CHERIE LUNGHI: For the Royals, tradition is everything.
Monarchy is about the past, the present and the future,
and tradition is absolutely central to that.
Spectacular... All of the parading, the history.
It's almost a fairy tale thing.
..sacred...
If you were royal, you had been chosen by God.
..and very British.
Meeting the Queen is an experience
that everyone will remember for the rest of their lives.
Now we venture behind palace walls into the riches beyond...
Not all royal jewels are the Crown Jewels.
We know that this was a gift of love.
..and delve deep into rare royal records...
Written in early January 1642.
It's the equivalent of a live blog.
This is right in the eye of the storm.
..to discover the untold secrets
of Britain's most loved and mysterious royal traditions.
He liked to show that he could control nature.
It's a rich royal heritage,
steeped in war, intrigue and scandal...
In order to get your face on this wall,
you had to be somebody, perhaps even a royal mistress.
..but at its heart is a deep-seated duty to the nation...
Queen Elizabeth II met more people than anybody else in history.
..no matter what the task.
As I heard him, I thought,
"Oh, you're not gonna like that, Charles."
This is how, for over 1,000 years,
the Royals have shaped the history and traditions we know today.
Tradition is what actually keeps them in power.
It wouldn't be Britain if we didn't have these sorts of things.
These are the secrets of the royal traditions.
This time, the strict royal rules of succession...
I too now solemnly pledge myself.
..that ensure a smooth transition from one monarch to the next.
From the first broadcast he made that evening,
we all viewed him not as Prince any more, but as King.
The extravagant royal tradition that cost a king his head.
He wanted to send a message, "I'm here, and I'm powerful."
And the gruesome rituals of royal medicine.
Plunging him into icy cold baths,
or rub caustic soda onto his legs, or hot glass cups on his back.
For centuries, Britain's king or queen
has presided over one of the United Kingdom's
most meaningful and mysterious royal traditions...
..the state opening of Parliament.
It is one of the, I think,
most iconic spectacles that we have in Britain nowadays.
The state opening of Parliament is all about pomp and circumstance.
The carriage ride from Buckingham Palace to Parliament.
Make way for Black Rod, make way for Mr Speaker.
The theatre of Black Rod going through to the House of Commons.
Close the door.
It's the sort of thing you don't really see
anywhere else in the world.
KNOCKING
Some of the traditions are seriously whacky.
Today, the rituals might look a little bizarre,
but they're rooted in a thousand-year-long bond
between the monarch and Parliament.
It goes back to at least Anglo-Saxon times,
when the sovereign would regularly turn to a trusted group
of bishops and bigwigs for advice.
These ad-hoc chinwags later came to be known as parleys.
The word "parliament" has its origins in parley, to discuss,
and that goes all the way back to Norman times.
But Parliament really becomes a political force
to be reckoned with during the Tudor period.
Henry VIII really started this tradition
of processing to Parliament because he appreciated,
perhaps more than any other monarch, the power of display.
You had to show off your magnificence,
you had to make yourself the focus of public attention
and also really put your stamp on the government.
Yes, Parliament might be meeting to agree your laws
or to vote you taxation, but you're the one in charge.
But a 380-year-old document, kept at the National Archives,
reveals this absolute power didn't last for long.
And when royal control ended,
it would give us one of the most iconic traditions
in the state opening of Parliament.
This document is absolutely fascinating.
Written in early January 1642, it's the equivalent of a live blog.
And you can see his annotations where he's scored stuff through,
but he's absolutely got the gist of the action.
In 1642, King Charles I was on a collision course with Parliament.
He believed five MPs had committed treason
by colluding with his Scottish enemies.
So, what does the King do?
He takes himself to Parliament,
he actually sits in the speaker's chair,
and he says, "Therefore, I am come to tell you
"that I must have them."
So, pretty threatening language,
but very quickly, he realises he's arrived too late.
They've escaped through the back door of Westminster Palace,
escaped in a boat,
and he says, "Since I see all the birds are flown,
"I do expect from you that you shall find them."
