Niggling questions
When Princess Diana died in 1997, the intensity of the outpouring of public grief led some to speculate that the monarchy would not survive. I think we might be seeing the repercussions now, in the muted reaction to this weekend’s royal coronation.
I was in Fiji, staying in a backpacking hostel, when the news of Diana’s death was announced. I said out loud, in the communal TV room, “She was murdered!”. I got some strange looks and a rebuttal.
I think that event brought about a shift in the way I saw the world. The idea of high-profile assassinations had certainly occurred to me, but the thought of them happening in the UK went against everything I’d been brought up to believe.
When I’d heard earlier that year that Diana was campaigning against landmine debris, I was surprised and impressed, and I remember saying to my mum, “She’s really getting into dangerous areas here – someone might want to see her get hurt.” I only half believed this. But when I heard that she’d been killed in a car crash, I thought, “They’ve done it.” I didn’t know who “they” were, but it shifted my perspective on the way I thought about my country and our world.
I’ve heard some independent commentators suggest that Charles might have ordered the killing. I think this is very unlikely. In fact, I suspect that most public figures, including the royals, are blackmailed, and it’s more likely that the event would be used for these purposes. It’s not nice to think about things like this, never mind write them, but I think you’d have to have major cognitive dissonance to deny that it could be a possibility.
Many people do have cognitive dissonance. They want to see our society as fair and just, and they don’t want to believe that bribery, blackmail and corruption could lurk beneath the surface. They would prefer to laugh at the very idea, to dismiss it as nonsense and carry on with their lives.
But I think these questions do niggle away at many people, at a subconscious level, and they eat away at respect for royal authority and for the “establishment”. Maybe that’s one reason why public interest in this weekend’s coronation is so muted.
Bunting has appeared on the railings of the care home near where I live, but only on one of the four blocks. I wonder if they ran out, or if the elderly residents in other blocks objected to it.