The Royals with Roya and Kate - Can royal pomp and pageantry hold its power?

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

From Trooping the Colour to Garter Day and Royal Ascot, this was the week the royal family put on their grandest annual display of glamour and spectacle. This week on The Royals, Roya Nikkhah and Kate Mansey are joined by the historian and author A.N. Wilson to ask whether these massive public events still have a place in modern Britain.They look beyond the carriages, uniforms and hats to discuss what these public ceremonies are designed to achieve for the monarchy and the country. At a time of protests, scandal, a smaller working royal family and growing scrutiny over royal wealth, is pageantry still the monarchy’s best way of proving its value, or does the institution now have to work harder to justify the show?Do the royals justify the pageantry? Get in touch: [e-mail] Roya won! But you can still donate to Roya’s racing challenge for Macmillan Cancer Support through JustGiving.Image: GettyProducer: Robert Wallace, Shabnam GrewalExecutive Producer: Priyanka DeladiaRead more: To shake off Andrew, royals must pay their way Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Royals, the podcast where we discuss what happens behind the palace walls and why it matters. I'm Royneeker. And I'm Kate Mansy. Now it's the biggest week of royal pageantry in the calendar. We've had Trooping the colour, Gartaday and Royal Ascot, putting the Royal Family centre stage. Harriages, uniforms, fly pasts and processions. It's a moment that puts the Royals on full display. But in modern Britain, what's all that? comp actually four? That's a good question. Some argue it's the monarchy doing what they do best, projecting soft power, cultural tradition and brand Britain in a way no other institution can match. Others might ask whether these grand displays feel slightly out of step, particularly at a time of protest scrutiny and tough questions about the monarchy's value. So today we're asking

the big question, is royal pageantry still relevant? a spectacle that has to work harder to justify itself to an increasingly questioning audience. While joining us to unpack the history, the theatre and look forward to the future of the firm, we're delighted to be joined by the historian and author A.N. Wilson. Andrew, welcome to the Royals. Thank you very much. So it's been a big week for everybody, I think, involved in anything to do with the Royal Family. We've had Trooping the Colour. We've had Garter Day.

and we've had Royal Ascot kicking off two days so far of the five-day festival. Roya, why is this time of year so important to the royal family, do you think? Why is it such a busy time of year for people like us who have to write about them? Well, it's all those set pieces, isn't it? And it's the season. It's the start of spectacle, the thing where we see all the pomp and pantry tree coming out, but also where we get almost two weeks' worth of back-to-back coverage. And we get them out in their finery.

We get all the family together, the working royals, which we saw, at trooping the colour. It's sort of moments of unity set against a backdrop of huge kind of the public that want to come and see them. There's lots of opportunities for them to come and see them, both at the mall for trooping. There were lots of crowds at Royal Ascot, cheering for them Tuesday and Wednesday this week. And I think it's a kind of moment where the royal family get to put on their public facing. This is us. This is what we represent. This is the unit. And we see the public response to that. The intro was all about the public questioning the royal family increasingly now and is this spectacle worth it and we're going to dig into that now.

But I just think you and I having sort of seen the last few days, there is still very much a clamour for and a thirst for that kind of spectacle from the royal family for them putting on a show. Especially in times when there's lots of kind of dire news about, isn't there? I always find it really interesting with the royal family that, you know, we don't see them for a while over summer and various other points where they go back and have some kind of rest time, look to build up new meetings and things like that. But when they hit it, they hit it. and you have bam, bam, bam, and it's the kind of the spectacle. And we had, you know, Saturday, trooping, Monday, garter day, always comes before the first day of

Ascot on the Tuesday. Wednesday we usually see the Prince and Princess of Wales at Ascot, which we did yesterday because they have the Prince of Wales steaks, of course. And last year we didn't have the Princess of Wales there. She pulled out at the last minute, still recovering from her chemotherapy in 2024. This year she was there in Canary Yellow. You know, and it's really them kind of presenting the Windsors to the world. What do you make at this period?

