THE SATURDAY PROFILE: Queen Elizabeth II has reigned for 50 years. Surrounded by a seemingly dysfunctional family and their hangers-on, the monarchy remains nonetheless a popular institution. Rachel Donnelly in London profiles the Windsors
From a distance, Britain's fascination and at times love for the royal family appears irrational. As she celebrates 50 years as monarch with a tour of former colonies, a pop concert on the lawn at Buckingham Palace and a three-month "thank you" trip around Britain, it's a wonder how Queen Elizabeth II puts up with it all. The realm she inherited in 1952 was deferential and respectful but the black sheep of the royal family have, to a large degree, put a stop to all that.
When she learned of the death of her father, King George VI, while visiting the Treetops game reserve in Kenya, Princess Elizabeth was 25 years old and newly married. In an instant she was propelled into a life of duty - and immense privilege - where she would live under the kind of intense media spotlight none of her predecessors had ever experienced.
In the midst of divorce and scandal, anti-monarchists and reformers forgot that monarchy - Britain's is the oldest in Europe - survives on continuity and symbolism. Opinion poll after opinion poll defies critics who say the monarchy is lurching towards its grave and the quicker it gets there the better. And although the royal network and its hangers-on have turned their lives into a weekly soap opera, even a jaded public is adamant that Queen Elizabeth has done a fine job for the last 50 years.
In a recent Daily Telegraph poll, 83 per cent of people expressed their support for her dedication to duty. The same satisfaction, however, did not extend to the rest of her family - with the exception of the Queen Mother - with 37 per cent of people in the same poll saying the royal family had gone down in their estimation in recent years.
What has caused such dissatisfaction as Britain and a few far-flung colonies prepare to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee? Is it, as some observers suggest, that Queen Elizabeth has stayed the same but public value placed in the monarchy has changed? Or could it be that hard as she tries, it's impossible to control her children, never mind the "minor" royals?
It wasn't so gloomy for the royal family a few years ago when Prince Charles embarked upon a public rehabilitation. After the bitterness and anger that passed between them during their marriage, who could forget the tragic irony of his journey to Paris to bring home the body of his former wife and then fast forward a few years to a father happily talking to the press as Diana's treasured eldest child prepared to leave for his gap year?
Perhaps forced into it as much as he was encouraged, Prince Charles and his coterie of press advisers turned the uncaring husband tag on its head and along the way discovered public sympathy for his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. But not enough, yet, that he can marry her. And one reading of the successful St James's Palace media strategy is that instead of criticism for being an "absentee father," as the Guardian put it, Prince Charles received widespread praise for sending cannabis-smoking Prince Harry to visit a drugs rehab clinic.
It was Diana's death, or so republicans dared to dream in the turbulent week afterwards, that might spell the end of the British monarchy, sweeping away hundreds of years of tradition in a bloodless revolution. But they missed the point.
Diana was indeed wilful, destructive and modern, but she was also the product of a classic upper-class English family and deeply committed to the institution of monarchy. The republican cause was not for Diana - particularly since her eldest son would probably one day become King - but her death and the reaction to it exposed as never before the gap between modernity and tradition, the royal family and the public.
The cry of "reform, reform" had gone up and the Windsors would never quite be the same again. After a period of retreat that saw the family firm close ranks around Princes William and Harry as they continued their schooling, support began to crumble away again shortly after the marriage of PR girl, Sophie Rhys-Jones to Prince Edward.
In the splendour of a London hotel, the Countess of Wessex's decision to drop hints about how her royal connections could rub off rather well on prospective PR clients exposed the contradiction between being royal and holding down a job. The fact that she was boasting to a fake sheikh planted by the News of World made the Countess look grasping and scheming.
And she wasn't helped by a News of the World editorial when the story broke last April that gleefully pointed out: "Sophie did not say William Hague was deformed. She did not say Cherie Blair was horrid. She did not call the queen an old dear." But she did say the press "were very, very keen to put me onto the empty pedestal that has been left by Diana." In the post-Diana age, such sentiments didn't win her any admirers.
It got even worse when Prince William began his first term at St Andrew's university last September. Contravening the media agreement to leave William alone, Prince Edward - dubbed the "Wessex weasel" by the Sun - got into a bitter row with big brother, Charles, when his television company continued filming after the rest of the media went away. Even Jennie Bond, the fairly uncritical BBC royal correspondent, described Edward's actions as "an unmitigated disaster - I think it's down to the royal family to see if they [Edward and Sophie] have to be reined back."
But just as the royal family is promoted as a symbol of Britain around the world, the troubles and privileges connected with its members make it harder than ever for Britain's multicultural society to relate to them. So far, most citizens in Britain have shown a lack of enthusiasm for the Golden Jubilee celebrations and yet in some of Britain's former African colonies you can guarantee the bunting and flags will line the streets.
Even if, as in Silver Jubilee year in 1977, there is a last-minute surge of support for the Queen and her family, the doubts about the British public's response this time around must be giving the royal family pause for thought.
Queen Elizabeth might prefer corgis to people, as a recent biography pointed out, but can she ignore public ambivalence about the royal family?