The Royals Revealed: Succession: The Royal Bloodline - British Royal Documentary

royal succession has been the epicenter of some of the biggest scandals in history most of the peaks and troughs of the monarchy's existence have been predicated on crises involving eligible children or fights over who should exceed the throne there's been abdication enemy blood relations george v he is cousins with nicholas the tsar in russia he is cousins with the kaiser and teenage ascensions victoria could have had to have an enormous sense of strength to integrate those two parts i'm now queen and i'm coming into my own womanhood that takes some doing so as rule commentators dispel the myth of the monarchy if you're a child in the royal family and you're hoping to grow up and go to an ordinary school you can forget it they ended up with the king doing the conga around the state rooms of buckingham palace experts will break down key archive from crucial moments in royal history it was a fairy tale created by the grimm brothers anybody entering the royal circles needs to come with their a game so prepare to discover what actually happens when blue blood runs red what have you been doing in here all day this is the royals revealed [Music] this episode will reveal just how important succession is to the royals elizabeth she knew that her situation was a very young woman becoming the monarch of what was still then a pretty big empire paralleled her ancestor queen victoria and although the monarchy may seem stable enough today she wants to go down in history as an extraordinary monarch and she will we have become used to seeing the traits that she uses as being primarily regal and idealistically regal in a way we tend not to question them very much do the next in line need to learn the lessons of the royal bloodline i think abdication remains a dirty word in the queen's vocabulary because she still blames edward viii for thrusting her father onto the throne and effectively blames that for his premature death henry viii had loads of sons out of wedlock and we even had a situation in which james ii when his wife was pregnant everyone said it was a fake bump to avoid making the same mistakes in the future [Music] he knows exactly his position when he becomes sovereign that he's got to put up and shut up in so many words the queen has been the ultimate constant in british life and that of course puts pressure on everyone that follows her to do just as good a job on the 2nd of june 1953 the world rejoiced at the coronation of a new queen coronation in 1953 was a tremendous morale booster there were street parties up and down the country there were beacons up and down the countries everywhere you looked there was flags there was bunting there was happiness people were happy because it was a terrific day one of the most important coronations of the last century given that it's led to this record-breaking reign by by elizabeth nearly seven decades on it's almost impossible to conceive that there was a time when she may not even have taken up the mantle of monarch elizabeth ii was brought up as a little girl who was never intended to be queen her life was one to be of an aristocratic marriage on a bigger state in the country and everything changed when she was 10 when her uncle edward viii abdicated he risks the power and the glory of his position and creates the greatest british crisis in centuries as he clashes with cabinet and parliament the duke of york is next in line for the british throne and next to him in succession is his eldest daughter the princess elizabeth shown here with her father and mother she was just a little girl and she and her sister margaret were at home and they heard people shouting outside and they went to ask a footman what's happening and the footman said your uncle edward viii is abdicated and your father is george vi and margaret said to elizabeth does that mean you'll be queen now and elizabeth said i i suppose so princess elizabeth to go from being third in line to air aged only ten must have felt quite destabilizing because i'm wondering whether the behavior of those around her would have shifted gear because she'd have gone from being an aristocrat minding her own business to suddenly in the spotlight and the the attention on her to groom her behavior for her path to the throne would have been of paramount importance however within the family there had always been a precautionary nod to the notion of a potential succession edward viii was considered a bit of a playboy and there wasn't much prospect of him marrying and having children when elizabeth was a young woman george vi mindful of this didn't necessarily think that he would take the throne but thought that the throne would pass from her his brother to his daughter so elizabeth did have lessons in constitutional history and forged a bond with figures like winston churchill even as a child because there was this sense before even george vi became king that she would be next in line now a lot of that framework and structure may very well be about protocol how to behave which knives and forks all that kind of stuff how to you know greet heads of state what might not get as much attention is her emotional psychological well-being because this is still a little girl growing up in this environment where suddenly she's got a lot more to think about and at 10 years old what are you thinking about hanging out with your sister maybe hanging out with your friends and thinking about playing when elizabeth was growing up she would have sensed that what you can do and what you can't do is very clearly defined she couldn't mix with people outside the royal circle as elizabeth watched her father take his reluctant place in the line of succession it was a time of mixed feelings particularly towards her uncle edward so you definitely see i think a general resentment in the whole country of edward viii of abdicating but also within the feelings of elizabeth ii she really did feel that her uncle had left them in the lurch had left her father doing a job he perhaps wasn't entirely suited for but in the long