The Truth About the Royal Family with Royal Reporter Robert Hardman

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**Konstantin Kisin** (0:32)
Structurally, within Britain, the monarchy has no power. Is that really true?

**Robert Hardman** (0:37)
Well, they might not have executive power. They unquestionably have influence. Do you think of anyone who's ever met 14 presidents? There is what you might call a negative power, because the armed forces owe their allegiance to the monarch. No politician can get their hands on it. Same with the judiciary, same with the civil service, same with the honor system. All these things that are in the hands of the wrong people can lead to tyranny.
She had various grades of sort of objection, which would start with one raised eyebrow and then double raised eyebrow.
And then the ultimate one was, are you sure? And are you sure? Are you sure? Was like a sort of code for, I think you've got to go away and think about this. It's not rational. It's how we've evolved and it just, it works.

**Konstantin Kisin** (1:24)
Robert Hardman, welcome to TRIGGERnometry. You are of course journalist, but also a chronicler of a number of Royals. The latest book you have is about Elizabeth II. Delighted to have you on. The Royal Family is actually a subject that's probably been undercover on TRIGGERnometry in fairness, and partly because Francis and I are both a little bit foreign, and maybe can't quite understand why the Royal Family is such a big deal.
Why is it such a big deal?

**Robert Hardman** (1:51)
It's sort of an integral part of, I think, of what we are, who we are. People don't wake up every day and think, oh, we live in a monarchy. But it does have an underlying force of stability, continuity. It's why it allows Britain, it helps Britain sort of punch above its weight diplomatically. Every world survey, global survey, and when they analyze it country by country, what does the rest of the world think of first when they think of Britain? They think of the monarchy, they think of the royal family. When I've talked to umpteen diplomats, as soon as they go abroad, the first thing anyone says to them in their postings is, how is the king? How is the princess? How are the royal family?
When you stand back and look at the post-war history, as I have done for this book of Britain, and you see the part that the queen has played in that, in the dismantling of empire and the transition from monocultural to multicultural society. At every level, the monarchy has played this part, and they are this thread that runs through it all. And I think it's best summed up, actually, in the day of, the very sad day of her death in 2022
And it was an extraordinary week. We just changed our head of government three days earlier, two days earlier. Suddenly, we were changing our head of state. In most countries, if you change your head of government or your head of state, that can often lead to, you know, a degree of protest, turmoil or whatever, whether it's, you know, Washington, January the 6th or other countries. We'd done both. We'd changed the whole lot in one week, and not a shot was fired. There wasn't a protest. There wasn't an angry word. Things just carried on. And there was a lovely letter in the Times newspaper that week saying, dear sir, there's a pint of milk in my fridge. It's seen two prime ministers, two heads of state, and it's still going strong. I wonder what the marmalade's seen. That sort of summed up that level of just sort of heft, stability.
It's a sort of bedrock. And we don't think about it all the time, but it's there. And if it's ever challenged, boy, the people suddenly go, oh, hang on, no, we've got to defend this.

**Konstantin Kisin** (4:08)
Yeah. And I've always felt a kind of natural understanding of the connection to history. I mean, it's a thousand year history of the country at the very least.
Is that one of the reasons it has such a strong sentiment? It evokes such strong sentiment in this country because it's maybe one of the very few things left now that really connects the people of this country to it.