- 2 weeks ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:01For the royals, tradition is everything.
00:04Monarchy is about the past, the present and the future
00:07and tradition is absolutely central to that.
00:10Spectacular.
00:11All of the parading, the history, it's almost a fairytale thing.
00:15Sacred.
00:16If you were royal, you had been chosen by God and very British.
00:21Meeting the Queen is an experience
00:24that everyone will remember for the rest of their lives.
00:27Now we venture behind palace walls into the riches beyond.
00:32Not all royal jewels are the crown jewels.
00:35We know that this was a gift of love.
00:37And delve deep into rare royal records.
00:41Written in early January 1642.
00:44It's the equivalent of a live blog.
00:46This is right in the eye of the storm.
00:48To discover the untold secrets of Britain's most loved
00:52and mysterious royal traditions.
00:55He liked to show that he could control nature.
00:58It's a rich royal heritage steeped in war, intrigue and scandal.
01:04In order to get your face on this wall, you had to be somebody.
01:08Perhaps even a royal mistress.
01:10But at its heart is a deep-seated duty to the nation.
01:14Queen Elizabeth II met more people than anybody else in history.
01:19No matter what the task.
01:21As I heard him, I thought,
01:23Oh, you're not gonna like that, Charles, are you?
01:25This is how, for over a thousand years,
01:27the royals have shaped the history and traditions we know today.
01:31Tradition is what actually keeps them in power.
01:36It wouldn't be Britain if we didn't have these sorts of things.
01:39These are the secrets of the royal traditions.
01:43This time, the bloody origins of the royal tradition of honouring Britain's best.
01:57If you were distinguished in serving your king on the battlefield,
02:02then you could be conferred with a knighthood.
02:05The dangers of the royal tradition of being a court jester.
02:10If you enrage a Tudor monarch, your punishment is going to probably be physical.
02:14And the enduring royal custom that reveals an all-too-human side of the monarchy.
02:20Royalty and scandal go hand in jewelled hand.
02:29The royal calendar is packed with age-old traditional rituals and customs.
02:37Tradition and history are what makes the British monarchy special.
02:44And it really is, it's USP.
02:46I think Britain does pomp and circumstance better than any other country.
02:49And that's part of our attraction, certainly for a lot of tourists to come to this country.
02:57But there is one royal tradition that many of us dream may one day happen to us.
03:03And that's receiving an honour.
03:06There's about 2,000 honours handed out every year.
03:10Broadly speaking, in two honours lists.
03:12In the New Year's honours list and the birthday honours,
03:15which are published the night before the official birthday of the sovereign in June.
03:21And I got it for fashion and for performing arts and charity.
03:25But what I'm most proud of is that I'm an ambassador for Britain.
03:29The modern tradition of handing out honours to the British public
03:33has its roots in a much older custom.
03:37Second party, royal silence!
03:41Something that's still celebrated annually in the somewhat bewildering ritual
03:46known as the Garter Day procession.
03:49The Order of the Garter's your big daddy of orders
03:53and the oldest one tracking way back to the 14th century.
03:56Established by Edward III in 1348, this most senior of knighthoods has its roots in the blood and guts of ancient battlefields.
04:09The Order is about rewarding your most loyal men, your leading knights,
04:17the individuals who are laying down their life and land for service to the king.
04:22Once awarded only to royalty and aristocracy, this most ancient of honours has evolved over time into the modern system we know today.
04:35If you move down through the centuries, you see other orders being established and created which speak to an inclusivity.
04:46Probably the best example of this is in 1917 when you see George V establishing a new order.
05:06The First World War was raging and there had been many acts of gallantry and heroism
05:10and people were really putting themselves on the line for the war effort and that needed recognition.
05:17Men of every class are serving and giving their lives for king and country.
05:26And therefore you have the establishment of the Order of the British Empire.
05:30This inception of a new award to recognise people was really a moment of national patriotism but it also helped remind people that the king was there.
05:44As head of the nation, he saw what was going on and he wanted to recognise the everyday person.
05:49There are five honours within the Order of the British Empire. The top two are knighthoods or damehoods.
06:01And the remaining three honours are CBEs, OBEs and MBEs, short for commander, officer or member of the British Empire.