Soz, mate, you're not gonna be able
to get your hands on those five MPs,
and not only have all the King's birds flown,
but most of his power has flown with them.
He's been exposed not only as a man
of violent and unconstitutional intent,
but also a pretty impotent king.
This confrontation ignited a civil war
that would consume the kingdom for nearly a decade.
It becomes one of the bloodiest conflicts
in English and Welsh history.
To give an idea of just how brutal it was,
adjusted for population sizes,
the civil wars kill a higher percentage
of the Welsh and English population than the First World War.
Among the dead was the King himself.
On the 30th of January, 1649, Charles I paid the ultimate price
for challenging the power of Parliament,
when he was beheaded just metres from the House of Commons.
So when his son, Charles II,
was restored to the throne a decade later,
he set out to keep the politicians firmly onside.
He's a much more pragmatic figure than his father.
He knows that this can no longer be an oppositional relationship,
it has to be one that works together.
This is why, three centuries later,
the monarch can never enter the House of Commons
and why even their messenger, known as the Usher of the Black Rod,
is ceremonially barred.
Close the door!
Instead, they must knock three times with the ebony staff of office
from which they get their name.
Black Rod. Opening the door.
Only then is Black Rod admitted to summon the MPs
to the monarch's speech in the House of Lords.
Mr Speaker, the King commands this honourable house
to attend His Majesty immediately in the House of Peers.
It's all part of a political theatre
that says what happened in the 1640s does not happen again,
and the privileges of the House of Commons
are things that no monarch can trample upon.
So, yes, it looks like silly costumes and lots of gold carriages,
but in fact, it really does display
what it means for our democracy today, which is hugely important.
The ritual of the state opening of Parliament
is a regular occurrence, but some royal traditions
might only be witnessed once or twice in a lifetime.
I speak to you today with feelings of profound sorrow.
And one of the most important
is the seamless succession from one monarch to the next.
When our late Queen died,
there was a plan for her funeral and a plan for the next succession.
It's all set in concrete.
The day after his mother's passing,
the new King Charles spoke to the nation,
reassuring them that the updated line of succession
was already in place.
I too now solemnly pledge myself.
He made sure any ambiguity about his title, his son's title,
was cleared up swiftly,
they weren't going to wait for an investiture.
Today... I am proud to create him Prince of Wales.
Prince William was now Prince of Wales, next in line.
All of this was done very, very smoothly.
Some people were quite surprised at how incredibly smooth it was.
From the first broadcast he made that evening,
we all viewed him not as Prince any more, but as King.
But for the Royals,
the seamless transfer of power was a hard-won tradition,
learned from the lessons of a bitter and sometimes bloody history
of botched successions.
Until very recent times, succession wasn't guaranteed.
Ill health, illness and disease was no respecter of royalty.
When Queen Anne died at Kensington Palace in 1714,
the ruling Stuart dynasty discovered this the hard way.
Queen Anne only had one surviving son after 17 pregnancies,
and unfortunately, he died after his 11th birthday,
and with that, the whole Stuart line died with him.
To keep the crown in the family
and keep the Stuarts' Catholic cousins off the throne,
Parliament dredged up a distant German relative
and shipped him over to be crowned George I.
George I turns up with all the charm of a wart.
I mean, no-one is happy to see him.
He can't speak fluent English,
any English he does speak is with a very, very heavy accent.
He makes no secret of the fact that he prefers Hannover to Britain.
He is cold, he is reticent.
All that he has going for him is that he's a Protestant,
and not a very devout one.
The public didn't much want a German on the throne,
and Anne not having that smooth line of succession
meant that we ended up with, basically, the worst of all cases.
A century later, when a republic was a viable option,
the monarchy mightn't have survived.
Which is why today, every element of the succession is planned years,
if not decades, in advance.
There's always placed, unspoken or otherwise,
huge pressure of making sure
that you have got your successors lined up like ducks in a row.
But sometimes, protecting those ducks
and that line of succession comes at the expense of a normal family life.