I mean, this is someone who occasionally, dare I say, Andrew, raises a questioning eyebrow about the royal family. I constantly raised questioning eyebrows about the royal family, certainly the concept of a royal family. But I think if I were a very passionate royalist, which in some moods I am, I'd say there's a distinction between, let's say you're in Leicester Square. and there's a film premiere of all your famous film stars, Nicole Kidman, whoever may be, you're feeling when you're looking at them, you're only looking at your favourite personalities,

whereas the concept of a monarchy is that it's not just people, it's a whole institution, and therefore you need to ritualise institutions. And we haven't mentioned because it's not quite part of our key week with Royal Astros, etc. But state opening is one of those times in the year

when you have a gold coat, you have people wearing ludicrous clothes, really, of crowns and robes and so forth. It's in order to deny the personality of the person involved, in this case the king, and concentrate on the institution. And even in this week, which involves glamour and treating them a bit like film stars, dressing them up and sending them to Royal Astrid, and having them on the balcony for the trooping of the colour, etc., etc., etc., etc. Even in this week, there's an element in which is ritual rather than just a parade of

celebs. Well, you've mentioned ludicrous clothes, but they don't come much more ludicrous than the order of the garter robes, do they? They do not, particularly the hats. We have the plumes on the head with the ostrich feathers. We have those kind of floor-length robes. So garter day, I think, is interesting in and of itself. William always looks quite uncomfortable. He looks like he's been rummaging in the dressing-up box. It does look like a bit of a smigre from the Princess of Wales as they walk down. So the knights of the garter, We're told that the gatta ceremony is this medieval thing when Edward the Someday or another invented it. Oniswarking malipance and these robes are meant to be. That's the motto.

And it's all meant to go back to the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact, although there have been knights of the gatta since the Middle Ages, Queen Victoria, for example, had nothing whatsoever to do with this. And why was that? Well, everyone said it's true she was shy, but she also had a keen sense of the ridiculous. and she could see it was absurd. So, Courtney, I thought the Order of the Garter ceremony was too ridiculous to put on. Even the Order of Instituting the Knights of the Garter she refused to do in private.

It was revived in 1948. So this is a year-oldy traditionally going back to 1948. It's partly because the monarchy looked as if it was going to collapse before the war when King Ebert the 8th abdicated. His brother then saw the country through and was a hero, really, joined the Second World War of holding the country together. and afterwards he thought, let's have a bit of pageantry, let's have something wonderful. And so rather than just the Knights of the Jolter assembling,

as I think probably they did each year in the chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor. Let's make it a public event with parading down from the castle. They have a private lunch and then we see them all parade down. We have former prime ministers like Sir Tony Blair, Sir John Major. We have Baroness Amos. Now Andrew Lloyd Weber is among them. It used to be more or less only members of the royal family scattered throughout Europe with the King of Norway and people like that.

But now, as you say, it's an old riffraff. One very... Any old riffraff? It's Tony Blair and people like that. Where it was one very notable exception this year. With that's Andrew Mount... Mr. Windsor. That was the complete exclusion of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

Because, of course, he was formerly Knight of the Garter. When he stepped back from public duties in 2019, he was allowed to attend the private lunch behind the scenes, sort of out of public view, up until last year. and we were told by Buckingham Palace ahead of the service this year that as he was no longer a member of the order of course everything's stripped from his last year, titles, HRHs, all his orders. He's had his banner taken down from inside St George's Chapel. He didn't even get to come to the lunch.

The point of this was to justify the royal family to the public at large and the one thing you would want to suppress at this moment is any thought of Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor. The point of all these ceremonies we're talking about is public perception. It's what we haxed, for all optics. And so you don't want to have somebody who's associated in the public mind, however wrongly, with sex offenders. What you want is to be uplifted and to have a sense that the royals are magical beings who will help us out of the dreariness of having to think of the balance of payments and unemployment and world wars and all the horror. Of course, the investigations into Andrew are ongoing.