06:11The introduction of that honours system had a revolutionary effect in terms of binding hearts and minds to the royal machine.
06:24Although the honours system began as a way to keep noblemen loyal to the crown,
06:29these days the closest a member of the royal family gets to choosing most recipients is pinning the honour on their chest.
06:36I think there's a great misconception that when you're given an OBE, CBE, whatever, someone at the palace, well probably the king or the queen,
06:45oh they're doing a good job, let's award them this, that or the other, that doesn't happen.
06:49The awards come from Downing Street.
06:52Even the government's ability to bestow patronage has been limited in recent years because you now have the House of Law's Appointments Commission.
06:59Now they warn that somebody might be either limited risk, medium risk or very high risk.
07:07And if you're very high risk, you probably don't get the honour.
07:11The honours that make headlines today tend to be from the government sanctioned honours list.
07:17But there are some less reported honours that are still bestowed at the discretion of the monarchy.
07:22Certain honours are only in the gift of the sovereign.
07:28The Royal Victorian Order is one such thing, which is traditionally given to people who have served well and served closely, members of the royal family.
07:38Traditionally, the Royal Victoria Order is awarded to people who have dedicated their lives to helping keep the monarchy on track.
07:49And they have a lot of people to choose from.
07:52Because the royals are supported by the vast and largely hidden machine, otherwise known as the Royal Household.
07:59There are still pages of the back stairs, footmen, underbutlers, yeomen of the cellars, yeomen of the silver and china pantries, ladies-in-waiting, ladies of the bedchamber, mistress of the robes, and it goes on.
08:17The Royal Household is huge.
08:19Think of Buckingham Palace as a rather grand hotel with a very famous owner.
08:25And you're there.
08:26You're there.
08:29From Anglo-Saxon times, no monarch worth their salt was without a large royal retinue to do their bidding.
08:37Over the centuries, this collection of royal servants, advisers, and companions traditionally became known as the Royal Household.
08:48And by Tudor times, it was enormous.
08:50When Henry VIII and his fifth wife Catherine Howard go to the north in 1541, an ambassador says the process as they move between residences is so vast, it resembles more of an army than a royal household.
09:05Incredibly, one of the most sought-after roles within Henry's staff was the so-called groom of the stool.
09:12They would help him dress in the mornings, they would accompany him to the toilet if he needed them to be there.
09:17And what was unusual about this is that it was normally the aristocrats and the traditional courtiers who would fill these roles.
09:27Thankfully, that royal tradition no longer exists.
09:30But there are plenty of other everyday tasks our royal family never need to think about, thanks to their diligent army of staff.
09:40A lot of people think that the royals live like we do.
09:45As a man and wife in a marriage or brothers and sisters, forget all of that.
09:49It's nothing like that.
09:52They live in a very special world, which is very different.
09:58There are certain domestic skills particularly that royalty have done without and do without.
10:04And that's because they don't need to know them.
10:06Frankly, I'd love to not know how to clean a loo.
10:08I mean, wouldn't you?
10:10Royal privilege and life doesn't come cheap.
10:13At the last count, the running of the royal household costs taxpayers tens of millions of pounds a year.
10:21But there are signs that our modern royals are looking to break with tradition and live simpler lives.
10:28Of course, Kate, being middle class and being brought up in a normal household,
10:35she's able to bring that breath of fresh air into her world and William's world.
10:40And that's what William embraces, the normality of his family.
10:48Coming up, the year when not even royal tradition could rescue the monarchy.
10:54Charles and Diana were box office because nobody had seen anything like it before.
10:59The royal ritual rooted in make-believe.
11:02Chivalry was at the heart of royal tradition for many centuries, but actually it was based on a myth.
11:09And the royal tradition that shows the monarchy's charitable side.
11:14Royal patronage shows that they're human.
11:17They've got interests.
11:18They've got cultural depth themselves.
11:21Even in the 21st century, our royal family exists in a rarefied world of ancient traditions and rituals that often lends them an air of otherworldliness.
11:39Royals love symbolism.
11:42They really hark back to trying to connect the past with the present.
11:48They try to remind us of where they came from and why they still exist today.
11:52But historically, the royal mask has slipped at times, giving us a glimpse of an all-too-human side.
