It has been a turbulent few weeks for the British royal family. First Prince Harry felt compelled to issue a statement condemning the ‘wave of abuse and harassment’ which his girlfriend, the actress Meghan Markle, has been suffering at the hands of the tabloid press, as well as their comment sections and other forms of social media.
Again and inevitably it was the Daily Mail and The Sun who were primarily to blame. The Sun splashed on its front page the illiterate headline ‘Harry girl’s on Pornhub’, with the implication that Markle could be witnessed in the full throes of pornographic scenes. In fact the video sharing website merely carried clips from the legal drama Suits, which stars Markle, and is now in its sixth season on the USA Network.
With the sleazy angle all covered, the Mail was free to take a racist tack. An article on Markle’s background stated ‘Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton’. And Rachel Johnson, the equally lamentable sister of Boris – in a ludicrous comment piece which harped on the death of Princess Diana while expressing a motherly interest in Harry’s affairs – declared that having done her ‘due diligence on Miss Markle’, she was able to conclude that the Windsors stand to gain from thickening their blood with some ‘rich and exotic DNA’. Markle’s mother was caricatured as a ‘dreadlocked African-American lady from the wrong side of the tracks’.
Both papers responded to Harry’s heartfelt plea with some playground tittering, as they exclaimed ‘Look! Prince Harry really does have a girlfriend after all!’. But while readers were left to wonder whether they even kiss and stuff, the broader sympathy felt for Harry and the rest of the royal family soon dissipated, as plans were revealed concerning a ten-year refurbishment of Buckingham Palace.
As the palace is owned by the Crown rather than the Queen privately, the £369 million cost of the phased refurbishment is to come out of the Crown Estate. This is a collection of lands and properties which historically belonged to the British monarch, but which since 1760 have been managed semi-independently as one of the largest commercial portfolios in the UK. Crown Estate profits go directly to the Treasury, with the monarch receiving an annual payment, currently known as the Sovereign Grant and set at 15%.
There is no doubt that according to this long-established mechanism, the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace should be paid for by the Crown Estate. But the Royal Household stands accused of mismanaging its finances, and even endangering heritage sites and artifacts, including the Royal Collection of art. Because the royals have failed to save up any of their allowance, the Royal Trustees – who include the Prime Minister and Chancellor – are suggesting a temporary increase in the Sovereign Grant to 25%.
The somewhat simplified notion that the taxpayer is being asked, as if out of nowhere, to pay for new curtains for the Queen, understandably cause some consternation as most of Britain continues to suffer the effects of politicised austerity. A brief swing in the tenor of internet opinion, courtesy of YouTube monarchist CGP Grey, was based on an equally faulty understanding of the Crown Estate, and the absurd sense that the royal family are graciously propping up the taxpayer by declining to demand their historical properties back.
All in all however, the outcry has been loud and sustained, with more than 100,000 people signing a petition demanding that the royals pay for the refurb using their private wealth. The refit will replace ageing cables, lead pipes, wiring, and boilers, and is meant to reduce the carbon footprint of the palace – where the Queen spends a third of the year hosting events – by up to 40%.
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One of the few extended families who face more public scrutiny than the royals are the Kardashian-Jenners, and they have endured an even more torrid and high-pressured couple of months. At the start of October, in the middle of Paris Fashion Week, Kim Kardashian was bound and gagged by five men disguised as police officers, and robbed of $10 million worth of jewellery at gunpoint.
The incident caused filming for the next season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians to be placed indefinitely on hold. And perhaps the repercussions have been making their way into Kanye West’s live performances, for after causing controversy with a comment showing support for Donald Trump, cutting short a show in Sacramento following an extended rant which questioned Hillary Clinton, Jay Z, and Beyoncé, and the cancellation of a Los Angeles makeup concert, now Kanye has cancelled the remainder of the Saint Pablo tour, before being rushed to hospital suffering from exhaustion. Having commenced in August, the tour was set to continue throughout December, climaxing with a couple of nights at the Barclays Center before the turn of the year.
But who is better? The royal family or the Kardashians? The answer is: the Kardashians of course. The truth is that the royals are Kardashians for parochial Brits, something to gawp at and gossip about regardless of the details, famous for the very sake of fame. But whereas the royals have inherited their positions, the Kardashians have boldly made their own way, and the Kardashians surpass the royals in abundance when it comes to matters of style and good taste.
Let’s look at some of the evidence. Whereas the Queen is always at pains to downplay her private wealth, under the stewardship of Kris Jenner the Kardashians have become a veritable media and retail empire. Kim, Kourtney, Khloé, Kendall, and Kylie don’t only eclipse Kate and Pippa, Beatrice and Eugenie when it comes to voluptuousness and high fashion. They are multi-faceted models, designers, and actresses, with their own lines in clothing and cosmetics, fronting for some of the world’s biggest brands, their success all self-made. Leave it to the royals to wave meekly and walk with their dogs through filthy country fields, and you wouldn’t find the Kardashians posing surreptitiously for bikini-clad beach shots.
With regard to incendiary rhetoric, Prince Philip puts up a stern fight, but Kanye West has him roundly beat. In a close run race, Caitlyn Jenner edges past Camilla Parker Bowles in the sartorial stakes – and dare The Shimmering Ostrich suggest, is less damned in her day than Princess Diana was by the conservative right. While the royals lounge round Balmoral and Sandringham in their slippers, Rob Kardashian works his fingers to the bone knitting up sock after sock. And what value is a stuffy old Prince when Scott Disick, at the age of just thirty-three, trots the globe as a Lord?
Of course the royals do no line in great music. And out of deference to them, we can also put their arms deals and sex scandals to one side. The royals might be nice to look at, if straight lines and pallid complexions are your aesthetic preference, but when it comes to substance, only the Kardashians are capable of offering us something plentiful yet refined.