He is being investigated for misconduct in public office. He denies all wrongdoing. But it's interesting you say this ceremony, this procession, is pretty much a modern invention dating back just to the 1940s because we're always told, aren't we, by the palace, that this is the ancient order of chivalry. Which, of course, again, optics, it's not very good to have Andrew associated with that, given that he's been so stripped to his prince title,

Duke of York title. How important do you think it is to the royal family to remind everybody, hey, this is a really ancient institution. It has always been this way, even though there are these kind of modern flourishes, I suppose, and reinventions of the way in which they present there. So, say, ancient additions. I think it's absolutely crucial,

because the bit of me that is a monarchist, even a passionate monarchist, is that politicians come and go, political parties are reinvented and renamed. But the monarchy, the idea of the head of state being invested in this family, goes right back to Alfred the Great, that you can say that since the 9th century,

this country has had a continuous thread woven through the tapestry of national life. And that is a very, very powerful image to hold on to, particularly now when British society has become much more divided on lots and lots of levels. And the Church of England doesn't unify people anymore. Most people don't go to church. The political parties certainly don't. The trade union movement which used to unite the working classes and the intellectuals, that doesn't do it. The monarchy, you know, we may be skeptical. and sophisticated people sitting around a white table talking about it.

But actually, the king is far more popular, both as a person and as a figure. Than most political figures. He has 70 or 75% approval ratings, whereas the politicians are minus. It's a visually sort of affirming moment. It's an affirming thing. We need rituals. G.K. Chesterton said, man was a ritualist before he could speak. And I think it's true.

And a bit of mumbo-jumbo, jumbo, doesn't do anybody anything. harm. So we talked about why it's so important to the royal family to have those kind of spectacles and those big set pieces. But of course the counter argument is, is that still relevant today? Is it, you know, is it indicative of a modern Britain? Is this the image that people want to see projected of, you know, ermine and robes and finery and huge kind of vast palaces? Or is it a relic from the past that's no longer fit for purpose? What's your view? And all the finery and riches, particularly at Royal Astrid with a lovely clothes and expensive hats and things.

The top hats. At a time when many of us are struggling. So it's a good question. And I think we're all probably a bit torn about that. I think what the royal family has to do is to come to grips with their own personal wealth and how it's used and how much they're getting freebies. That's the argument against them. But I would say to the Republican, just look around as our divided, broken country.

Every country needs something which is going to try to hold together a fragmented society, but to have an institution which takes seriously the idea that we truly are a united society, even if you don't believe totally in the United Kingdom, we are a united society. And the royal family has been incredibly good, I think, about emphasizing that fact. The Prince of Wales, you know, his fund for encouraging young people of all backgrounds, all income groups, etc., etc. The Duke of Edinburgh awards scheme the remarks made at Prince Phillips

Memorial Service in Westminster Abbey where there were people from all backgrounds and they weren't rich people and they weren't grand people saying that they owed everything to the inspiration of the royal family. We've seen that, haven't we, at more recent occasions

like the coronation where the king was very keen to include people from across all backgrounds, all faiths. It's not bogus. That is real. So your, someone who questions the monarchy frequently, you're still had the belief in the feeling that the royal family unite the United Kingdom more than they

divided? I think they do. That's a very valuable asset, isn't it? It's a fantastic asset. Apart from the fact that which everybody always says, you know, it attracts the tourists and so forth when these extraordinary displays in London the changing of the guard and the trooping of the colour and people wearing extraordinary uniforms marching about the place and lovely brass bands and gold coaches, which many of us rather enjoy. And I would have thought utterly harmless. And certainly in terms of public expenditure, it's nothing to the money that politicians waste day in, day out,

on new computers and all the rest of it. That's often the argument from people I speak to at the palace about how much it costs around the palace, the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace, reservicing, as I like to call it. It pales into insignificance compared to what's spent in various other kind of public buildings. And waste it.

Waste it. Coming up, Prince Albert, God rest his soul. He invented this modern idea that the royal family would be a sort of ideal family to which we'd all look up. And it was a bit of a disaster, really. We did see at Trooping last week something that we haven't traditionally seen that much of at trooping. And we saw protests at Trooping the colour. There was some video that went quite viral of the Princess of Wales with their children, almost watching and listening to the protesters and booze.