successional history of the monarchy george vi certainly wasn't the first to ascend the throne in remarkable [Music] circumstances 1937 marked a milestone in british constitutional history as after the controversy of edward yates abdication a confused nation finally got back some stability with george vi coronation and his young daughter was now next in succession there was a sense once he became king and he knew that princess elizabeth's destiny was to exceed the throne after him that he decided to prepare her by sharing the contents of his red boxes of state papers and effectively co-opting her into his role as king so she would know what she was in for so from princess elizabeth becoming air at this point may not have been as daunting the more daunting path was for her dad who'd gone from being spare to now being air and he would have felt all those pressures she may well have felt shielded and protected because her dad's in the spotlight and she may as may have also felt you know there's time on my side i can just focus on growing up and waiting another 20 30 40 years before i have to you know ascend to the throne so for her it would have been a very different journey at that particular point however as the king's health worsened it didn't seem likely elizabeth would get much time to prepare for her destiny it's very difficult to believe that she wasn't aware that for for the last two or three years of his life that he could die at any time he'd had one lung removed he was a heavy smoker i mean he was very very weak and ill but and i think also elizabeth she knew that her situation as a very young woman becoming the monarch of what was still then a pretty big empire paralleled her ancestor queen victoria who became queen at a very young age and was remarkable in very quickly getting a grip on what was seen as you know in victorian times an even more difficult task for a young woman george passed away in 1952 and at just 25 elizabeth became queen father's death was a tremendous shock it would be a shock to anybody to any child losing losing their dad or losing their mum the shock of her father's death was trauma enough then elizabeth had to step into becoming queen at the age of only 25 these are two monumental events in a person's life and i cannot imagine what it must have been like to feel the pressure and the responsibility of taking on the crown decades later the controversy surrounding her uncle hasn't been forgotten i think abdication remains a dirty word in the queen's vocabulary because she still blames edward viii for thrusting her father onto the throne and effectively blames that for his premature death however in a law dating back to the norman conquest if instead of a younger sister margaret she'd had a brother he would have taken the crown until 2013 you could have six royal daughters and they would all be deposed if number seven child was a son even if he was a baby the succession act of 2013 effectively ends the sexist approach to monarchs taking the throne it was enacted under the coalition with a view to the fact that the duke and duchess of cambridge were going to start a family of course in the end it became irrelevant because prince george was the firstborn son and therefore it hasn't been needed he was briefly in the background but not for long george alexander louis prince of cambridge and third in line to the throne is now three months old and clearly growing fast but had george been a daughter i think the cambridges particularly would have wanted to have insisted that that girl inherited the throne and wasn't superseded by a younger brother because it just would have seemed frankly very victorian to do so if we crystal ball gaze and look ahead to 20 or 30 years time when george gets married if he has a daughter first then his daughter will be in line of succession irrespective of whether a son came second so it was a good move the overdue modernization doesn't end there it wasn't that long ago in fact in recent memory that the idea of a royal marrying a divorcee was seen as a no-no and um how far we've come we know that from the marriage of prince harry to meghan markle that it's perfectly acceptable for very senior members of the royal family to marry both divorcees people of color the queen is the first to admit she doesn't change but she adapts to meet the needs of the 21st century and the world has changed dramatically since she came to the throne in 1952 however the monarchy is still far from adapting to all societal child-rearing trends convention dictates that so-called bastard children to use the old-fashioned terminology don't have equal right to those who have been conceived and born in wedlock now that might seem extremely old hat and traditional but it's the way it's happened for centuries and in fact most of the peaks and troughs of the monarchy's existence have been predicated on crises involving eligible children or indeed fights over who should exceed the throne henry viii had loads of sons out of wedlock and we even had a situation in which james ii when his wife was pregnant everyone said it was a fake bump and that the baby was snuck in in a hot water bottle because she'd never have a real child inside the wedlock so the british monarchy's big problem has been trying to have a child on the right side of the sheets [Music] many have claimed that they are born of royal blood most startlingly in recent years u.s publication the globe alleged prince charles and lady diana had a secret daughter called sarah i must confess i have no knowledge of a secret daughter called sarah born to princess diana and prince charles as alleged by the globe i think that's just perhaps a headline too far a conspiracy theory that has been widely debunked and isn't given much respect the monarchy has clearly stabilized since but some of her predecessors had a fight to get to the throne in the first place not least much heralded leader queen victoria queen victoria was someone who really turned the fortunes of the monarchy around and victoria was also seen as the monarch of empire this was the moment in which the british empire