[October Freebie!] Royal Rota 101 & The Series Premiere of Princess Diana (SERIES)
UNLOCKED post - Royal Women & The Rags: Part 2 of a Multi-Part Series
Since I can’t hand out candy, my little Halloween treat is an unlocked paid tier post for you (zero chance of rotting your teeth, although remember to unclench your jaw to prevent grinding.) I hope you enjoy this try before you subscribe [to the paid and founding tier if you so choose.]
The relationship between the Royal Family and the British media is a symbiotic one. They rely on each other for survival, complicated even further by the fact that the royals are, in part, a taxpayer-funded institution. Before we dive back in, a quick detour about the British Monarchy’s “press pool”—for a lack of a better term—the Royal Rota.
Monarchy and media is a long, winding, toxic love affair.. Historically, portraiture or coins were a popular way to share the RF with the masses. Queen Victoria — the great-great grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II — became the first to feature in newsreels, giving new access to the people and their sovereign. On Christmas Day 1932, the British people got to hear their sovereign, King George V, become the first British Monarch to deliver a live radio address. Two decades later, King George’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, would become the first British Monarch to have a televised coronation in June 1953. (I’ve left out King Edward—Elizabeth’s uncle, and Wallis Simpson intentionally, I’ve already done a deep-dive on their media relationship in a previous series you can find here.)
The media relationship was chugging along, until a 19-year-old entered the picture and caught everyone off guard. Diana, like the rest of the royal family, believed that after the excitement of her 1981 nuptials to Charles died down, so too would the attention.
Everyone—even the media were— ‘caught unawares by the Princess Diana phenomenon’. The demand for Di made royal engagements (visits to patronages, ribbon cuttings, etc.) a logistical nightmare. On top of that, the papers rightfully argued that taxpayers deserved to know the goings on at taxpayer funded engagements.
And so the Royal Rota was born.
The Royal Rota is Not a Catch-All Term For Royal Reporting
The Royal Rota has roughly a dozen representatives including: The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Sun, The Mirror, Express, Telegraph, Hello! (a U.K. magazine only recently allowed entry), London Evening Standard, The Times, and Sunday Times. Half of these are tabloids. So, when people say, “who cares about the tabloids anyway?” Apparently the British Royal Family.
It’s akin to The National Enquirer being included in a traveling press pool for Vice President Kamala Harris and reporting on her visit to (insert swing state)…and the next day writing an article about how she is actually animatronic and the real Kamala Harris is hidden with Jeff Bezos’ underground clock that’s supposed to last 10,000 years in West Texas. (Honestly, the W2 tax returns for being a teenaged employee at McDonald’s also could have worked here.)
It doesn’t lend itself to the most democratic of processes; it’s nearly impossible to obtain membership, plus you have to be a U.K. based outlet with a hardcopy circulation. This bars a lot of outlets and encourages gatekeeping around a family who is in the service to the entire country and the commonwealth.
Tabloid culture in the UK is very different than in the US. Roger House, associate professor in American Studies at Emerson College says, “If there is a difference between the United States and British practices, it is in the level of aggression in pursuing (or concocting) a story.” I call this creating versus reporting on a story. He goes on to say, “The British tabloids are more aggressive because they operate in a small and cut-throat media environment” [...] “Also, British social tensions over class, race, immigration, and status may provide easy targets for reporters to exploit.” This is especially true when considering how homogenous the royal reporting community is. We have seen this play out again and again with women who have married into the royal family.
The Royal Rota functions as a unit, albeit one that’s been thrown unwillingly together, sort of like Louis Pearlman and the boy bands of the 90s. The rota representative at any given engagement rotates, with the Rota Captain ultimately determining who’s on for the day. This individual attends the event, takes notes, and files them for the rest of the Rota to see (This can be an issue if someone incorrectly transcribes a quote from a royal). They’re a group, but always keeping an eye on those solo careers (ie: future interviews or books). Depending on the integrity of their work, some (most) royal reporters serve as a cog in the machine–acting more as an extended PR arm for the British Royal Family—similar to Fox News and the GOP. In his book, Endgame, former honorary royal rota representative, Omid Scobie, called out specifically Domestic Royal Rota Captain, Rebecca English at the Daily Mail and her unwillingness to publish a negative word about Camilla. Allegedly, Camilla loves to have a ‘pet’ in the media, which given her history with the media, tracks.
