parties, and public bodies want diversity in senior leadership teams. Republics chief executive, Graham Smith, put it bluntly: Its going to be guys. We wont know who our leaders will be until the end of the century, which is absurd. Itll be Charles, William, and George from now on, so itll be all about kings and men, which I dont believe enhances their image.  The billboard campaign highlights that when the queens reign ends, there will be a significant push to oust Charles. Succession will potentially come at a time of personal mourning for the royal family, however, the palace will need to prepare for the struggle that follows. Queen Elizabeth II celebrates 70 years of her reign in 2022, when a dragon the size of a London bus will lead the Platinum Jubilee pageant in her honor. However, each new year brings the royals closer to the moment the worlds longest reigning living monarch will pass the crown to her less popular son. Elizabeth consistently does well in opinion polls, including a +60 percent net approval rating in a Redfield & Wilton survey for This website in May. Not so with her firstborn son, who is still the target of popular wrath for having an affair behind Princess Dianas back. In our poll, 58 percent said they would rather see Prince William as the next king compared to 23 percent who wanted Charles, who was on a net approval rating of +20 percent. In May, Republic reported with glee that there were signs of young people turning against the royals. They point to YouGov data which suggests 41 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds want an elected head of state, while 31 percent support the monarchy. The treatment of Prince William and Prince Harrys mother by Prince Charles was brought to life for a new, younger audience in 2017, the 20th anniversary of her death, when a Channel 4 documentary showed old footage of the princess describing her emotional trauma. One clip, from Diana: In Her Own Words, described how Charles once said, Well, I refuse to be the only Prince of Wales whos never had a mistress.  Prince Harry and Prince William teamed up on two more documentaries and exclusive interviews, including with Washington Newsday, though commentators noted that very little was said in support of Charles. The following year, Charles turned 70, and his office used the milestone to try to repair the damage by giving interviews for the BBC documentary Prince, Son And Heir: Charles At 70, which positioned him as the next British king. In 2020, however, the Netflix series The Crown brought it all back up, with actress Emma Corrin acting out her bulimia and Josh OConnor portraying Charles in a fit of rage. The Crown has two more seasons to go  the next will likely take viewers up to Princess Dianas death in 1997, and the last will deal with the aftermath of the tragedy. Newspaper coverage in the run-up to Dianas 60th birthday, which was in July, also brought the revelation that police actually suspected the princess might have tampered with Charles brakes. And then theres the modern royal war, in which Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have dropped several sizable bombshells with their attacks on the monarchy. The second-born son of Charles told the world that his family literally cut me off financially, and it was already known who had funded him. The Prince of Wales, it later emerged, continued to fund Prince Harry from his assets in the Duchy of Cornwall in the first few months after the royal departure, before pulling the plug in the summer of 2020. The Duke of Sussex also said Prince Charles stopped taking his calls while trying to negotiate his way out of the monarchy in late 2019 and early 2020. Then there was Harrys suggestion to the Armchair Expert podcast that he suffers from genetic pain caused by his royal upbringing. All in all, Charles has his work cut out for him if he wants to win over his subjects when he becomes king. However, hubris may offer its own challenges as the next in line to the throne has some of his own priorities. At the top of his list, according to historian Robert Lacey, is whether his second wife, Camilla, should be allowed to call herself queen.  Current royal family policy is that, out of respect for Diana, she will instead be referred to as Princess Consort, in reference to Prince Philip. Lacey told The Washington Newsday last week, Secretly, I found out that both brothers [William and Harry] are absolutely fed up with Charles trying to negotiate full Queen status for Camilla.  Then theres the question of his longstanding ambitions to slim down the monarchy, which was the focus of Meghan and Harrys Oprah interview. Among the most explosive claims was the suggestion that the royal family wants to intervene to prevent Archie, their first member of color born into royalty, from becoming a prince when Charles ascends the throne. Meghan and Harry said it has been actively discussed, though no action has been taken, and a Sussex insider recently told The Washington Newsday Archie and Lili are still on course to be prince and princess, barring a new intervention. However, if the issue comes up again, Charles could have a significant international dispute on his hands in the first days of the new reign. Smith told The Washington Newsday, People have sympathy for the queen. They project onto her the image of a nice and honorable person who has always done the right thing and never put a foot wrong. They dont see that with Charles. Hes not a likeable character, and the interview with Harry and Meghan only reinforced that.  All of this is happening against the backdrop of an even bigger time bomb that is about to burst for the royals, just as the queens reign enters its winter years. There are 16 countries around the world that currently count Elizabeth as head of state that could succeed King Charles. Among them, Barbados recently announced its intention to remove the queen as head of state, and it was a hot topic in Jamaicas recent general election. There is a theory that if the queen dies, a chain reaction could be set in motion in which each of these countries abolishes the monarchy one by one. According to the hypothesis, each new country that leaves will spark an increasingly heated debate within those that remain. Smith said, Barbados is doing it and there is no referendum, the government has said it is doing it and it will happen at the end of the year. Recently there was the statue that was taken down in Canada.  In Canada, statues of the Queen and Queen Mary were torn down in Winnipeg by protesters angry over the historic treatment of indigenous children after hundreds of unmarked graves were found at a school, although the traumatic incident did not directly involve the Queen. If enough of these potential problems hit Charles at the same time, it could give the republic its best opportunity yet to push for an end to an institution that has defined British identity on the global stage for generations. Smith told The Washington Newsday, People always think things are immovable and impossible until they happen. Its going to change fundamentally over the next few years with debate and public opinion.