became the race for land oppression conquest looting and victoria was this queen over it all yet photos from the latter half of the 19th century don't exactly radiate an effervescent leader i think like all victorian photographs they probably took about half an hour to take the photograph so they're quite carefully posed and i think people get this image of queen victoria with her rather stern look and the black clothing and the upswept hair her personality was in many ways quite the opposite victoria was also the queen of spin she recognized the importance of newspapers of image and victoria's image of herself the pictures that she produced of her really they created this vision of a virtuous perfect queen the power victoria's image was such that one picture of victoria and albert with a christmas tree meant that the christmas tree went viral and after that everyone had to have a christmas tree when they never really had one before victoria made herself to use very modern parlance into her influencer however this influence victoria held over her empire and her public only came to be after perhaps the most complex and unlikely route to succession in the history of the monarchy queen victoria was never meant to come to the throne you have to go back to her grandfather george iii who had seven sons six daughters and by 1800 this lot seven sons six daughters all adults have produced between them 56 illegitimate children and one legitimate ed and this one child princess charlotte she died just after childbirth and without princess charlotte there was not a single other child so the race was on for someone to create a new heir all the uncles all the sons of george iii suddenly thought i need to get rid of my mistress marry a german princess as a protestant and then have a child because if i have a child i'll get loads of money and pay off all my debts so it was pretty mercenary really and an unlikely sire came to the forefront as edward the duke of kent set out on a marital quest he's only really got a small potential amount of possibilities she has to be protestant she has to be royal and she has to be of childbearing age also she has to be willing to marry a man who's nearly twice her age because he's 50 and he was pretty lucky to get victoire of lining a young woman who was 30 with two children which proved that she could have children and unlike many of the other royals they did also manage to have a legitimate child victoria was born at kensington palace in may 1819. she was well a healthy little baby but so far from the throne she's a girl and she's the daughter of the fourth son no one's ever going to see her come to the throne but her father said my brothers are not so strong as i am the throne will come to me and my children he died just eight months later his father george the third six days after that meaning baby victoria was third in line to the throne before long she'd be first queen victoria became here to the throne at such a young age because her various uncles were dying simple as that she was living at kensington palace and she was informed that she was now queen victoria and that's how she came to the throne at such a young age george iv had been next to go leaving brother number three now william iv in power with victoria only 11 and on course for the throne her mother and her advisor john conroy set about preparing for her destiny she was given very strict structure she was raised in this kensington system of education that was devised by her mother's advisor conroy and that gave her limited access to other children how she was educated was controlled and interestingly victoria shared a bedroom with her mother until she was 18 years old so think about that very hyper protected but were the guardians eyes on a greater prize all along what john conroy and victoria's mother wanted is a victoria to come to the throne as a child so that they would be the power behind the throne and so you have this incredible fight between mother and daughter about when victoria comes to the throne if you think about the relationship between victoria and her mother in today's terms she'd be described as a helicopter mother very controlling very overprotective almost to the point of smothering and from victoria's point of view as a growing girl into a young woman she probably felt like she couldn't breathe and this kind of level of control can cause a real adversarial relationship between mother and daughter so i wonder whether there was some kind of battle between the two of them going on battle for independence by victoria and battle for control by the mother this is how i want you to be molded fortunately victoria had a high-powered ally the king william iv he's on the throne and he's old and he's ill but he hates victoria's mother and he wants a throne to go to his niece to victoria that's it so he says to his doctors he basically says to his doctors just wind me up just keep me going and victoria's 18th birthday party he's too ill to go but it's a wonderful party victoria has a marvellous time and guess what her mother storms off early because victoria's 18th birthday means the end of all her mother's hopes of being power behind the throne having got his wish william iv passed on weeks later leaving the now considered adult victoria to take the this is an 18 year old girl who's just coming into womanhood finding her own voice wanting to find her own identity separate to being the child of someone and that's quite a a conflicting position to find yourself in so she would have had to have an enormous sort of sense of strength to integrate those two parts i'm now queen and i'm coming into my own womanhood and combine them together that takes some doing and there was such an avalanche of enthusiasm for her even though she was 18 even though she was female in a sexist time people thought anything has to be better than those awful awful old uncles victoria was crowned in 1838 and having latterly married prince albert of germanic aristocracy wasted little time in creating her own successional line she was a very sexual woman i mean it's almost as though she was