So I had some thoughts about this comment of yours: "I think what they're trying to do is make a clear distinction between the private and the public. [.. ]The fact that they reportedly met at Highgrove rather than Buckingham Palace, for example, can easily be seen as drawing a clear line between their private relationship and their public roles."
I agree about your overall comment that Charles meeting Harry doesn't mean is caving in or welcoming him back, but I actually think the difference between public and private is not actually clear and that is the one of the reason there has been so many problems with the BRF. I remember reading an article about Andrew and it was said something like this would have never happened with the japanese emperial family because they control everyone that comes close to them. While I don't wish for things to be so rigid to the BRF members, there should be a much clearer line between the working and non working royals. When I look at the other euro royal families, I have no idea who the cousins, uncles / aunts or even the cousins' spouses (reference to Edo, Mike and Jack) of Victoria, Felipe, Frederik, Guillaume, Willem etc.. are. Or who the parents / siblings / in-laws of Daniel, Letizia, Mary, Stéphanie, Maxima.. are either. (I'm focusing about W&K generation as they are the future). The only other royal family that I can think where we see so much of the extending family members is Monaco, which I'm kinda putting them aside given their history and structure.
So I believe that in the future, anytime a working member of the BRF appear officialy as their Majesties / their Royal Highness, as in they appear publicly, in front of a crowd or the press as royals, the only people they should be seen with, are the ones who are officially and formally working for the RF and don't receive any other income. So there shouldn't have been Zara and Peter taking part in a garden party alongside William; there shouldn't have been any annoucement about engagements or wedding details or pregnancy of Eugenie / Peter / Samuel etc; I'll go as far to say there shouldn't have been a picture of the Middleton (as lovely as it was) on the official insta account of the PPOW; the Queen shouldn't have come with her sister at Wimbledon; Eugenie shouldn't have had a public wedding; etc…
To me in the futur, slimming down the monarchy shouldn't be about the numbers of working royals (having a dozen people who carry duties in favor of the monarchy is fine I think), but about completely obscuring all those that don't. For example, I'm even thinking they should get rid of the Christmas and Easter walk, where there are always all the non working family members that join the working family members. Yes, it's a family event, but they're doing it in front of a crowd / medias, therefore appearing in their official roles. It's also thank to event like this that Fergie got her clout back.
Same goes for modernising the monarchy. One thing that sould be done is pivot from a structure that focuses so much on family to a structure that only promote the work carried by its members, without promoting or talking about anything related to the non working family members.
To get back to Harry. If all those things had been put in place in the last decade, I don't think people would be so mad about Charles and Harry meeting, because even if they were to reconcile, the most we would see of H&M would be, for example, them driving to the larger family Christmas gathering at BP or Windsor and photographed by the paparazzis. But here a reconciliation still mean maybe taking part in the very public Easter / Christmas walks and milking the royal connections to the max. So yeah that's my take. There's still not a big enough difference between official working royals and non working members. Sorry for my very long commentary, I wanted to develop my thoughts enough so you would understand what i mean.
Sorry for the long answer.
I get what you're saying, and to a certain extent I agree with you. Obviously, I respect your opinion and your take on all of this. That said, I think one of the things that has always worked in the monarchy's favour and something they've been remarkably good at selling is the idea that they're not just an institution, but a family as well.
The problem, particularly during Elizabeth's reign, was that the line between those two things was never especially clear. As you said, everything tended to blur together. Even now, although I think they've made a conscious effort over the past few years to distinguish between working royals and non-working royals, they still haven't fully managed it, and I'm not convinced they ever completely will.
Maybe things will become clearer once William is King. By then there'll probably be fewer working royals, and fewer titled members of the family overall, which might naturally make that distinction easier for people to understand. But one of the foundations of the Windsors has always been the image of a family working, for want of a better phrase, for the good of the people. Because of that, I don't think a complete separation is either realistic or even desirable. What I do think is necessary is a much clearer distinction between the family and the institution. On that, I completely agree with you.
I think Queen Elizabeth was more or less forced into making that distinction during the later years of her reign, and Charles has clearly tried to reinforce it. I'm just not sure he's fully succeeded yet.
For example, I never really understood why the official Royal Family account announced Eugenie's pregnancy. That's one of those things that felt odd to me. At the same time, though, I don't think it's a bad thing for the cousins to join William at a garden party. It's almost become known as the "cousins' garden party", and I don't really see an issue with that.
I suppose it's all about knowing how to manage these things. While I completely agree that there are events which are essentially family occasions and others which are official engagements, the reality is that everything they do is public. Even the things that are meant to be personal end up being carried out in a very public way.
