From left to right: Queen of England Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, Kate Duchess of Cambridge, Camilla Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex on March 5, 2019 at a ceremony in Buckingham Palace to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the investiture of the Prince of Wales.

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Dominic Lipinski / AP / SIPA

  • Part of the French are passionate about the British monarchy, its pageantry, its ceremonies and its decorum, as an exotic form of representation of power which is reminiscent of our own republican scenes.

  • The interest in the British royal family can also be explained by a strong incarnation of it through different personalities who have become essential.

  • The peopolization of the royal family and the history of its members, worthy of a fiction, hold in suspense the amateurs of celebrity news.

Can't you ignore that Harry and Meghan gave a shocking interview on American television?

And why don't you ignore it?

Because everyone has been talking about it (a lot) for a week.

This umpteenth episode of the particular fascination for the royal family of England - whether in front of the Netflix series The Crown or in the People pages of magazines - questions.

We asked the historian Philippe Chassaigne, specialist in Great Britain and the royal family, professor at the University Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux, to enlighten us on this attraction.

"There are a lot of things that we don't understand about the English"

A few hours from the Normandy coast is Great Britain.

This geographical proximity has been at the origin of a very special relationship, a form of fraternal intimacy, between rivalries, conflicts, but also exchanges and interbreeding for several centuries, explains Philippe Chassaigne.

“Our respective national identities were built in reaction to the figure of the Other: the French for the British, the British for the French”.

“There are a lot of things that we don't understand about the English,” he continues, explaining that there are also links, human but also ideological, which have united and united the French and the British.

“During the two world wars, France and Great Britain fought side by side”.

Philippe Chassaigne also explains that this Great Britain, symbol of European resistance against fascism and Nazism, is embodied in the royal family.

It was perhaps in 1947, when Elizabeth II was still a princess and accompanied her parents George VI and Elizabeth on an official visit to Paris, meeting René Coty during the celebrations, that the link was created, particularly between this woman and the French.

"From the gold of the Republic to that of the monarchy"

Some, like Jean-Pierre Jouyet, French Ambassador to Great Britain in 2018, believe that the French interest in the British Crown is linked to the fact that there is a certain proximity between the two political regimes.

The former secretary general of the Élysée had declared "whether we like it or not, we are a kind of republican monarchy".

Philippe Chassaigne agrees, arguing that “the presidential function, as it was defined by Charles De Gaulle, is a kind of elective monarchy.

Is that what explains why part of the French are so attached to the British monarchy?

Perhaps.

"

Beyond the possible institutional proximity, but questionable, “there is this ceremonial which is said to date back several centuries - which is not necessarily correct - but which seems to us both fascinating and a little strange. , and at the same time that we find with the republican scenes or the receptions at the Elysee.

All this pageantry is an exoticism to which we can easily relate ”.

Indeed, for having been revolutionary and regicide, France has nonetheless perpetuated a culture of the staging of luxurious power, resulting in large part from a tradition of representation of power historically linked to monarchical and imperial models. .

Thus, for Philippe Chassaigne, it is not a question of the nostalgia of the French for a royal family but rather of a curiosity for this staging of power which is not quite our but is not totally us. foreign either: "The French love the gold of the Republic but the gold of the monarchy shines even more.

"

Faces of the Crown

The great success of the royal family in France and more widely in the world also comes from the fact that this crown has a face, familiar and reassuring, immortalized in popular culture with a portrait painted by Andy Warhol in 1985: that of Elizabeth II. .

If the figure is dignified, haughty, that the queen is admired for this self-control and this ability to perfectly embody the royal character, it is also a human and sympathetic person.

“The queen is the queen but she is also a mother and a grandmother.

If she could sometimes seem a little distant towards her children, that was not the case towards her grandchildren ”explains Philippe Chassaigne.

This very human side, this grandmother, can also be found in the official response of the Crown to the allegations made by Harry and Meghan in their interview with Oprah Winfrey.

"It is obvious that she does not want to cut ties with her grandson either," he continues.

This humanity, this face given to the British royal family is first and foremost the Queen but is also the result of other figures, strong personalities, inseparable from the Crown and its history: Kate, William, Harry, Meghan, Charles … For Philippe Chassaigne “it is obvious that a monarchy with a little more silly personalities would not interest many people.

There are personalities who catch the light more.

Diana was one of them.

She caused a kind of transfer of popular attention from the queen herself to a personality which was very different from her, much more glamorous, more charismatic and therefore which then carried over to the whole of the monarchical institution. British.

"

A grand entrance into the era of peopolization

“At the end of the 1960s the communication policy of the British royal family changed.

Previously, the Palace kept the press as far away as possible.

But with the change of personnel, we measured the public's interest in the royal family and we thought it was better to cooperate with the press, ”explains Philippe Chassaigne.

The royal family has therefore adapted, with some success recently.

In 2011, TF1, France 2 and M6 broadcast live the wedding ceremony of Kate and William.

In 2018, according to an Ipsos poll carried out in 28 different countries with a panel of 20,793 people, 15% of French people said they were interested in the union of Meghan and Harry - almost double that of Spain where only 8% were said interested.

But it could be that in the future the French will no longer be the

number one

foreign fans

of the British royal family.

Philippe Chassaigne notes that the interview with Meghan and Harry “is first and foremost an interview for the American public.

She gives the couple a much more American than British image to gain the sympathy of the American public.

Meghan watched very well the interview Diana gave to Martin Bashir in 1995 and she adapted it in 2021. ”But even addressing a more international audience, and current, there is little chance that the royal family is losing its interest in the eyes of the French public.

Go to the next episode of the soap opera, or season 5 of

The Crown

, to measure it.

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