chasing albert around the palace at some time you know trying to get a conjugal right and he was he was making excuses to sort of no i need a rest and then keeping away from it if you look back through history you've got prince albert you know you've got other consults but they've probably been known for their breeding potential victoria's first child is princess vicki and really within three months of princess vicki's birth victoria is pregnant again they have the heir who the future is the seventh he's number two and then they keep going and of course this is because for one great reason that big family is a power and for albert and victoria they want to marry their children into the other european royal families to create links to create friendships and create relationships because albert and victoria believe that if your children are married into foreign royal families then you will never ever want to go to war queen victoria had unknowingly set the stage for colossal successional damage that would have disastrous consequences for the british royal family victoria had a high-powered ally the king william iv he's on the throne and he's old and he's ill but he hates victoria's mother and he wants the throne to go to his niece to victoria that's it so he says to his doctors he basically says to his doctors just wind me up just keep me going and victoria's 18th birthday party he's too ill to go but it's a wonderful party victoria has a marvelous time and guess what her mother storms off early because victoria's 18th birthday means the end of all her mother's hopes of being power behind the throne having got his wish william iv passed on weeks later leaving the now considered adult victoria to take the reigns this is an 18 year old girl who's just coming into womanhood finding her own voice wanting to find her own identity separate to being the child of someone and that's quite a a conflicting position to find yourself in so she would have had to have an enormous sort of sense of strength to integrate those two parts i'm now queen and i'm coming into my own womanhood and combine them together that takes some doing and there was such an avalanche of enthusiasm for her even though she was 18 even though she was female in a sexist time people thought anything has to be better than those awful awful old uncles victoria was crowned in 1838 and having latterly married prince albert of germanic her own aristocracy life she was a very sexual woman i mean it's almost as though she was chasing albert around the palace at some time you know trying to get a conjugal right and he was making excuses no i need to rest and then keeping away from it if you look back through history you've got prince albert you know you've got the consoles but they've probably been known for their breeding potential victoria's first child is princess vicki and really within three months of princess vicky's birth victoria is pregnant again they have the air the future is at the seventh he's number two and then they keep going and of course this is because for one great reason that big families are power and for albert and victoria they want to marry their children into the other european royal families to create links to create friendships and create relationships because albert and victoria believe that if your children are married into foreign rural families then you will never ever want to go to war queen victoria had unknowingly set the stage for colossal successional damage that would have disastrous consequences for the british royal family [Music] queen victoria's idea of breeding harmony into europe may have spectacularly backfired but she was never very keen to promote their duo-nationality lineage in public anyway victoria and albert are very clear to say that they're a british family that they only speak english at home that they have nothing to do with germany it's just albert was from there but albert does speak german to the children and you might say it's quite a good idea after all in his view they will all end up married to german so they might as well learn how to speak to their future spouses and the royal family is really quite a german one at heart even though in public show it's always very english victoria's nine children gave her an astonishing 42 grandchildren as she set about a complicated scheme of continent-wide bloodlines queen victoria was an arch-matchmaker and she wanted all of her children married into royal families across europe of course spreading hemophilia as they went but never mind about that and you have a situation thus that all of the monarchies are even more interrelated than they ever were [Music] though her family was spreading the seed far and wide victoria herself lived a much more reclusive life after albert's death in 1861. she was desperately in love with albert her world came crashing down when albert died in the early 1860s and nobody saw sight of her except for private secretaries and her prime minister though ever the proud queen she was adamant to appear one final time in public for her diamond jubilee in 1897. by this time the lady was pretty large and so thanksgiving service at saint paul's cathedral had to be conducted with the clergy and the congregation on the steps of some pools while queen victoria remained in the carriage because she couldn't actually got out or even attempt to make the steps into some pools victoria died in 1901 but would her international royal legacy continue after victoria her son edward vii becomes king then his son george v and george v is the king for the first world war and he have a situation in which he's related to all of the royal families through his mother's matchmaking efforts he is cousins with nicholas the tsar in russia he is cousins with the kaiser unfortunately it was anything but happy families it actually accelerates and intensifies the possibility of war because all these monarchies are related and all of them are saying not just why has britain got so much they're also saying why has our relation got so much by 1917 the line of royal succession saw queen victoria's grandson george