You have a very morbid tradition of making sure
that people who are next to each other in the line of succession
don't travel on the same plane.
According to this tradition,
the first and second in line to the throne
must travel on separate planes once the number two turns 12.
Now that George is 12, we're waiting to see, actually,
whether William does adhere to this rule, this tradition.
I think he will largely have to stick to it, but, you know,
if you're a family, you want to go together, you know.
You want to get on the same plane. It's pants, really, isn't it?
Coming up, the time-honoured royal tradition of keeping secrets.
Didn't even tell the King what was wrong with him.
The awkward rituals that sustain our democracy.
As I heard him speak,
I thought, "Oh, you're not gonna like that, Charles, are you?"
And the royal tradition that almost prevented a planet
from becoming the butt of playground jokes.
So, schoolchildren have had a planet
whose name they can laugh about for centuries.
CHERIE LUNGHI: Some royal traditions are rarely seen...
..but there's one that's almost impossible to escape.
Royal names plastered on buildings, streets, and pubs.
You can't get away from them, really, can you? They're everywhere.
Oh, look, the Queen Vic, the Crown, the Royal Oak.
If you look, I think the top four most popular pub names in Britain
have a royal genesis.
Of course, sometimes, it can land you in hot water.
Using a royal name requires careful handling.
The use has to be dignified and appropriate.
Which is why the Cabinet Office at the heart of the British Government
keeps a close watch over their use.
The best example of it not being really easy
to name anything after a royal or to call anything royal
is Harry and Meghan not being allowed their Royal Sussex website.
In March 2020, the couple formally stepped down from royal duties,
prompting Buckingham Palace and the Cabinet Office
to insist that as non-working Royals,
they no longer use the word "royal" on any branding or media.
But if you can prove there is a valid connection,
then you may well be granted permission to christen your road,
your chapel or indeed your common garden potato -
King Edward potatoes.
Those fine spuds, named, of course, in the Coronation year.
From the humble spud to the mighty cruise ship,
a royal name bestows glamour and the chance of royal favour.
It has that little sprinkle of magic,
the little flavour of royalty.
On the tip of everyone's tongue
and at the heart of every high street,
the tradition has woven the Royal Family
into the fabric of British life.
Whether it's a group or an organisation or a building,
having things named after them helps leave a much stronger legacy
than us normal people might be able to.
And the grander the thing, the longer the legacy.
New York, for example, is named after the Duke of York
who became James II.
Georgia, Augusta,
yeah, these are places in the United States
which are named after British Royals.
Queensland in Australia.
Even the solar system nearly had its own royal tribute.
In 1781, astronomer William Herschel
discovered a new planet during the reign of George III.
His original loyal and patriotic instinct
was to name it after his king,
so the planet would have been called Georgium.
But he's prohibited from doing this
because planets, it was said, must have classical names.
Eventually, the gods of Roman or Greek mythology won out.
It's proof that sometimes,
even royal traditions don't reign supreme,
and the result was a cosmic bum joke.
We were gifted Uranus.
So, rather than having Georgium, school children have had a planet
whose name they can laugh about for centuries.
But other royal traditions have stood the test of time.
The state opening of Parliament happens like clockwork
at the start of every new Parliamentary year.
It's pageantry and politics all mixed up together.
There's a lot of symbolism that goes back centuries.
And the most powerful symbol of all is, without doubt, the crown.
It's the only occasion where the crown is worn on a regular basis,
the state opening of Parliament.
It's not St Edward's Crown,
which is the one that the monarch is actually crowned with,
it's the Imperial State Crown.
That is a symbol of the United Kingdom.
So important is the crown to the ceremony,
it even travels in its own transport.
Stranger still, the crown's colourful guards
are the King's bargemaster and watermen.
As their name suggests, they are bargemen,
they are supposed to be on the water accompanying royalty.
The Imperial State Crown is part of the Crown Jewels,
which have been kept under guard in the Tower of London
for over 300 years.
And the Tower of London, like the Houses of Parliament,
is, of course, on the River Thames.
