Thread by @garius

Agree.

The Queen has saved AND destroyed the monarchy. She forged it into something fit for the 20th Century by linking it to generational support of an individual, not the office.

But her long reign has robbed Charles AND William of their chance to build generational bases.

https://twitter.com/prodigalbum/status/1368843590928072705

The Mail/Tabloid response right now is all:

BUT THE QUEEEEN!

That's fatal for it as institution, in its current form. The Sussex disaster has highlighted that keeping the EXISTING generational support (Boomers, high-end Xers) is incompatIble with support from Xennial and below.

You can't build a new form of monarchy when your powerbase is the Daily Mail comment section. You can only prolong the old one.

And that means when change DOES come, you have no control over the direction it takes.

The Firm got gifted a chance to pivot, and missed it.

I rolled out the old joke about strange women in lakes throwing swords earlier, but in reality the British monarchy since the 50s has been dependent on one women wielding patronage and press access like a scythe.

And she's REALLY GOOD AT IT.

But every time she's let Charles have a go at wielding patronage, he's fucked it up, Andrew should AT THE VERY LEAST be under investigation and everyone knows it, and William is borderline competent at it, at best

The irony is the one who's turned out to be decent at it is Harry

And that's the problem. I used to joke that Harry, true to his name, was always the mostly likely to accidentally break the monarchy. Either by invading France or starting a new religion again

Instead he's done it by wanting to be a decent, normal human being. Not an institution