v now seven years into his reign with the world at war often during his many tours of the front his majesty went up into the danger zone and saw the field artillery at work king george v and queen mary actually started the walkabouts they went to hospitals they met the common men common women people who were fighting on the front line people who were injured people who were recuperating in hospital they were the king and queen of the people despite george's constant shows of support for his troops there was another war raging back home a direct result of queen victoria's mission to create royal allegiances all over europe the outbreak of world war one meant that many germans living in this country had been seen as really the most marvelous people to have here overnight went to enemies and overnight were hated and lost their jobs and you actually see incidents in the early days of world war one in which the royal family are actually reported as spies there was one in which there was said to be suspicious lights coming out of windsor castle which was signaling apparently to german u-boats now the police investigated and found it was just the vicar driving home from windsor castle but still there was this appetite this obsession this anti-german suspicion this febrile terror of germans all across the country remarkably george had visited germany as recently as 1913 to spend time with their leader kaiser wilhelm ii who also just so happened to be his cousin the final straw came in june 1917 when an airstrike killed over a hundred londoners and it was revealed the plane was called agotha the surname sax cobra gotha came from albert because victoria married albert and took his surname and so that meant that the royal family's surname was saks cobra gother when your king's got the same name on the one hand you've got a plane shooting up anything and everything because it perceives uh the british and empire forces as the enemy and it was felt highly inappropriate lord stan fordham who is the king's private secretary was very good at judging the mood of the people and didn't so much suggest to the king said to the king the name has to be changed various names are talked about usually parts of the country that are debated should be buckingham could it be oxford britannia was even thought about which have been highly appropriate but in the end windsor is plumped upon they choose the name windsor a completely fake made-up name simply because they like windsor castle just four days after the gotha airstrike george v had officially changed his name the house of windsor remained as other monarchies throughout europe fell but this would have a knock-on effect to future royal generations with the royal houses of europe um having been largely wiped out after the first world war um the the the the number of possible suitors for elizabeth uh and indeed margaret was was greatly reduced because this was a time when um royal princesses were expected to marry um princes uh they you know it's not the modern era where there were it was possible to marry someone like meghan markle or kate middleton fortunately elizabeth found her greek prince and julie ascended the throne and she has made the role of monarch her own i think we think she's perfect for the job of queen because we've only seen the queen being queen so that's what the job looks like and in a way we have become used and programmed to a certain extent as to seeing the traits that she uses as being primarily regal and and idealistically regal in a way we tend not to question them very much even in her 90s the queen shows no signs of stepping down the queen is a deeply religious woman who swore her coronation oath before god and would do nothing to end that vow and so while she is of sound mind and body she will continue to be queen i think she feels she's almost living in a sort of a heroic age she wants to go down in history as an extraordinary monarch and she will [Music] however one day the inevitable must happen i think that we underestimate the destabilizing effect the queen's death will have on the nation there isn't anybody on earth now that doesn't remember either a princess elizabeth or a queen on the throne that continuity and stability that the queen has provided um has brought great comfort to not only people in the uk but across the world plans have already been made for the queen's funeral though only a select few can know what they entail journalists are privy to the plans but we're not allowed or authorized to discuss them in public out of respect to the monarch but also because we've been given the plans off the record in order to prepare from a broadcasting and media point of view for what will happen all the royal deaths are very stringently planned for or the funerals are very triggeredly planned for with codings with setups and in fact that was the case for diana's funeral that it was based on the plan for the queen mother's funeral because of course they hadn't planned for diana's funeral they had no idea that she died so young what we do know is that on d plus one the day after the queen's death charles will be proclaimed successor here we saw prince charles riding alone immediately behind the state coach carrying his parents an upright figure riding quietly without flamboyance charles will be automatically king but there will be a proclamation read from saint james's palace and from other parts of the country proclaiming him to be king sovereign defender of the faith and then it will be formalized at his coronation what form the coronation takes that remains to be seen there's also speculation around whether he'll actually be charles iii given what happened to one of his predecessors charles the first who had his head disconnected from his shoulders in 1649 having interfered with parliament it's a very difficult choice i suppose there may have been a tendency towards adopting his grandfather's name george but then we've got another king george coming down the line so that might be difficult yes albert has been mentioned he could choose another name but that might be odd because as the longest