by The Laird o’Thistle
May 15 2004

I have recently viewed two fascinating videos. The first was Sir Ian McKellan’s production of Shakespeare’s Richard III, done some years ago. It is an amazing resetting of the bard’s great history play on the Machiavellian hunchback into the 1930’s… a sort of “Wars-of-the-Roses-meets-the-Spanish-Civil-War presentation.” It works. The various royals portrayed (Edward IV, the tragic princes in the tower, and so on) come across as believable figures in an alternative Britain tumbling into the grasp of a regal fascism. The young Edward V is a chillingly Windsor-esque figure during his fleeting appearance before disappearing into the Tower forever. (Maggie Smith, not surprisingly, also does an incredible job as the royal matriarch, the Duchess of York.)

The second video – a DVD, actually – was Matthew Bourne’s breathtaking version of Swan Lake (1996), featuring lead dancer Adam Cooper. In a chillingly oedipal and homoerotic re-visioning of the ballet, the royals are even more Windsor-esque than in Richard III. Bourne’s Queen, dressed in the elegant styles of 1950s Hartnell, evokes images of Princess Margaret. The aggressive and common girlfriend thrust upon the unwilling prince was undoubtedly a caricature based on elements of Fergie, from her flowing red hair to a particularly inappropriate red dress, to her numerous zesty and earthy failures to fit the royal mold. But it is the confused and tortured Prince that engages my notice. He is pampered, uneasy and bored in his role, and uneasy in his sexuality. On the verge of suicide, he goes off to a city park where he encounters the intense and punkish Swan and starts “out” on the tightrope walk between liberation and madness that unfolds toward a tragic end.

The Swan Lake liner notes are careful to say that the royals portrayed are composite figures inspired by members of the royal family over the course of the 20th century, with a couple of obvious nods to Bavaria’s Mad Ludwig thrown in for good measure. Bourne’s Prince certainly raised the specters of figures like the late and unhappy Duke of Windsor, the physically fragile and nervous George VI, and also their addictive and bisexual brother George, Duke of Kent (the current duke’s father). The portrayal also brings to mind the rumblings and rumors concerning one or two current members of the family, at least as they were in the troubled 90s. The archetype at play here, and in McKellan’s portrayal of the young Edward V, seems to be of fragile princes dancing on the edge of destruction. And the disturbing thing is that this archetype is so easily evoked by various Windsor males.

Part of the genius of monarchy is that it is archetypical. That is what has informed playwrights and filmmakers from Shakespeare down to James Goldman – author of A Lion in Winter – and beyond. To work, however, I suspect that archetypical monarchy has to authentically connect to the spirit of its age. Henry II and Eleanor evoke the 12th century. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I embody the sixteenth century. George III is the paradigm of the 18th century, both as farmer and madman. Victoria simply was the 19th century. George VI and Queen Elizabeth were the ideal incarnations of monarchy for World War II. And, Elizabeth II has been the perfect sovereign to oversee the dignified devolution of Empire into Commonwealth.

In the process of the 20th century, it seems that the core archetype of the House of Windsor became one of “majestic powerlessness” far beyond that of Bagehot’s constitutional theory. The secret of why it has worked so well is, I think, that all power in Britain bows to a figure that is utterly impotent. That is the ironic mystery that helped Britain fend off fascism, and let go of India, and muddle through the troubles in Ulster, and undertake awkward and messy ventures into devolution in Scotland and Wales. It is a key piece of why so many Americans, tired of each flawed President in turn, look enviously across the water to the Sceptred Isle. There is something essentially reassuring in looking to ultimate powerlessness at the center of power, so long as it is somewhat “happy and glorious.” But part and parcel of that archetype has been the sense of virtual emasculation that has afflicted too many of the Windsor males, leaving them somewhat like the imperial eunuchs of old China. The only one of the lot who seemed to succeed in remaining intact was George V himself, the bluff old sailor who carried off the transition into Windsor-hood in a carefully grandfatherly manner.

I wonder if it may be time for the Windsor archetype to be permitted to evolve anew. Just as Henry II wouldn’t fit the era of George III, and Elizabeth I could not have succeeded in Victorian times, the 21st century will move the royals into a new mode of embodiment. Or, they will fall by the wayside and become merely figures of romantic nostalgia like Bonnie Prince Charlie and Mad Ludwig – tragic princes both. This, I think, sets the Charles versus William discussion in an entirely different light. I do believe Charles will be king, and he will do well. But he will also be the fourth and last king in the old Windsor mold. It seems to me that he, like Diana, has worked hard to try to create the space for William to become a different sort of prince. One gets no sense of William in Matthew Bourne’s tortured generic Windsor.

What will the new archetype be? Only time will tell. It will certainly have to be more substantive than “Cool Britannia!” It will emerge and blend the best of the old into the new realities. At the very least it will call for a prince with a strong sense of self-confidence in a changing world. One of the things that most impresses me in the informed and thoughtful members of William’s generation is how comfortable they are with themselves, and with a much more fluid and diverse reality. That bodes well in a chaos-theory world. Beyond that, though it has always been dicey for the royals to flirt with the Arthurian myths, I suspect that they may hold more of the pieces that our times will require than any other. In some sense, the 21st century may need a prince who really will pull the sword from the stone. It is just a hunch.

– Ken Cuthbertson