11:59There's a very long tradition of royal scandals going back to the medieval period. Royalty and scandal go hand in jeweled hand.
12:09If you look at the history of monarchy, crisis is something that does happen occasionally.
12:16The abdication crisis of the late 1930s, the madness of King George, or the loss of the American colonies.
12:23So you've got an institution which is very, very ancient, so it goes up and it goes down.
12:30Traditionally, almost every royal generation has had to weather some sort of scandal.
12:36But there was one year, above all others, when the sheer number of scandals almost sank the monarchy.
12:431992.
12:441992.
12:451992.
12:471992 was the Queen's annus horribilis.
12:50The worst year in the Queen's reign.
12:53The House of Windsor's perfect royal storm began at the start of that year with the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York.
13:02The Duchess of York took Princess Beatrice to school as usual this morning, refusing to let the press interest in her marriage interrupt her daughter's routine.
13:11That shock split was quickly followed by news that another royal marriage was on the rocks.
13:17Shortly after, we heard that Anne was getting a divorce, so here we go.
13:21Another of the Queen's children getting a divorce.
13:24And worse, the release of Andrew Morton's controversial biography on the Princess of Wales confirmed that the once fairytale marriage of Charles and Diana was also struggling.
13:35Suddenly, all over the papers were splashed.
13:38Diana tried to commit suicide.
13:41The marriage is over in all but name.
13:44A massive scandal.
13:46The Walesers were starting to fight in public.
13:49Their marriage is falling apart for us all to see.
13:54If the torrent of scandals wasn't enough, the monarchy faced another problem.
13:59The long-held tradition of the British press treating the royals with deference was on the wane.
14:05And in 1992, the tabloids smelled blood.
14:11The way that newspapers operate now is, I think, very different to how they operated in 1992.
14:17And scandal was preeminent for them.
14:21Say world-exclusive or royal-exclusive.
14:24In the early to mid-1990s, Charles and Diana were box office because nobody had seen anything like it before.
14:31That's good.
14:32Yeah, that's the one, isn't it?
14:33Yeah.
14:34My life's torture.
14:35The final royal scandal of the year came when the Sun newspaper published the transcript of a private phone conversation between Princess Diana and a male friend.
14:48By 1992, it was completely clear that the marriage was in terrible trouble.
14:54And I suppose, therefore, they felt they were justified in releasing these tapes, which were dynamite.
15:02Just when it seemed like the royal family couldn't take any more bad news, the very heart of the monarchy went up in flames.
15:17I was at Windsor Castle that day.
15:20What a sight.
15:21The beloved home of the sovereign, much of it, in flames.
15:26The late queen had a reputation for rarely showing emotion in public.
15:31But the sight of her beloved home going up in smoke broke that long-held tradition.
15:39I think the queen felt that it was an achievement to have survived that year.
15:48Before 1992, Britain was traditionally pro-monarchy.
15:53In the years after, the royal family's popularity took a major dive.
16:00But over the decade it took for their reputation to improve, they drew on another great royal tradition, knowing that time heals all.
16:08Because the tradition of monarchy is so profound in this country, it seems to be able to bounce back from crisis because we see it as something imminent and very profoundly rooted in our country.
16:25Traditionally, the way of steadying the royal ship in times of crisis has been to honor those closest and most supportive to the monarchy.
16:38Monarchs have bestowed honors to basically keep the barons on side.
16:44Because there are so many examples throughout history where the aristocracy have revolted and actually caused several monarchs to be deposed.
16:53The oldest honor is that of a knighthood.
17:00As with so much else with royal tradition, this had its roots on the battlefield in military service.
17:08If you were distinguished in serving your king on the battlefield, then you could be conferred with a knighthood.
17:14When William the Conqueror became king of England in 1066, he created the feudal system, gifting his supporters land to keep them loyal.
17:27Knights were crucial to defending this system.
17:31And becoming one was steeped in ritual.
17:34At its height in the medieval period, the conferring of knighthoods was quite an involved process, stretching over many hours.
17:47Firstly, they all had to have a bath and be cleansed.
17:51And then throughout the night, they would probably be in their armor, kneeling before an altar, and they would hold vigil throughout the night.