serving heir apparent in history we all know prince charles and therefore king charles seems the most natural progression but will the succession be an easy transition we know that prince charles isn't as popular as his mother and that he has enormous shoes to fill because of the unwavering way in which she has reigned for the last nearly 70 years so it's going to prove challenging he'll be a good king because he's a long time waiting for it he knows exactly what's going on in the united kingdom he knows exactly what's going on globally he knows he's been to practically every commonwealth country he's well tutored he's probably the best prepared sovereign that we've ever had however some incidents during the long wait have raised questions over his kingly credentials there was um the annual holiday of when they went skiing at clusters they they had a deal with the press and everybody knew it and we come out and we have a photograph taken and the press asks a few questions and then after that you'll leave us alone it's not a big deal really these are the ones that the royals feed off for their popularity and one of them happens to be nicholas witchell who has put in a lot of very sterling royal duty doing that charles then turns around and does the worst ventriloquist act in the world with his microphone on and starts being rude about nicolas witcher he started being the son and his sons were more like the father his candid aside to his sons really shows what's going on internally and we're given a little window into that kind of frustration irritation and i think he would have been horrified if he'd recognized in that moment that the whole world could hear what he was really thinking and at that moment you just want to say to charles inside voice inside voice i don't think that's the kind of side to the roles that we should be seeing we probably know that it's there but it puts them in the worst light the minute their backs are turned and the smiles turn off they're slagging everybody off and talking about it was almost like that little man you know it's like that wasn't another human being really and i think that was a very dangerous thing to do charles has also been accused of meddling in politics with a so-called black spider memos to where he aired his views to ministers on environmental and economic matters as uh heir apparent you would expect him to win off letters to ministers you'd expect him to criticize nothing government does is perfect and if he can criticize and get some answers and get some response from them what is better than doing nothing about it it actually shows the man for what he is passionate about the country there is this sense all the time that you have duty comes first always duty first and your own life your personal life either has to be sort of hidden away or it has to be looked at by the general public and judged you've got to be accountable because you're being paid by the taxpayer and you've got this extraordinary unique position of responsibility and he's made very clear in a documentary he made last year turning 70 that he knows exactly his position when he becomes sovereign that he's got to put up and shut up in so many words charles has had his fair share of controversy but is there another successional option waiting in the wings not even necessarily the one the public might expect have raised questions over his kingly credentials there was um the annual holiday of when they went skiing at clusters they had a deal with the press and everybody knew it and we come out and we have a photograph taken and chris asked a few questions and then after that you'll leave us alone it's not a big deal really these are the ones that the rules feed off for their popularity and one of them has to be nicholas witchell who has put in a lot of very sterling role duty doing that charles then turns around and does the worst ventriloquist in the world with his microphone and starts being rude about nicolas [Music] into that kind of frustration irritation and i think he would have been horrified if he'd recognized in that moment that the whole world could hear what he was really thinking and at that moment you just want to say to charles inside voice [Music] the minute their backs are turned and the smiles [Music] charles has also been accused of meddling in politics with the so-called black spider memos to where he aired his views to ministers on environmental and economic matters as uh heir apparent you would expect him to bring off letters to ministers but expect him to criticize nothing government does is perfect and if he can criticize and get some answers and get some response what is better than doing nothing about it it actually shows the man what he is [Music] and you've got this extraordinary unique position of responsibility and he's made very clear in a documentary he made last year that he knows exactly his position when he becomes charles has had his fair share of controversy but is there another successional option waiting in the wings not even necessarily the one the public might expect [Music] during any reign in the long history of the monarchy there's always been debate regarding succession and in 2019 a survey claimed nearly half of the british public want prince william to be the next king not prince charles [Music] but is he made of the right stuff william has been born and grown up with a burden of responsibility on his shoulders and a set path he needs to follow which he can't really deviate from and i think that's quite restrictive and i think there used to be a bit of jokes between him and his younger brother with harry sort of saying that he was able to get away with what he wanted because he never had to be king the only thing that i would think would be that maybe william hasn't been tested in so many situations he hasn't had a crisis in his life yet in terms of making a mistake and being able to be resilient or being unpopular or anything like that so that's slightly untested whereas i think charles has been through an absolute minefield it has been quite a bumpy ride for the monarchy uh certainly throughout