Prince Philip has taken advantage of the privilege of being a mere consort and with a cheery wave of the bowler hat under torrential rain on Wednesday he retired. At least, he has given up pre-booked dates. He will still on occasion be seen out with the Queen, who doesn’t have retirement in her employment contract. His has been an extraordinary life of public service and although it would be fair to say his outlook on life is not one shared by the Guardian, it is impossible not to admire his sheer bloody-minded resilience. It is becoming the hallmark of the dynasty that he married into 70 years ago this year.
Managing extreme old age – the prince is 96 – is a new challenge for the monarchy, but only one of many that this extraordinary institution now has to confront. It is doing so with the kind of professionalism that has also become typical since its hold on popular esteem seemed genuinely challenged in the dark days between the row over the taxpayer paying for the 1992 Windsor Castle fire and the death of Princess Diana five years later. That was when the Palace, and notably Prince Charles, learned about corporate brand management, and they have become masters of its arts. That is why there is now a well-advanced exercise in brand reinvention under way. The trick is to win over a new market without alienating the old one.
The Queen and Prince Philip belong to the mid 20th century, an age that was appalled by public demonstrations of emotion, that was privately as well as publicly stoical in the face of all adversity. They had to embody and project in themselves, and in everything they did, the continuity and decency that were the justification for the survival of empire and commonwealth. Both of them are old enough to remember the abdication crisis of 1936. They would not be where they are were it not for the horror stirred in the heart of the empire by the idea of Edward VIII marrying the divorced Wallis Simpson. It is dizzying to contemplate the gulf in time and culture between the age when addressing the nation on the wireless once a year was an innovation, and having a Facebook page and Instagram account that are updated every day. This is an object lesson in the application of the key rules of reinvention: adapt, but don’t ditch the heritage; recognise how much the target market has changed; respond to the great millennial fear of missing out by making sure they can feel involved; abandon the stiff upper lip. After Princess Diana’s death, the Queen notoriously struggled to go through the motions of showing her feelings. Now the princes champion mental-health charities and hug old ladies with warmth.
This has been a time of ends and beginnings. Not only was there Prince Philip’s last hurrah; Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, has flown his last air ambulance mission. His life is now devoted to being royal. Unfinished business has been sorted. He and his brother have paid tribute to their mother in the public send-off that they were too young to give her when she died. The ITV documentary film that aired last month served as a public bookend to their terrible personal tragedy of experiencing divorce and bereavement through the claustrophobic straitjacket of a constitutional crisis.
For all its embarrassment quotient, this Sunday’s Channel 4 programme, in which footage of Diana filmed by her speech coach will be aired for the first time in Britain, also means a humiliation avoided: bad now, perhaps, but much, much worse if it were aired after Prince Charles had become king. In all this, it is the heir to the throne who is invisible. It is almost as if the plan is to present the world with a buy one, get two free monarchy. Charles the meddling monarch may be a hard sell. But throw in William and Kate too, and it’s a proposition: a brand reinvented, the future embraced but the past respected. The real questions about monarchy go beyond PR, but by straightening out their image the royals have quelled any clamour to raise them.