And I don't remember, I mean, I cover trooping the colour every year. I didn't this year I was doing something else. But I cover it every year. I don't remember ever seeing or hearing all the cameras picking up on booze before during the procession. Ditto Commonwealth Day as well when we saw them going into Westminster Abbey. There was a huge protest. And while there have always been protests, they've never been as prevalent or as vocal as they have, it seems, in the last couple of years since the late Queen died.

growing that, isn't it? I wonder what you think about that. Of course, you know, there's always groups like Republic, the anti-monarchy group, will always come out more frequently now. They feel emboldened, I think, since the passing of the late Queen. Does it matter? Does it matter to them? Does it match to the spectacle? It doesn't matter to the spectacle. I think it's a good thing, because as I'm a living example in front of you, many of us are a bit divided. On the one hand, we can see lots of arguments about why should one family, most of whose private, so-called private wealth actually derives from public sources. Why should they be singled out as these examples to the rest of us, when we know that some

of them, no names, no pactual, who deny all the wrong thing, and why can't we be sensible like other countries and have an elected government, elected head of state? I think I've already suggested why I don't think that's a good idea, because I think the royal family connects us with our past, our shared past. It's shared, even if you've only arrived in the last three or four generations. Some of us have only arrived in the last 20 generations, but we're all immigrants into these islands. And we've all got different backgrounds, different religions, or none of them. And this is one thing which unites us.

And therefore, I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing, if you're a Republican, to stand in the streets and shout. At the same time, it's perfectly reasonable for others who've had all these doubts ourselves to answer back. And I think one way of answering back is with words and another is with rituals. incidentally, although it's true that people didn't very much boo the late Queen, Queen Victoria, who's held up as the most popular Queen ever, all that sort of thing, when she went to the East End in the year of her Diamond Jubilee, she wrote to the Prime Minister that Queen was very much surprised when she went to the East End to hear a noise which she had never heard before, booing, she believes, it is called.

Why was she booed? Well, which was they thought, why should this rich old bag come round in her can. when we're living in Squalor. When there's shots as well at Queen Victoria. There were nine assassination attempts. And don't forget, in one trooping of the colour was Queen Elizabeth II. There was a shot that rang out. Tell us about the history.

We talked about Gartaday. Tell us a bit about the history of trooping the colour. Because most people will see pictures of it. It'll happen once a year and people will be aware of it in the background. But tell us a bit about where it came from, about a birthday. Well, I think the point of the trooping of the chruller was that in an old battle, You wanted to know where your regiment was, because there was smoke and noise and dust and fire. And so they held up the colours, that is the flag, of your regiment.

On the battle lines you could recognise it on. So that's the origin of it. And Charles II, who revived the monarchy after a period of this country being a republic, thought, why not let's have something which is ritual, but it still has a function in human life. Look at all the great religions of the world. They all have rituals. At the same time, Charles II thought it's quite useful for the regiments to be able to recognize their challenges, but let's make it a royal event.

And I mean, one of the key things about the royal family is that the king or head of state or the queen has always been commander-in-chief of the forces. So it is a moment for the armed forces to say thank you to the head of the armed forces. It really is. And if you talk to anybody in the armed forces, however cynical they are, even if they're as cynical as I am, if that's possible. They do feel pride, don't they? They have a personal feeling about the monarchs. The overriding powerful image every year of trooping the colour is that balcony moment, which has evolved, I think it's fair to say, over the last few years.

We used to see the extended royal family. Yes. Extended, extended, I think in 2018, there were 45 members of the royal family on that balcony. This year there were 14. That is quite a slide in less than 10 years. What do you make of that? What does that say about the royal family? Because, of course, there has been so much chateaued the last year is about a streamlined

monarchy. When Charles was Prince of Wales, there was constant briefing from his team about how he wanted a very streamlined monarchy. We're now seeing something deliberately streamlined or streamlined by wastage? It's deliberately streamlined as far as we know, because of what you've just said, because Prince Charles, when he was Prince Charles, made it clear that it was getting out of hand. Also, you'd rather look at it from their point of view. The wider reaches of the royal family are, funnily enough, perfectly normal people doing quite normal things like being artists, being dons, writing books, being business people. They don't particularly want to be recognised in the street, and they don't particularly

want to do so-called royal duties. They want the mere accident of their birth or they're having married into this family shouldn't make them into royal people. Prince Albert, God rest his soul, a fantastic man in many respects. He invented this modern idea that the royal family would be a sort of ideal. family to which we'd all look up. And it was a bit of a disaster. They have all the problems that ordinary families have, despite their status and money.

As soon as you said we're the ideal family, then this entitles people like me, gutter journalists, to say, look at them. He's fiddling, his expenses. Look at him. He's committing adultery. Look at her, et cetera, et cetera. And in the past, you've just took it for granted that the royal family were rather badly behaved in the regency, for example.