It's a reminder of times gone by when, actually,
the river was the safest,
most comfortable route for Royals to travel.
And once it's arrived safely,
the crown takes centre stage during the ceremony,
especially when the monarch is unable to attend.
During Elizabeth II's long reign,
when she was in her 90s and struggling with mobility issues,
the Prince of Wales, the future Charles III,
stepped in and would deliver the speech
but would always be careful
to show that he was fulfilling this FOR his mother,
not in lieu of his mother.
The late Queen's speech may have been read by the Prince,
but it was the crown, not the Prince,
that represented the Queen.
The crown is always present at the state opening,
so whether the monarch wears it or not, the crown is present.
But while the crown and the pomp and pageantry
suggests the monarch wields authority,
the tradition at the heart of proceedings makes it clear
this power is purely symbolic.
So, the Queen's speech, or the King's speech,
that is not written by the monarch,
that is written by the Prime Minister.
And it's presented to the monarch as a fait accompli.
And that means the monarch sometimes has to announce government policies
they find hard to stomach.
Her Majesty's ministers will encourage
agricultural and scientific innovation at home.
As I heard him speak, I thought,
"Oh, you're not gonna like that, Charles, are you?"
Now, I remember sitting with Charles at Highgrove at one occasion
when he invited me there, and we were having tea,
and he just went on and on about genetic modification of crops
and how violently against it he was.
Legislation will unlock the potential of new technologies
to promote sustainable and efficient farming and food production.
In other words, genetic engineering.
So, when he had to say those words on behalf of his government,
I thought, "Oh, gosh, that must grate,"
but that's what he has to do.
It would be highly unusual
for the King to go back to the Prime Minister
and say, "Can we just change sentence three?"
It just doesn't happen.
And that's because since Charles I lost his head,
political power has rested
with the peoples' elected representatives,
not the unelected monarch.
The opening of Parliament tells us in the 21st century
that even though we have all of the trappings of royalty,
royalty does not hold political power.
The voters hold political power.
It is the clearest illustration that there is a separation
between monarchy and Parliament and politics,
that he is above politics,
but he must do the bidding of his government.
But beyond the confines of the Commons,
the Royals are increasingly breaking with tradition
and speaking more openly than ever before.
A new tradition is being born of being a bit more touchy-feely,
a bit more in touch with their emotions,
a bit more candid with the public.
In early 2024, King Charles and the Princess of Wales
went public with serious health diagnoses.
This new tradition of openness
is a radical departure from previous royal protocol.
Historically, the Royal Family never admitted to ill health.
If you were royal, you had basically been chosen by God
to be their divine embodiment here on this earth.
If you admitted to ill health of any kind,
it was a sign of weakness, fallibility,
not being able to govern, and definitely not being part god.
And it wasn't just the public that were kept in the dark.
Sometimes, the monarch didn't know either.
George VI had a lung cancer operation,
and he had either the whole or part of his lung removed,
and obviously, the surgeons are perfectly well aware
of what was going on, but he wasn't. He wasn't told.
His private secretary said, "Poor fellow,
"he doesn't really know what's wrong with him."
You know, they didn't even tell the King what was wrong with him.
He was prone to anxiety. I think they felt that if they told him
he had the big C, that would be the end.
So, there was utter secrecy,
even from the man himself, which is bizarre.
Today, the Royals have flipped the script,
swapping secrecy for transparency.
The Royal Family have done an absolute about turn
on this tradition.
Now they talk about their ailments, they talk about receiving treatment,
they pay tribute to the NHS and doctors and nurses.
There's been a sea change in the way the public perceive illness.
We now live in the Instagram age
when you're considered brave IF you share,
not weak because you're sharing.
And this new tradition of openness
has given us the nudge many of us needed.
The King's public announcement
sent NHS website searches for cancer symptoms
soaring by over 50%.
Everyone starts googling, people book in for their own check-ups,
and actually, the nation's health sees an uptick.
Coming up, the royal tradition of keeping secrets
and its toxic consequences.