throughout this reign and william knows about the the bumpy ride he knows what he's got to do and he knows he's got to steer a straight course and he will aim to do that williams certainly shares a strong bond with his grandmother they're both quite shy and introverted both quite dedicated to duty there's a sense of both fun and seriousness about them which makes them a little bit of a contradiction i think on one hand it's a relationship between granny and grandson and another it's a relationship between two different and significant generations of royalty she has a vested interest in him more so than anybody else that he actually gets it right that he learns the art of kingship he's learning it from his father but he can learn it from wise counsel from his grandmother and she's doing a lot to help him along the way if he's not sure about anything he knows that he can always go to his grandmother williams rarely put a foot wrong on his journey to the throne but there's the odd exception there was a moment where the queen appeared to admonish prince william for crouching down and talking to prince george um at trooping the colour marking her 90th birthday i think this sense that you shouldn't be crouching down on balconies or instructing children to do anything they should just be well behaved i think you can see a reflection of that generational change going on that when william was speaking to his son on the balcony at buckingham palace he was absolutely doing the right thing because he was breeding the next generation of royals but as far as the queen saw no that's the wrong thing to do because you should be standing up here and doing your duty william's regal rebuke may have seemed innocuous but shows how educating the future king hasn't been taken lightly the queen has been the ultimate constant in british life she has been this beacon of stability and continuity and that of course puts pressure on everyone that follows her to do just as good a job as he gets older there's signs of another strong female influence on william's life [Music] i think the spencer legacy and particularly the diana spencer legacy it's emerging as william gets older i love the way that it's been like seeds that are now growing and showing the best side of william he's clearly got the winds of genes and safaris a lot of his royal behavior and his sense of duty but i think there's almost an even bluer blood in there because of the aristocracy of the spencers and the way that diana translated that to modernize the royal family yet in a family of famously strong-willed females dating right back to queen victoria would another actually be the best successor i think anne has carved out a very definite role for herself and i think like her mother she has put duty very much in the spotlight you know she rolls her sleeves up and she gets stuff done i have to say that in capital letters i've never seen anybody as stoic as princess anne she's old school royal and she has the look of somebody that even if they accidentally chop their leg off they'd just get up and laugh about it and you know carry on with what they were doing she's like the the night in um the monty python film you know she she would never complain about anything she's a real trooper i'm not necessarily sure what the queen would have preferred princess anne to be queen rather than prince charles b king but she certainly has the queen's daughter her most trusted confidant may i invite you to i think in the absence of her mother the queen mother and her sister princess margaret anne has grown closer to her mother over the years always associated with being more of a daddy's girl but actually she's been a stalwart support of her mother but do the magisterial similarities go even further back yes there would be a lot of similarities between her and the queen victoria school of raws not just that but in other aspects of the personality as well there's that sort of uncompromising uh dress and styling that and amway's clothes that she probably bought in 1970 something or other you know she's she swept her hair up at some point when she was about 19 and it stayed up there it's i'm not going to bend and flex to fashion like queen victoria i think outwardly hugely intimidating though should the monarchy be looking forward and not back to the bloodlines of yesteryear it is unique that we have this monarchy in the 21st century that is recognized throughout the world but i think i believe this sovereign queen elizabeth ii is very much in touch with the people you've only got to look at the the the address she gave on april the 5th over covet 19 when she uttered the famous phrase we will see our friends again we will see our family again we will meet again that's how much in touch she is with the people people felt very comforted by that this isn't born out of political ambition or personal ambition it's born out of a desire to make sure that when the chips are down the nation can be rallied and that is very much taken from the queen mother and george vi book of boosting british morale and during the second world war when frankly the nation needs their help they're enduring you know we've had them a long time and they are also willing to hold on to tradition while also behaving in progressive ways that we can then relate to and as the queen has always said we're here for as long as the public want us to be here and in the absence of the public calling for there to be a republic and for an abolition of the monarchy they will continue and so she overtook queen victoria's 63 years on the throne to become the uk's longest-serving monarch in 2015 elizabeth ii displayed a characteristic modesty any future successor will be wise to replicate inevitably a long life can pass by many milestones my own is no exception but i thank you all and the many others at home and overseas for your touching messages of great [Music] kindness [Music] you

Channel: British Documentary

Views: 73,463

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Id: yBCCUS4SyZA

Length: 51min 2sec (3062 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021