And they were very, very unpopular, of course. But nobody held them up as ideals, whereas from Prince Albert onwards, they've had an idea that they must be a sort of extra special family whom we all look to us are here as we don't. The images are very powerful, aren't they? When we see them on the balcony, I think, I suppose the question is whether they're still value for money, because what we have is a slim down monarchy. The king, as we know, we're always speaking to people who say that he wants the monarchy

to be good value for money. But what we're seeing is fewer senior working members of the royal family. an increase in the amount of public money that they receive. And I suppose we have those powerful images of this family. Not perfect. No family is. Do you think it's the money and the value for money issue that's really going to make them unstuck? I would have thought the thing which,

if the monetary does come unstuck completely, it's over the issue of money and who's paying for it. We have a right to ask why that they consider themselves entitled, not merely as individuals, but as the receivers of a great deal of public benefaction and money. And I think that's something that evidently Prince William is trying to sort out. He's trying to sell off bits of the Duchy of Tormwell and give the money to good causes and all that stuff. Given that the Garter Day is a relatively recent modern phenomenon in terms of that procession,

dating back just to the 1940s despite it being an ancient order, can you see a time in which King William could say, you know, to Halwer that I'm going to go like Queen Victoria and get rid of some of the stuff. I can. And actually, over the gatta ceremony, not the trooping of the colour, that's something quite different for the reasons we've talked about

because it's the central link between Monarchy and the armed forces, which almost every member of the armed forces would want to continue. But the jarter ceremony is basically a bit of rather charming nonsense. Don't we need a bit of charming nonsense, though? What's interesting about it? I think it pulls such big crowds every year.

4,400 people applied for a ballot and came out to see that, which I thought was surprising, quite extraordinary. A lot of tourists, both British tourists within the British Isles and people from overseas, think this is beyond anything I've ever seen. It's very beautiful Windsor Castle. It's been fantastically restored and rebuilt over the last two or three hundred years. And seeing that procession of people, even if it is a lot of slightly absurd people wearing absurd hats, There's something beautiful about it. It's been so good having you, Andrew,

and thank you for sharing your amazing kind of views with us. I've just got one more question, I suppose, which is, do you think pageantry can survive in 2026 and beyond? Are we in a world that still needs it? That still wants it. Yes, I think the simple answer is I think we all love it. And not to love it shows it's like having a clothier and not understanding music. Human beings need pageantry.

And if we didn't have royal pageantry, we'd have some other sort of pageantry, which would be more tawdry. Maybe a reality TV show. So interesting. Honestly, we could talk to you for hours. Thank you. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. Well, that's all from us this week. A big thank you to Ian Wilson for joining us to unpick it all.

And you can look out for Andrew's new book, The Wise and Their Works. Angie, tell us a bit about that. The Wise and Their Works in my book are the people who set up the great exhibition of 1850. above all Prince Albert but also Sir Henry Cole and with the money they made entirely private money which they put in themselves from that exhibition we can step out of South Kensington Station which they had built

and see the Natural History Museum the Victorian Albert Museum the Imperial College which is the best science the university in the world it all came from them and the reason we've got that splendid collection of museums and tremendous contributions to our culture came from the great exhibition of 1851. That's what the book's about.

Well, I can't wait to read it. Sounds fascinating. So, Royal, where were you? Why were you missing trooping the colour? On the day of all days. I miss trooping the colour for the first time in my royal career because I was riding in a race at York Racecourse. And it was called...

It was called the Macmillan ride of their lives. And you had the ride of your life because he won. I did. Congratulations. Thank you very much. That's amazing. And can you still sponsor you? You can.

Yes, the link's open for a while. All the money goes. towards McMillan Cancer Support, of which the King is patron, and you can sponsor me at my Just Giving page. Great cause. But if you enjoyed listening to this episode with Andrew, do subscribe to the Royals wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube, on the Times Royals channel.

And please rate, review and share the show. It really does help others find us. And make sure you come back next week. The pageantry may be behind us, but we're going to be looking under the hood of the Monarchy's finances when we attend the first. formal renewal of the sovereign grant. And we'll be here with all the behind-the-scenes reaction, data and analysis of what it means for the public purse. But until then, thanks for joining

us on the Royals and we'll see you next week.