Wild conspiracy theories develop
that the King's secretly being abused
or tortured by members of his family.
The royal custom of conspicuous consumption.
You name it, they've got it, and if they didn't have it,
they made it quite clear they wanted it.
And the younger Royals overturning centuries of tradition.
They are putting themselves at risk of being laughed at by the tabloids,
the great enemy of the British Royal Family.
It's a huge gamble, a huge risk.
CHERIE LUNGHI: Royal traditions come in many forms.
Some are symbolic, others practical,
but there's one royal tradition that's neither duty nor necessity.
It's dedicated to pleasure, prestige, and the pursuit of beauty.
The tradition of collecting art.
It's hundreds of years' worth of deep pockets
and extraordinary artistic connections.
I mean, you name it, they've got it, and if they didn't have it,
they made it quite clear they wanted it.
The result is the Royal Collection,
a treasure trove of more than a million items,
with an estimated value of over £10 billion.
I would have it all to myself some days.
I'd take the Queen's tea tray on a daily basis
and pass Charles I by Van Dyck...
..a Vermeer in the corner,
the Lady at her Virginals, playing the piano,
and I used to stand there and look at them, thinking,
"These are priceless treasures."
Got Vermeers and Canalettos and Rubens,
but you've also got Warhol and Lucian Freud.
So, it's both about the past and about the present.
It's some of the greatest art of the last 500 years.
But despite its name,
the Royal Collection doesn't actually belong to the Royal Family.
It belongs to the nation.
The monarch can't sell things in the Royal Collection,
and although they're on display in royal palaces,
they're all royal palaces which are open to the public.
So, yes, it's part of the tradition of the monarchy,
but these are our works of art,
you know, not the King's works of art.
Kensington Palace is home to some of the collection's finest artworks,
including a piece that reveals the origins
of this most decadent of royal traditions.
Dominating the King's Gallery
is a version of a spectacular 1633 portrait of King Charles I
by Sir Anthony van Dyck.
The painting's huge.
It takes up most of the wall,
and you just have to think about how long this would have taken
to have painted by van Dyck, and then also how much it cost.
The scale of the piece really just shows it was there for impact.
Charles commissioned it because he wanted to send a message,
"I am here, and I'm powerful."
Charles was keenly aware of the power of art.
He really could see how useful of a tool it could be
to present this image to the people
of a king who knew what he was doing,
was in charge, and was there to protect and defend his nation.
Which is why the King embarked
on one of the most extravagant shopping sprees in royal history.
We know that between 1636 and 1638,
Charles I actually acquired 500 paintings,
and by the time of his death in 1649,
there were over 1,500 paintings in his collection.
Splurging tens of millions of pounds in today's money,
the King snapped up works by Renaissance big hitters
like Titian and Raphael
and commissioned cutting-edge contemporary artists
like Rembrandt and Rubens.
In the process, he established a new royal tradition.
One thing that we can actually commend Charles I for
is beginning the tradition of royal art collecting.
It really wasn't a common or a consistent theme
in monarchs before him,
so without Charles I, there would be no Royal Collection.
But the King took this new tradition too far.
As his appetite for art outgrew the royal purse,
he forced Parliament and the public to bankroll his obsession.
He spent so much time focused on the sort of...
the trappings of monarchy, the displays of monarchy,
and he neglected the heart of monarchy,
which was his relationship with Parliament,
and that would have fatal consequences.
In 1649, the King was condemned to death by a Parliamentary court.
On his way to the scaffold,
he passed beneath his most extravagant commission -
Rubens' spectacular Banqueting House ceiling.
It seemed the tradition of royal art collection had died with the King.
The collection was split up, much of it sold off across Europe.
But a decade later,
Charles II set out to rekindle the tradition his father had started.
Charles II didn't quite manage to get back
all of his father's collection,
but he also collected older art himself, such as Leonardo da Vinci,
and that's a tradition that then continues
during later royal dynasty,
which means that today, the Royal Collection is vast.
It's one of the best,
most magnificent art collections in the world.