17:57Then the following day, they would actually go to the proper ceremony, where they would be tapped on their shoulder with a hand or with a sword.
18:07But being a knight wasn't just about defending the kingdom.
18:12There was a strict code of conduct that harked back to a legendary time that was, in fact, completely made up.
18:19Chivalry was at the heart of royal tradition for many centuries, but actually it was based on a myth.
18:30In the Middle Ages, most monarchies become fascinated by a past that they believed to have existed, but which almost certainly didn't.
18:40And that is the era of King Arthur and Camelot.
18:42They were myths, and yet they gave rise to this cult of chivalry that dominated royal tradition for centuries and that can still be found in things like the honours system today.
18:59These days, receiving a knighthood certainly doesn't involve ceremonial bathing or armor.
19:04And while chivalry isn't dead, our modern knights are far less likely to have gone into battle, unless it's in a sporting arena.
19:15The way in which the royal family have democratized the honours system speaks to the evolution of the monarchy.
19:26The modern honours system is the monarchy's way of recognizing good works across the nation.
19:31Another royal tradition of giving back is their involvement in charities.
19:40Three, two, one.
19:42I think one of the most important day-to-day functions, really, of the royal family is their support and patronage of charities.
19:51That brings prestige, and that brings publicity, and publicity brings money.
19:56There we are.
19:57There we are.
20:01The royal tradition of providing patronage to charities was started by King George II.
20:09In 1751, he granted a royal charter to the Society of Antiquaries, a group dedicated to the study and knowledge of antiquities and history.
20:19Today, the royal family supports more than 1,000 UK charities, and they've even started their own foundations in areas they're passionate about.
20:29The King started the Prince's Trust, now the King's Trust, with some of his naval pension, and he decided he wanted to help young people.
20:40He wanted to give them a step up.
20:41So that has gone from strength to strength over the years, and helped well over a million young people.
20:48Hello, young people from the class! Give us a wave!
20:51The King has personally founded more than a dozen charities over the years, and he's patron to hundreds more.
20:58And the next generation of royals is also very much involved in charity work.
21:04But they're doing it a little differently.
21:07We've seen with William and Catherine a slight change in tradition in that they have a much smaller portfolio of charities, because they have taken the view that it's all about impact.
21:22With William and Kate, it's dozens of patronages rather than hundreds of patronages, and the evidence and the way things are going now is to focus on a fewer number of charities and do more work on those charities.
21:40But this royal tradition of supporting a worthy cause doesn't just benefit the charity.
21:46Royal patronages also work for the royal family because it shows that they're human.
21:50They've got interests, they've got hobbies, they've got cultural depth themselves.
21:58Still to come, the very public break with royal tradition that led to a constitutional crisis.
22:05The breakdown of the marriage makes any modern scandal look like a Sunday school outing.
22:12The Queen Mother's lifelong beliefs forged by war.
22:15She lived the reality of the First World War and she understood the need for charity.
22:23And the traditional court position that was the key to a king's happiness.
22:29His party piece was that he was able to jump, whistle and fart all on the king's command.
22:36The royal tradition of duty and service sees senior members of the monarchy carry out more than 2,000 public engagements every year.
22:52And that takes a huge support team.
22:58Most people only see it from the outside.
23:01But if you are a member of the royal household, you get to see the workings of it.
23:05You see all the cogs and all the smoke and mirrors which makes everything happen to give you a grand performance.
23:15Some traditional positions unique to the royal household, such as piper to the sovereign or keeper of the privy purse, still exist today.
23:26But other roles, once deemed crucial to the smooth running of the monarchy, have long since disappeared.
23:35Including one that by today's standards seems laughable.
23:40Jesters or court clowns or fools, as they were sometimes known, were a major part of life at early modern and medieval courts.
23:51We have this image, when you think of a royal banquet, there is this jester prancing around and generally being hilarious.
23:58But it was an official court position.
24:02Jesters received a salary.
24:04And they were highly trusted individuals.
24:07A clue to the traditional importance of a royal jester can be found at Hampton Court Palace.
24:18This is a very important painting at the palace.
24:21It's called The Family of Henry VIII.
24:24It shows the king with his dead wife, Jane Seymour, who died actually eight years earlier.
24:31His son, Edward, and his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth.
