Can the monarchy survive the collapse of public respect?

From the Edwardian scandal to the recent Andrew affair, the British monarchy survives by managing its legitimacy rather than earning respect.

Every royal scandal invites the same historical analogy. Some will refer to the reign of Charles I in the 1600s and speak of a crisis and constitutional breaking points. This comparison flatters the drama of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, but misses the underlying issue. The modern British monarchy doesn’t usually face any revolutionary threats like it has in the past – its power has been greatly diminished over time – but it faces something more subtle and something that’s happening more often within Britain: the collapse of public tolerance for the behaviours of the elite.

And the appalling behaviour of Mountbatten-Windsor – allegedly – is not a recent development but part of a precedent that has been established for some time. In 1870, the Prince of Wales – who went on to become Edward VII – appeared in a divorce case amid rumours of sexual impropriety, and was later a part of the baccarat affair, a card-cheating scandal that ended up in court. The future king was forced to give evidence as a witness, a humiliation that exposed the privilege of aristocracy to the general public. The issue was never just about gambling, it was the suspicion that elites always closed ranks around their own. The institution would always absorb the embarrassment, time would pass, and then the Crown would endure. The lesson was that scandal could be survived if it remained focused on the personal, rather than constitutional issues.

What separates that world from the present is not simply morality but the issue of judgement. Edward’s humiliation occurred in a courtroom and then dissipated through manufactured Victorian discretion. These modern scandals operate in a different way. The judgement is now social rather than legal and through the court of public opinion: a permanent public verdict formed through media saturation, the memory that exists online forever, and a culture that increasingly assumes institutions protect their own until forced otherwise. Mountbatten-Windsor’s fall shows this shift very clearly.

The abdication of Edward marked the moment when an older model of damage control failed. Private life veered too closely to public duty, and the opposition from the government of the day became too great. This crisis in 1936 didn’t cause the destruction of the Crown but it did create a new and more modern survival strategy: when a royal becomes the problem, the monarchy must separate itself from the royal. That lesson sits behind every modern-day response to royal controversy, and that’s exactly what Kings Charles had done today.

What has changed the most since those earlier scandals is the disappearance of public deference as a default political emotion. The post-war monarchy relied on a culture that separated private behaviour from the public role, and on a media environment willing – or pressured into – to maintain that separation. The collapse of that understanding has been slow and cumulative, rather than sudden but the exposure of institutional failures across politics, media and public life has produced a public mood less willing to assume that authority deserves protection, just because it’s a long-established authority.

The shift in perceptions after the Jimmy Savile scandals of 2012 has crystallised this wider change. Institutions such as the BBC that were once seen as reputable and capable of self-regulation came to be viewed as organisations that protected insiders, until they were forced to act otherwise and came begging for public forgiveness. The monarchy, though constitutionally unique and obviously different to the BBC, operates within this same social climate. Like the other institutions that have suffered ignominy, the monarchy is being judged by the same expectations of accountability and a speed of response that now applies to governments, corporations and political parties.

This has altered the modern political calculations around scandals. Earlier generations of royalty could rely on time and silence, or come out with statements about annus horribilis, and then expect that everything would all go away. But that silence doesn’t work anymore – reputation now relies on the speed of the response, rather than evasiveness or just keeping quiet about it. Institutions – even the royal family – can’t survive anymore by appearing untouchable but by demonstrating that they are no longer going to engage in the practice of defending the indefensible.

In this sense, this Mountbatten-Windsor affair is more about the convergence of monarchy with modern institutional politics, and less about royal exceptionalism and mysticism of the Crown. Governments will discard ministers to protect the Cabinet, even if Prime Ministers would usually prefer tooth extraction than giving up a scandalous but loyal colleague. Parties move quickly against liabilities to preserve their own credibility. Corporations will always remove executives to defend the trust in their brand and ultimately protect their profits. The Crown is now just following the same logic: individuals become expendable in order to maintain the institution. It’s just surprising that it’s taken so long for this particular institution to realise this.

This helps explain why the current crisis with Mountbatten-Windsor is unlikely to produce the kind of disruption to the monarchy that has been predicted – they’ve already internalised the lessons from the past. Where once it defended offensive individuals in the name of royal dignity, it now distances itself in the name of survival. The role of King Charles in this sense is more about maintaining stability while the public expectations around accountability continue to become more demanding.

The more interesting question is not whether a particular scandal will end the monarchy – history suggests that it won’t – but whether the Crown can operate in a political culture that no longer provides stability. For most of the twentieth century, the monarchy benefited from an assumption of the idea that it would always be there, like a permanent fixture. That assumption has weakened, not because republicanism has all of a sudden become fashionable, but because authority of all kinds has become unstable. Only the institutions that are capable of stability, correction and self-restraint will be the ones which survive.

The deeper shift might be generational, as public attention is increasingly focusing on who is in the succession plan, rather than who is in the position right now. This does not necessarily weaken the monarchy; it may in fact be part of how it stabilises itself. By allowing expectation to drift toward the future, the institution is reducing pressure on the present. The politics of monarchy is beginning to resemble the politics of party leadership: a legitimacy managed through careful transitions, rather than dramatic and instant change.

In Australia, these episodes are important not because of fascination with the lives of the royals but because Australia has inherited the constitutional consequences of how the monarchy manages its own legitimacy. The Crown in Australia is almost abstract – it’s a legal and constitutional factor, rather than a daily presence overlooking the realm – yet it’s a symbolism that is continuing to shape debates about constitutional change, a move to a republic, and national identity.

Of course, Australian republicanism has rarely been advanced on legal argument alone, it’s more about an emotional pull, and it rises and falls with perceptions that occur in other places. When the monarchy appears stable, the question becomes irrelevant and fades away; when it seems fragile or mired in controversy – as it undoubtedly is at the moment – the debate about republicanism returns.

Although Australia’s own political culture has become more stable since the 2022 federal election, it has more or less travelled in the same direction as Britain. Respect and deference to institutions has weakened, and trust has become more conditional. The monarchy in this current environment doesn’t exist as a unique and untouchable body, but just another entity that is now subject to the same scrutiny as every other. And how it responds doesn’t only affect Britain, but Australia as well, especially if these inherited constitutional arrangements can no longer be justified and feel like they no longer belong.

This Mountbatten-Windsor affair is resonating in Australia because it’s a test of whether the monarchy can still perform what Australians tend to value the most in it – especially conservatives – the quiet continuity that creates stability. And it can’t be argued that the monarchy does create stability in Australia, when it’s clearly unstable in Britain: it’s an argument that doesn’t make sense, and it’s an issue that will create a new energy for the supporters of republicanism, without even lifting a finger.

The question for Australia might be less about loyalty or abolition, and more about timing, remembering that the death of Queen Elizabeth II was meant to be the opportunity for a change in Australia. The future of the Crown in Australia probably won’t be decided by scandal alone, but by whether the institution can continue to appear as a stable abstraction in a political culture increasingly impatient with inherited authority. The real question isn’t so much about whether the Crown can survive scandal. It’s whether any institution, monarchy included, can rely on loyalty once the deference and respect has gone.