THE first months of 2022 have not been proud ones for the male heirs of the House of Windsor.
The semi-detached Prince Harry continues his myopic moanathon from Montecito, yet remains a Counsellor of State. Likewise the disgraced Duke of York, who still holds sway over our Queen.
Even Prince Charles’s usually crystalline reputation has been sewered by allegations of cash for honours, which, in fairness, he denies all knowledge of.
Not for the first time in British history, it has been left to the female side, and in particular the Wives of Windsor, to pick up the slack for Queen and country.
The admirable Princess Anne, bonny Kate, the softly shining Camilla, whom I suspect, once fully burnished, will be a flawless ruby in the crown.
And the ever stalwart Sophie Wessex, who quietly goes about her charitable work as Grand President of St John Ambulance, and gave up her birthday to volunteer at an NHS vaccination centre.
We should all go down on our knees and thank Heaven for such a golden harvest of royal women.
But what of the men? It is troubling but typical that so many of the Windsor males are failing to step up to the mark.
Windsor men, especially those born into the Blood Royal, have often suffered from a sort of Byronic unhappiness.
Their philosophy seems to be that there is nothing that life can give compared to what it takes away. Confronted with difficulties and travails, they wail and turn their faces to the wall.
Princes Harry and Andrew appear to suffer from a mild form of persecution mania, believing them- selves to be the perpetual victims of ingratitude, treachery and unkindness.
Women, often the more logical sex, are inherently suspicious of such self- indulgent posturing.
Our suspicion is particularly aroused by the multiplicity of villains it has been the sufferers’ misfortune to meet with.
In accordance with the doctrine of probability, different people occupying similar positions in life will meet with about the same amount of bad treatment.
If one person, as is the case with Harry and Andrew, meets with what they regard to be universal ill treatment, it is more likely that the cause lies in themselves, and that they either imagine injuries or behave in a way that causes uncontrollable irritation and disgust.
IRRITATION AND DISGUST
Even Charles can show signs of this dysfunctionality.
According to friends, he dislikes contradiction or argument, whilst those same friends say it is entirely possible to have a good- natured disagreement with Camilla, and even with the Princess Royal.
One of the troubles lies within the ambiguities of the British Constitution, which is both unwritten and occasionally mystifying.
Our laws and customs are based on history and precedent. As such, they sometimes throw up a bum steer.
With regard to the monarchy, the male hereditary principle has never seemed more dated or inappropriate than it does today.
Indeed, to any sane person, there is an unpleasant whiff of misogyny about it.
Why on earth, for instance, is the sorry but unapologetic Duke of York one of the Queen’s official Counsellors, when his wise and hard- working elder sister Anne is not?
Under the 1937 Regency Act, the next four adult heirs in the line of succession may step in for the monarch if she is out of action, and at present this quartet is made up of Charles, William, Harry and — despite being younger and ludicrously less appropriate than his sister — Andrew.
The notion that Andrew would be permitted to perform the Queen’s duties were she to become incapacitated is not only repugnant to members of the public but horribly out of step with the times.
We tend to regard royal women as the decorative part of the Constitution and not the efficient part, when the very opposite is now true.
Royal men, particularly those who are born such, fancy themselves to have the combined virtues of Jesus Christ, El Cid and David Beckham.
From the cradle, they are subject to ceaseless flattery and acquiescence, so develop an unconscionable conceit and sense of entitlement.
Instead of serving, they expect to be served and crave the hosannas of both courtiers and the multitudes, not recognising their empty transience.
They gild and fresco their lives with a desire for yachts, gratis holidays and the largesse of unsavoury billionaires.
The by-products are seldom laudable. One only has to look at the Duke of York. In short, male royals have a decided inner lack.
Women, and royal women in particular, have a much more wise apprehension of the feeble and worthless coin of adulation, frippery and yelling crowds.
They disdain such things. Sophie Wessex may not be one of us, but she behaves as if she is. Princess Anne, who works harder than any royal, has gone about her life unobtrusively, refusing titles for her children.
Andrew and Harry, on the other hand, never cease to remind those they meet that they are royal, and enjoy their privileges like hogs at a trough.
By contrast, Kate, Sophie and Camilla have never shown themselves to be susceptible to venality. With the exception of Meghan of Montecito, our Windsor wives do not aspire to be like the Kardashians.
I often think women are less prone to displays of peacockery, and comprehend that with power and privilege comes duty and service.
BREAD LOBBED AT HIM
Lacking the vanity of men, who always live with a bawling child inside them, women have always got on with the job.
It is telling that our most hard-working monarch and Prime Minister have been female: Our present Queen and Margaret Thatcher, both of whom almost ran themselves into the ground for their country and favoured a lifestyle of frugality.
It is also constructive to consider English monarchs of the past. That solar myth Elizabeth I was as conscientious and as penny pinching as her father, Henry VIII, was vainglorious and self indulgent.
Queen Victoria was repulsed by the whole cohort of her male antecedents and their extravagances and shook the monarchy out of its spiritual lethargy.
And it was the forceful Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon — aka The Queen Mother — who forged her stammering Bertie into a king.
Neither Camilla, Kate nor Sophie were born into royal entitlement and have a sound understanding of what modern Britain requires from the Royal Family.
All institutions must adapt to the century they exist in, and it is the women of Windsor who see with laser-like clarity that the public can no longer be dazzled by titles and trappings and, like a canny housewife, demands value for money.
This is particularly so in an age when the words honour and duty, when applied to other institutions, elicits derisive laughter.
The people of this country believe in moving with the times.
We have women leading us in every walk of life, yet the monarchy remains an oddly male preserve.
Princess Anne, who seems clothed in the sackcloth of wisdom, was forced to relinquish her role as a Counsellor of State when Prince William reached 21. Camilla, Kate and Sophie do not, officially, enjoy the monarch’s ear.
No one would argue that our future king should be stripped of one of his official roles, but what on earth are Harry and Andrew doing as Counsellors?
Mystifyingly, Andrew still thinks he’s on a roll, when what he deserves are a series of bread rolls, preferably lobbed at his face.
Harry, had he any self-knowledge, would dig a hole in his fifty shades of green Californian lawn and stay there until the rest of us can forget a shamelessness of which a bent copper would be proud.
It is time for The Women. Fling open the doors of your little turrets of fragile-egoed male courtiers who tell you you won’t cut the mustard because you don’t wear the pants.
Look around you, Anne, Kate, Camilla and Sophie. Realise your own worth and magnificence. Sniff the unfetid air that we, your supporters, breathe.
Plant your stilettos firmly in the green fields of England and forward march as the bright new royal legion.
In the meantime, I would urge the feckless Dukes of York and Sussex be stripped of their privileges as counsellors and Anne restored forthwith.
It is not only sexist and behind the times but quite mad that capable women should continue to be regarded as pretty faces simply because they are royal, and that the media should comment solely on their frocks, forgetting they have cranial cavities and something inside them called a brain.
It’s time the Windsors — and the rest of us — wised up.