24:34But a really unusual part of the painting is the inclusion of Will Summer, Henry VIII's famous jester or fool.
24:44Jesters were highly respected because they didn't tell lies.
24:50They didn't flatter the king.
24:52He could trust their words.
24:54So Henry really respected them and that's why he displayed them alongside his family here in this painting.
25:01By the time Henry VIII commissioned this portrait, court jesters had been a great British royal tradition for well over four centuries.
25:11Some of them becoming almost household names for their unique talents.
25:17One name that stands out that insists on a titter is Roland Le Fartre.
25:24Roland the Fartre, I think, if you don't want to give it a French gloss.
25:28His party piece was that he was able to jump, whistle and fart all at the same time, all on the king's command.
25:43Flatulence aside, it wasn't just their ability to entertain that earned jesters a unique position in the royal court.
25:50Most fools in the Tudor court were probably people who had either learning difficulties or disabilities in some way.
26:00And as such, they were very respected because their words were thought to be unfiltered and to come straight from God.
26:09Without question, the jesters get away with a lot more than an ordinary courtier would.
26:13There's the comedian's privilege of saying slightly outrageous things, but you'll always have to read the room.
26:21Henry VIII's favourite jester, Will Summers, had a free reign to say things to the king that others would never dare to.
26:30He could really push the envelope with the jokes that he made and Henry would let him get away with things that he would not let anybody else get away with making fun of.
26:40But free speech could be something of a problem when it came to staying on the right side of a mercurial monarch.
26:48The problem is, if you enrage a Tudor monarch, especially a thuggish one like Henry VIII, your punishment is going to probably be physical.
26:56We know that Henry VIII on one occasion got very angry with Will Summers and actually hit him so hard that he apparently fell through several rooms and down a flight of stairs.
27:06Summers never made the same mistake again and remained as the king's jester for well over a decade.
27:14After Henry VIII dies in 1547, Summers is left with a really cushy retirement package which includes a set of rooms, no rent and bed and board sorted for the rest of his life at Hampton Court.
27:29The tradition of court jesters began to phase out during the 17th century and royal entertainment became less slapstick and more intellectual.
27:42Ironically though, the loss of the one person capable of speaking the truth to the monarch coincided with the rise of royal scandals going public.
27:52A tradition our modern royal family knows only too well.
27:59The royal family can't live in a normal sort of level time.
28:04They live with tremendous highs and almighty lows.
28:09In recent memory, a number of major royal scandals have played out in the tabloids.
28:14But they had nothing on the constitutional crisis caused by one royal couple at the beginning of the 19th century.
28:24The breakdown of the marriage between King George IV and Caroline of Brunswick makes any modern scandal look like a Sunday school outing.
28:34In 1795, George, then the Prince of Wales, was forced into an arranged marriage with a German princess.
28:45And from the start, it was an unmitigated disaster.
28:50I don't think it's an understatement to say that George IV and Queen Caroline were one of the worst royal matches in history.
28:55On their wedding night, he turned up totally drunk and he passed out by the fire grate and that was that.
29:05But from this point forward, they never liked each other.
29:08What began as dislike became an open loathing that lasted for decades.
29:17And just like the royal scandals of the 20th century, each party broke with tradition and began to publicly sling mud.
29:26Not only did Caroline and George hate each other privately, their dirty linen was effectively strewn across London.
29:33Because they had different journalists who campaigned for their perspective king or queen.
29:40They almost seemed to be performing to see who could show they hated the other one more.
29:46George made many comments about Caroline's poor body odour.
29:50She made many comments about his poor personality and even worse soul.
29:54Just a year after they married, the couple separated.
29:57In the years that followed, Caroline split her time between Montague House in Greenwich and Italy.
30:06And rumours began to circulate about her behaviour.
30:10During this period of time, cartoonists were having a field day.
30:14They were drawing these crazy satirical prints, lampooning each party.
30:19Everybody had something to say on the marriage between George and Caroline.
30:24It was a really unfortunate affair.
30:28In 1820, George tried to use Parliament to get the marriage dissolved.
30:34But public opinion was so strongly against him that his bid failed and Caroline remained his wife.
30:42After more than 26 years, the whole unsavoury affair finally came to a head on the day of George IV's coronation.
