The beginning of the end for the monarchy?

While the nation comes to terms with the death of the Queen Mother, it is quite natural that some people should have asked whether this is the beginning of the end for the British monarchy. To some people, evidently, she seemed not only immortal, but also an incarnation of the spirit of monarchy itself. Several voices have been heard to put the question, gingerly, gently, but clearly enough - was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in fact the linchpin holding together the whole show? Without her, will the modern constitutional monarchy in Britain begin to unravel?

The answer to this is a clear negative. If for any reason in the years to come the monarchy is weakened, or even abolished, this will not be because a much-loved royal personage has died at the age of 101. In fact, with the greatest respect to her memory, one can say that the very qualities and values which made her such a triumphantly successful and popular queen consort in the 1930s and 1940s are the ones which the modern royal family will need to discard if it is to survive in the 21st century.

The virtues of one generation become, if not the vices, then the liabilities of the next. Everyone has praised the Queen Mother for her qualities of iron resolve, steely courage and dedication to public duty. Many have rejoiced in her lavish selfindulgence, her splendid sense of style and that she gloried in the fact that she was, as well as a queen, an empress, with a huge retinue of servants and an almost Byzantine rigidity of court etiquette - lightened, of course by her sense of playfulness, but rigid nonetheless.

The Queen Mother was the woman of 1936. That was her moment. The Abdication of her brother-in-law Edward VIII, because he wished to marry a divorced woman, was the reason that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon became the Queen of England. Everyone has commented on the fact that she never forgot what a heavy burden this placed on the shoulders of her husband, who did not reach the age of 60. Whatever the reasons for the Establishment ganging up on Edward VIII - and they were complex - the events of 1936 shaped the subsequent destiny of the Royal House.

The whole raison d'etre of the monarchy was shaped by the fact that George VI was married lawfully in the eyes of the Church, and Edward VIII was not. The Church of England began with a divorce - that of Henry VIII. When the Hanoverian monarchy began, after the exile of the Stuarts, it started with a divorced king, George I. But after 1936, we had a new doctrine. Monogamy and Anglicanism became the be all and end all of the monarchy, with the strong implication that if members of the Royal Family stepped out of line in these areas, it would be the end all.Divorce, or marriage to divorced persons, or departure from the Established religion will bring down the monarchy!

That was the doctrine of 1936 and without it, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, far from being the Empress of India, would have lived and died as the Duchess of York. Wallis Simpson would have been the spirited and (I guess) popular and successful Queen of England.

The furies or gods concocted a drama of Aeschylean dimensions as their revenge. The first warning note was sounded when "mindful of the Church's teachings", Princess Margaret announced that she could not marry Group Captain Townsend - an equerry to George VI who would have made an admirable royal consort, but who happened to be divorced. Princess Margaret's own marriage subsequently foundered. Then came the next generation, with its Captain Hewitts and Will Carlings, its divorce for Charles, Andrew and Anne, its Lady Di-worship, followed by her tragic death. Meanwhile, the figure of Mrs Parker Bowles was a constant in the life of Prince Charles. How the shades of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII must smile, with sympathy mixed with schadenfreude.

In Britain today we all live with the knowledge that relationships fail. None of the sad royal marriages would have seemed important were it not for 1936.

As far as most British people are concerned, there is no reason especially why a modern constitutional monarch should not be divorced, as many of us have been. We do not care especially about the emotional preferences of the monarch and would not worry if the heir to the throne were married to the love of his life or not, so long as he was a well-balanced and sensible head of state.

Likewise, in a secular society, where the British are largely indifferent to religion, and where there are as many Muslims and Roman Catholics as there are practising Anglicans, only a few diehards really believe in an Established Church. It is an albatross round the monarchy's neck, and would certainly-hasten its end were Prince Charles and his sons be forced to continue with it. We do not care, most of us, whether Prince William marries a Jew, a Catholic or "a perfectly sensible agnostic like everyone else" (to use Ivy Compton Burnett's phrase).

In fact, the values of 1936 which the Queen Mother so bravely embodied, and which she insisted on maintaining, would destroy the monarchy in the 21st century. Rather than an ironhard set of values, we need a flexible set of values. Rather than an exclusive Anglicanism, we need a secularisation of the Crown so that all the people of Britain, of whatever faith or none, can view the monarch as their symbolic figurehead. Rather than exclusive monogamy, we are happy for the royals to have private lives which are truly private - let them be gay, bisexual, much divorced, anything they like.

Courage, rock-like devotion to public duty, grandeur - they were virtues once. Now, we would like a flexible institution which was adapted to a changed Britain and which did not place intolerable personal strain on whichever poor sap inherits the Crown when the present Queen, through death or abdication, finally relinquishes it.

In their love and gratitude to the Queen Mother, the Royal Family will be thankful, that when they bury her next Tuesday, they can also lay to rest the spectres and obsessions of 1936.