Jack Tame: The challenge for Royals is relevancy

When I was a boy, I used to love going my grandparents’ house and reading about the royals in my grandma’s trashy magazines.  

My grandparents had come out from the U.K in the sixties and they were still very British, working class, and my grandma was absolutely consumed by the various scandals and shifting dynamics within the Buckingham Palace set. 

Well... I say she was. I think, actually, I was. To a little boy it felt like a fantasy World. I used to perch up on my Grandma’s La-Z-Boy, recline the seat, and pore over all the details of how William and Harry lived their lives. I was obsessed with how rich the royal family must have been, and I can still remember some of the stories, almost thirty years on. William and Harry at a birthday party with Diana. William and Harry run amok in a fireworks shop.  

Times have changed. Back then, we voraciously consumed royal gossip just as we do today, but we didn’t question the institution nearly as much. 

The challenge for the Royals today is relevancy. Just as the influence of Britain has declined, the royal family is increasingly irrelevant to younger people. Polling released this week shows that just 12% of Britons aged 18-34 continue to see the monarchy as ‘very important,’ compared to 42% of people over the age of 55. The numbers in the U.K have steadily decline for several decades, and I expect they’re even starker in New Zealand. 

King Charles’ coronation will be a grand spectacle, a magnificent oddity, but I think one of the most interesting things will be observing how it’s processed across different media. Queen Elizabeth’s coronation was the first to broadcast on TV. King Charles’ coronation will be the first to be shown on TikTok. It'll be huge, don’t get me wrong. But the demographics of those who are watching and engaging with every minute of pomp won’t be nearly as broad as they would’ve been last time around. And that’ll tell us quite a bit about relevancy. 

But I also think, in responding to the question of relevancy, King Charles has proved to be incredibly thoughtful and astute. Back when I used to perch on her La-Z-Boy and gossip with my grandma about the latest royal dramas, Charles was very much a villain in the collective media narrative. And after Diana’s death, there was a lot of discussion about him perhaps never being king. But with time, some quite prescient advocacy (Especially on environmental issues), and increasingly favourable comparisons with other members of his family, the King’s reputation has largely been restored. He’s not as popular as his mum and he never will be. But he’s also extremely aware of the challenges he faces. 

There is one big force working in his favour. In a fragmented, topsy-turvy, uncertain, insecure-feeling World, I think there are many people will see value in an enduring institution they perhaps otherwise wouldn’t have appreciated.  

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