30:51The tradition within the British monarchy was if a king is married, by the time he is crowned, then he will be crowned monarch and his wife will be crowned consort.
31:05George IV banned his wife from actually being crowned alongside him.
31:09Caroline turns up unannounced. The doors to the abbey are closed in her face. She's hammering on the door to get in. The crowds watching this are perplexed, to say the least. And it leads to a thousand satires, comedians' jokes, newspaper articles.
31:27Queen Caroline died less than three weeks after her public humiliation.
31:33Despite finally ridding himself of the wife he despised, the whole sordid affair proved to be something King George IV's reputation would never recover from.
31:43When George IV dies unlamented in 1830, the Times gives him a scorching obituary in which they politely but firmly say good riddance.
31:54It took another generation and a woman on the throne to finally restore the royal family's tarnished reputation.
32:07What's extraordinary is the transformation that takes place under Victoria.
32:13You have an entire rethink of how monarchy can serve the country as opposed to the other way round.
32:23One of the ways Queen Victoria successfully reconnected with the public was through the patronage of charities.
32:30And it's a royal tradition that each successive generation has continued.
32:34Where philanthropic monarchy really works is when the royal in question clearly believes in the organisation that they're the titular head of.
32:47Traditionally, a royal's choice of charities is influenced by their own interests or key issues of the time.
32:55For the late Queen Mother, it was both.
32:58The Queen Mother's devotion to military charities is something that springs from her experiences before she married into the royal family.
33:07The Queen Mother's brother had lost his life in the First World War and her family home in Glam's Castle had been turned into a makeshift hospital ward.
33:20And she was directly involved in helping to nurse and look after wounded soldiers.
33:24The Queen Mother's experiences at Glam's during the First World War meant that she never forgot the sacrifice British soldiers made for the nation.
33:34She had an encyclopedic memory of any man who had lived at Glam's and served his country during the First World War.
33:43Long after her marriage, she could spot someone in the crowd if they had been a patient at Glam's during the war and she would make a point of going over and talking to them.
33:50Until her death, the Queen Mum was closely involved with military charities, supporting both veterans and families affected by a loss on the battlefield.
34:00One of the few times she became very emotional in public was at the ceremony at the cenotaph on Remembrance Day.
34:09She very much wanted her daughters, her grandchildren and her great grandchildren to continue that legacy.
34:16Today, the late Queen Mother's legacy lives on in royal tradition with her grandson, King Charles III, now patron to a range of armed forces and veterans charities.
34:29This is what we like to see in royal patrons, that the royal family are willing to show up to events, that they're speaking with real heart and passion.
34:43Still to come, what happens when our traditional honours system goes awry?
34:48There have been some notorious mis-honours in the past.
34:54And why our royals traditionally love a furry friend.
34:59They're the ultimate companion for somebody with a strange life.
35:03Receiving an honour is not only a great royal tradition, it's also, for most people, a life-defining experience.
35:20It was the most extraordinary moment to open the letter and find out that I'd been awarded an OBE.
35:28It really does mean a great deal.
35:30Today, the vast majority of honours go to ordinary people who have done something extraordinary in service of the country.
35:39And they usually have no idea they've been nominated.
35:45When I first saw the letter, I thought I was in trouble,
35:48because it's a strictly private confidential cabinet office, and I thought, what have I done?
35:53I got one Saturday morning, I think from Downing Street,
35:55to say that the Prime Minister had it in mind to recommend me for an OBE.
36:00There was like a form you had to fill in, and I'd filled in that form within like half an hour,
36:06which was affirmative.
36:08Traditionally, there are 30 investiture ceremonies held every year,
36:14usually at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.
36:16And although today's ceremony is far swifter than in the past, there are still echoes of age-old history in the process.
36:25Modern day ceremonies have been honed down, so you're assigned a certain number of minutes with the member of the royal family who is conferring the honour,
36:37and you must curtsy or bow accordingly.
36:40It was a very wonderful thing on that day just to be at a marvellous ceremony in this amazing setting presided over by the late Queen.
36:51And for two minutes, she seemed entirely focused on me.
36:56And then you are given the honour, you give a curtsy, and then you go away.