The Firm–the British Royal Family–is a business and the press and the royals have a shared interest in keeping the show running—and the monarchy retaining its power. That requires favorable press and a buy-in from the public. The press participating in this front-stage, backstage theatre (what the public sees and what’s hidden behind the curtains), means that important stories go unreported. Take for example the scandal involving King Charles’s charities before his May 2023 coronation. This scandal involving, “one of Charles’ charities and a Saudi billionaire, resulted in an investigation being launched by London’s Metropolitan Police Service, in which two men were questioned under caution.” It barely made a blip amidst feverish predictions over the Sussex’s attendance. Follow-up coverage – particularly from the majority of the Royal Rota – has been virtually non-existent.
What about Prince William refusing to disclose how much he voluntarily paid in taxes on his Duchy last year? If that’s a new story to you, I’m not surprised.
The unfortunate reality is that most of the reporting on this powerful public institution funded by tax-payers is either PR or reads like a soap opera script. And one of the favored tropes of a long-running soap (or any Real Housewives franchise tbh)? A new series-regular to kick off the season.
Introducing: Diana Spencer
If a young woman enters the royal family and no one is around to witness it, does it make a sound? The old “when a tree falls” idiom is partially a philosophical question. It’s about the role of the observer and the perception of reality. For Lady Diana Spencer, when she arrived at Clarence House–residence of the late Queen Mother (Queen Elizabeth II’s mother) –no one was there to witness her arrival except..a servant. It was a servant who showed Diana to her first-floor bedroom the night before her life was irrevocably changed. Not even her husband-to-be thought it necessary to greet his future bride. So much for Diana’s on the job training. February 24th 1981, the night before the engagement announcement, Diana packed a bag and left the flat she shared with her girlfriends–and along with it a fleeting taste of independence, for a new gilded cage.
Lady Diana Spencer was born July 1st 1961, the youngest daughter of Viscount and Viscountess Althorp. The Spencers had money and a grand home near Sandringham, one of the royal family’s country homes. (By country home I mean estimated 100-200 rooms on 20,000 acres. How quaint!) The Spencers did socialize with the royal family on occasion. They were regularly invited to Sandringham for a holiday viewing of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that Diana absolutely loathed (my half-British childhood friend made me watch that movie once and, same girl, same).
Diana’s childhood was an unhappy one; her mother left the family when Diana was 6–her parents later divorced–and Diana and her siblings were raised by a rotating cast of nannies. After finishing school, Diana rented a flat in London with a few friends and worked several jobs as a nanny, house cleaner, and a Kindergarten teacher. Diana had barely dipped her toe into the shallow end of adulthood before her whirlwind engagement to Prince Charles, 12 years her senior.
Even being a “Lady” and finishing school couldn’t have prepared Diana for royal life, just as her grandmother had forewarned her. One of her early faux pas was wearing a black dress to a royal engagement. Charles was upset with her as black is only permitted for royals when in mourning–not that anyone told her that–but to a 19-year-old, black was the height of sophistication. No one thought that perhaps the teenager required more guidance.
Nevertheless, the public loved her. Fitting perfectly with the soap opera metaphor, a 199l British tabloid compares her 1981 arrival in the British Royal Family to, “the launch of a fresh young lead in a flagging TV series.” The series regulars, who had been there from the start, weren’t impressed. Her son, Harry, explains this in the 2023 Netflix documentary, Harry & Meghan. He stated that people marrying into the royal family are supposed to be a “supporting act”. If they outshine those born to do it, it “shifts the balance”. The Daily Mirror claimed in a 1986 article that Princess Anne was, “angry over show-stealing Diana” after lackluster coverage of her trip to Northern Ireland, while Diana had only worn a low-cut dress to attend a gala in London. It is nearly identical to what would happen to Meghan decades later. The Daily Beast observed the growing attention placed on the Sussex’s in October 2018 with a piece titled, “Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are Wildly Popular. That Could Be a Problem” after their successful Australia tour. It harkened back to Diana’s first overseas tour to Australia and New Zealand. Royal watchers groaned when Diana didn’t get out of the car on their side to greet them and instead, got stuck with Charles. Between Charles’s jealousy, Diana’s bewilderment over the attention, plus battling morning sickness, Diana felt like she had been thrown in the deep end. “They’d be there to criticize me,” Diana would say of the royal family, but never to say, “Well done.”
Being “too good” at the job as a negative, crystallized for Meghan after an event attended by all senior royals—including the Queen—saw Meghan dominating the press coverage. Harry reflected on this moment in Harry & Meghan when a distraught Meghan, seeing her face on the front pages, looked at him and said, “This isn’t my fault.” “I know”, he somberly replied, “My mum felt the same way.” It echoed Diana’s words from decades prior, “I understood the jealousy [Charles’s] but I couldn’t explain that I didn’t ask for it.”
But even Diana would become old news, wielded by the media in a new way with the arrival of her future sister-in-law on the scene: Sarah Ferguson. Coming soon…
-Meredith