Britain’s royal family is likely in its “end game” — and will probably not “outlast” Prince William’s eventual reign as king, according to an award-winning UK author and dame.
“I think it’s the end game. I don’t know how much longer the institution will go on,” Dame Hilary Mantel told the Telegraph.
“I’m not sure if it will outlast William. So I think it will be their last big era,” predicted the “Wolf Hall” author, who was awarded the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2006 and then made a dame by Prince Charles in 2014.
Mantel wondered if Queen Elizabeth II was now “the only person who really believes in the monarchy.”
“I wish the Queen had felt able to abdicate … I understand that she thinks of this as a sacred task, from which you simply cannot abdicate, whereas the rest of us think of it as a job, from which you should be able to retire,” the author said.
“She believes that she cannot cease to be a monarch — she made those promises to God.
“It’s such a cliché to say, but what a lonely position to be in. It’s a conflict, because most of the world sees the royal family as a branch of show business. And I’m sure that is very far from the Queen’s own thinking.”
Instead, the monarchy has become a “self-punishing institution,” claimed Mantel, the first woman to twice win the Booker Prize, an annual award for the best novel of the year in the UK.
“No other family would be expected to parade a very elderly, newly widowed lady before the TV cameras, and yet it’s taken for granted that’s what will happen,” she said of heartbreaking images of the Queen sitting alone at husband Prince Philip’s funeral.
“Just as it’s taken for granted that a new royal mother will appear beaming on the hospital steps within a day of giving birth. There’s no legitimate public interest behind it,” she said.
Mantel refused to weigh in on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s TV attacks on the royal family.
“I wouldn’t judge them. And I don’t believe we will ever know, really, what has happened there. So I just wish them well,” she said.
Dame Hilary Mantel thinks Queen Elizabeth II may be the last staunch believer in the monarchy.Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