Take Catherine's Christmas Carol service, for example. It's an official public event, but at the same time it's deliberately family-oriented. The wider family attends regardless of whether they're working royals, non-working royals, titled or untitled. So I think it's really about understanding which events can afford to be a bit more flexible, which ones reinforce the idea that they're a family as well as an institution, and which ones are more solemn and constitutional, where there should be much stricter boundaries around who is invited and who isn't.
So I actually think the biggest distinction should come down to the use of royal titles. That's why I completely agreed with Charles' decision to grant Edward the title of Duke of Edinburgh, but on the understanding that it would revert to the Crown upon Edward's death rather than passing to his heir. His successor obviously won't be a working royal, so why should they hold one of the most significant royal titles when they won't have any official role to go with it?
To me, that's where the distinction between the family and the institution really begins: in the use of titles and in carefully managing which events different members of the family are invited to attend.
As for the Christmas Day walk, I actually think it would be a mistake to get rid of it. Events like that help the public feel a sense of closeness to the family that represents them. After all, whether people agree with it or not, one of the ways the monarchy has always presented itself is as the nation's family. That's part of the brand, if you like.
So, again, I think these are the kinds of occasions that simply need to be managed properly. I don't see anything wrong with them because, at the end of the day, it's a family going to church at Christmas. It just happens to take place in full public view.
It's very different from something like Commonwealth Day. That's clearly an official occasion, and there's a well-established expectation that the people attending are working royals carrying out their public duties and representing both the Crown and the Commonwealth. The line there is much more clearly defined.
So, in my opinion, It's less about drawing a hard line between family and institution, and more about recognising which events reinforce the monarchy as a family, and which ones are fundamentally about the institution and should therefore be reserved for those with official roles. That's probably how I'd approach the point you were making, and where my view differs slightly from yours.
I'm surprised we're still talking about a slimmed-down monarchy as though it's some distant plan that's yet to happen. The reality is that it's happening whether the institution likes it or not. By the middle of William's reign, the core of the monarchy will most likely consist of William, Catherine, and their children. So it's not really a question of what should happen; it's simply the direction the institution is already heading.
And I think that's when the distinction between the Mountbatten-Windsor family and the working Royal Family will become much clearer than it is today. There will simply be fewer close relatives who still hold royal titles and, more importantly, fewer who have any official role.
Take Anne's branch of the family, for example. Peter and Zara never had royal titles, and neither do their children. Edward's children are in a similar position. Although they were entitled to princely titles under the existing Letters Patent, Edward and Sophie chose for them to be styled differently, and they're not expected to become working royals anyway.
Then there's Harry and his children. Yes, they hold royal titles, but those titles don't automatically make them working royals, nor do they carry any constitutional role. In practical terms, once William is King, I think the distinction will be impossible to ignore. They'll simply be public figures with royal titles, but without any official function within the institution.
Now, going back to Harry. Personally, I think the problem started long before Harry got married. It goes back to the way Charles, the late Queen, and, to some extent, William handled Harry's place within the family.
Harry and William were raised almost as equals, when constitutionally they never were. William was always the heir, while Harry's role was fundamentally different. I think a lot of the expectations Harry seemed to have after his marriage came from genuinely believing that he and William would always be treated as equals: that he would have the same influence, the same privileges, and, in many ways, the same standing within the institution. But that was never going to be possible in a hereditary monarchy built around the line of succession.
To me, it's obvious that Harry was never given a clear understanding of what his long-term role was supposed to be. Whether that's because no one properly explained it or because the institution itself struggled to define it, I don't know. But I don't think he ever truly understood it, and I don't think he ever came to accept it either.
In fact, I think some of the decisions made by the late Queen and Charles only reinforced that confusion. For example, after Harry got married, there was a lot of discussion about him taking on a greater role in relation to the Commonwealth. Looking back, that always seemed like an odd direction to me. How could Harry realistically become the leading royal figure in that area when William was the future King, and when William's children would eventually become the next generation of senior royals? The monarchy has always revolved around the heir and the direct line of succession, so those expectations never really seemed sustainable.
I also think those same decisions contributed to Harry and Meghan having such a high-profile wedding and such enormous public exposure. I understand why the wedding itself was always going to attract worldwide attention. Still, I don't think the institution did much to establish realistic expectations about what their position would look like in the years that followed. In hindsight, that probably made the eventual transition much harder.
That said, I also think that, regardless of how those early decisions had been handled, the outcome might not have been very different. Once Harry and Meghan decided to step away from royal duties, I think there was always going to be a major fallout. The scale of it might have changed, and perhaps some of the misunderstandings could have been avoided, but I suspect the conflict itself was probably inevitable.
For me, the future of the monarchy isn't about separating the family from the institution altogether. It's about defining the relationship between the two far more clearly than previous generations ever did. If William succeeds in doing that, then Harry's story may ultimately be remembered not just as a family dispute, but as the catalyst that forced the monarchy to finally clarify what it is, who represents it, and where the boundaries between the family and the institution truly lie.