37:01So it's quite a brief ceremony today, but it's still incredibly special.
37:08You're made very aware of the centuries of history as you're conferred with your honour.
37:18Today, the traditional honours lists are strictly vetted to make sure only the truly deserving get a gong.
37:25Because in the past, there have been some questionable nominees.
37:29There have been some notorious mis-honours in the past.
37:36The fascist leader Mussolini being one.
37:41The Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe being another.
37:46And the Eastern European dictator Ceausescu being a third example.
37:53All three individuals were ultimately stripped of their honours.
37:57And even today, the traditional prestige of these royal awards means that's seen as a badge of shame.
38:06When the royal family strips someone of an honour that they've granted, they are sending an incredibly strong and powerful political message of disapproval.
38:16Thankfully, far fewer people have had their honours removed than received them.
38:24And, while being awarded one is the ultimate accolade for most people, tradition has shown you don't have to be a human to be revered by the royals.
38:32Pets, and particularly dogs, are integral to the royal family.
38:40Close inspection of a mural at Kensington Palace suggests the tradition of royal pets goes back at least as far as George I.
38:50Dogs were very much an aristocratic pet and almost an accessory.
38:57We have evidence of that in the king's staircase where we see multiple dogs.
39:01And it just goes to show that they were companions, but also really part of the fabric of court life.
39:06But it was Queen Victoria who really developed the royal passion for dogs.
39:13She was born at Kensington Palace, and it was here she met her first love.
39:19This is where she spent her formative years, and it's where she received her first dog in 1833.
39:25Dash was a lovely little spaniel, and she was a really lonely young princess, so he became a fast friend.
39:35When Dash died, he was buried in the grounds of Windsor Castle.
39:41But even as Queen, Victoria's obsession with dogs continued.
39:46She even entered the first ever Crufts.
39:49Victoria was a dog lover through and through.
39:52It was something she took with her for the rest of her life.
39:55She had collies, she had Pomeranians, she even introduced Dachshunds to the UK.
40:05Traditionally, each royal has a favoured breed.
40:08For King Charles, it's a Jack Russell.
40:11Princess Anne loves an English bull terrier.
40:15And their mother was rarely seen without a specific short-legged canine.
40:20Much to the disquiet of many people around her, actually, the late Queen was surrounded by her corgis, and she loved them all.
40:30But they didn't really love people quite so much, including Philip, I think. They used to drive him mad.
40:36Prince Philip once said to the Queen, why do you have so many dogs? And she said, but darling, they give me love unconditionally.
40:50That was the attraction of corgis. She loved the character of the corgi, and they did give her love.
40:57They didn't know that she was different from anybody else, and it was almost a sort of moment of sanity and calm for her that was always there.
41:07And it could be that the Queen's corgis also provided something that no human companion ever could.
41:16You know, I think the one reason that the late Queen loved her dogs is because these creatures can't talk.
41:23I honestly do think it's something about that close companionship that's safe, absolutely safe.
41:31I think they're the ultimate companion for somebody with a strange life.
41:36From acknowledging ancient loyalties to publicly honoring modern achievements,
41:49recognizing and supporting others less fortunate,
41:53to revealing their own all-too-human side,
41:57the royal family and their traditions echo through the ages
42:01to make them as relatable to the nation today as they were a thousand years ago.
42:10We judge them as a nation using the yardstick of history, of tradition, of culture,
42:18because they're symbolic of the best of British.
42:21Next time, the royal custom of keeping a spare on the sidelines.
42:33You are the perpetual understudy, knowing that you probably won't ascend to the top job.
42:40The curious royal tradition that launched a much-loved classic...
42:44People all on a boat going all the way up the Thames with this beautiful music.
42:48And how a decadent royal tradition nearly spelled disaster in Britain's darkest hour.
42:56The British Embassy says you and your flamingo need to get on a boat to the Caribbean.
43:03And you can catch up with the royals with Reverend Richard Cole's new next Saturday at 2.45,
43:14and stream today's episode now on 5.
43:17When she doesn't have to speak publicly, does she let her outfits do the talking?
43:21Kate, A Life in 10 Dresses is brand new next.
43:23We are brand new next.
43:25We are brand new next.
43:26We are brand new next.
43:27.
Comments