The majority of Britons think the monarchy is not such a bad thing. The royals are good for satire and tourism, after all, and what would we put in their place? The system may not be fair, but it is part of our heritage, and it would be more trouble than it's worth to change it. I used to share this view, but writing about history for the last few years has changed my mind.
Biography is especially fascinating when its subjects are flawed. Claire Tomalin's recent best-selling Samuel Pepys is a fine example of this. Pepys could be petty and cruel, but in Tomalin's hands (and his own) he is so human, so real that it is impossible not to be enchanted by him. Similarly, whether or not you agree that Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire was as important a historical figure as Amanda Foreman thinks she was, Foreman's obsession with her subject gives her book an infectious intensity a less committed author might not have been able to create.
But kings and queens do not need to charm in this way. We are enthralled by them simply for being their own vain, misguided selves. Royal biography is flourishing: in no other historical genre does curiosity about other people combine so well with an educational urge-Ladybird books with sex.
Over the past couple of years, I have had to read numerous studies of royal lives. It has left me increasingly enraged at the thought of people occupying positions so dramatically incommensurate with their talents or virtues. I know James VI & I was a very learned man (famously "the wisest fool in Christendom"), and even Edward VII has his apologists-it was attention deficit disorder, apparently, not stupidity, that made him so slow at his lessons. The Queen Mother's common touch (consisting of addictions to racing and powerful cocktails) is legendary, and George IV's passion for architecture kept an awful lot of builders in business. But ruling? Not one of them was fit for it.
The more intimate contemporary biography becomes, the freer writers feel to pass retrospective judgement on our past rulers. James I? He "slabbered" over handsome young favourites, viewed parliament as "nothing else but the king's great council," and imprisoned the greatest explorer (Walter Raleigh) and the greatest philosopher (Francis Bacon) of his age. Aged 31, admonished by his father for getting up late, the future George IV replied, "I find, Sir, however late I rise, that the day is long enough for doing nothing." As king he was a fat, delusional, dissipated popinjay. Another debauchee, Edward VII, or "Edward the Caresser," had no sooner ascended the throne than his meddling in international politics set in motion events leading to Europe's devastation. Edward's jealousy of Kaiser Wilhelm, and his corresponding desire to ally Britain with France and Russia, were significant precipitating factors of the first world war.
We did once need the monarchy. In the middle ages, kings didn't survive for long unless they were war leaders, state builders, creators of their country's wealth, laws and national consciousness. Monarchy served as well as any other form of government, and we didn't know any better. Elizabeth Tudor, fiercely intelligent and passionately attached to her England, was as worthy of a crown as any leader has been.
Since her time, though, the capacity of our monarchs has diminished almost in parallel with their powers. Not one ruler from 1603 to the present day had the merit to match their rank. George I and George II were known as Dunce I and Dunce II. The Stuarts (with the exception of Charles I) made no secret of the fact that they preferred hunting and whoring to governing a dangerously insecure country. Victoria's gloomy legacy was mainly the result of longevity. The modern royals are celebrities without talent or purpose.
If the republican in me finds the idea of princes being adored for nothing more than the accidents of their birth quite indefensible, the reader in me is still fascinated by them. I can't help enjoying the spectacle their exposed private lives provide: they make page-turning material in a scholarly biography as well as the Sun.
The fashion for narrative history is bringing us a new kind of history, history with the pulp left in, and monarchs, traditionally shielded from such scrutiny, fare badly under the microscope. They measure up less well than our new heroes: ordinary-but extraordinary-people like Pepys.
I never thought there was a pattern to my books, but looking at their subjects (two 18th-century criminals, a bisexual 18th-century courtier, and four maharanis in late 19th and early 20th-century India) I realise that what I am drawn to is people who write their own rules for life.
Perhaps that's why I find princes and princesses so unbearable. They accept their fates with such shameful complacency. Give me a cocky jailbreaker, a subversive aristocrat, or a lustful civil servant over a king any day.