For the Royals, displaying their wealth is a deep-rooted tradition,
but when it comes to discussing their health,
the rules are very different.
There's a tradition of British stoicism,
royal self-containment.
You're supposed to never admit to weakness of any kind.
And there's one taboo that's even greater
than talking about physical ill health,
particularly in the Royal Family, and that's mental health.
And inside the picture-perfect Kew Palace
lies the ugly reality of this long-standing royal taboo.
It was here in 1788, that King George III was confined
after suffering years of what was then known as madness...
..and where his doctors kept a daily record.
We see a sort of diary, listing his symptoms, his treatments.
There's lots of accounts of him talking himself hoarse,
frothing at the mouth, really demented,
and you can see that meticulously logged
is the need to restrain him on almost every one of those days,
sometimes, a couple of times.
"Walked about the room. Slept in his chair.
"Slept only two-and-a-half hours."
I mean, really, he is raging.
But the restraint is what stands out, really.
"This morning, hear what the physicians have to say
"but soon lost in reverie."
So, we have a man who's sleeping,
he's restrained quite a lot of the time,
or he's away with the fairies.
The cause of the King's illness was, and remains, a mystery.
The general consensus today
may have been that he suffered from a bipolar disorder.
We still don't know.
All we can be certain of
is that it caused him a great amount of mental anguish.
But whatever the cause, his doctors' so-called cures
can only have made his condition worse.
They thought that they could snap him out of it
by plunging him into icy cold baths,
or run caustic soda onto his legs to get blisters going on,
or hot glass cups on his back to, you know, cause it to swell up.
The physical pain was thought to help him recover
or snap him out of this delirium.
Locked inside these stately rooms,
the British King endured a barrage of barbaric and abusive treatments.
And if he did something that was perceived to be bad,
he would be put in a straightjacket,
and if he ate up all his dinner and was a good boy,
he got to go into his library and look at a book for an hour.
Now, this is a grown man who is clearly vulnerable,
and it just really seems quite cruel from today's point of view
to know that he went through those treatments.
I really just feel for George III, knowing that this what was going on
to who was supposed to be the leader of the country.
According to royal tradition,
news of the King's illness was kept firmly under wraps.
It was a case of not wanting to show weakness within the monarchy
because that, of course, could lead to the whole system falling down.
But in the absence of facts, rumours ran riot.
Wild conspiracy theories develop that his wife, Queen Charlotte,
is in league with the Prime Minster to kill the King
and seize control of the government,
that the King's secretly being abused
or tortured by members of his family.
Writers make up stories.
They say that he shakes hands with a great oak in Windsor Park
and thinks it's the King of Prussia, for example.
That he pulls down his breeches
and exposes his bottom to prove that he doesn't have gout,
that he runs a race with a horse.
These are all invented stories.
Royal illness, secrecy,
and a void filled by wild speculation
would all sound strangely familiar to today's Royal Family.
If you look at what happened on social media
and in public speculation
just before the Princess of Wales's recent announcement
that she was battling with cancer, it's not too dissimilar
to the way in which the public rumour mill went into overdrive
with George III's ill health,
and the speculation was rampant and wildly inaccurate.
Today, 200 years later,
a new generation of Royals are determined
to overturn this outdated royal tradition
and break the taboo surrounding mental health.
When Catherine, Harry and I launched Heads Together,
it is fair to say that we were ambitious
about what it could achieve.
William, Harry and Kate have made it a mission
to talk about mental health
and to make that one of the cornerstones of their campaigning,
to say, "Look, this is very difficult, life is hard.
"It's OK to admit to not being 100% your best self,
"it's OK to seek help."
William and Harry, to an extent, took the cue from their mother
in championing mental health issues
because you remember that Diana stood up
and spoke openly about bulimia.
She didn't actually say, "Look, I've got it,"
but the inference was there,
and she also championed other charities to do with mental health.
So I think they learnt from their mum that this was something
that perhaps we should broach more publicly, more openly.
But as Diana knew all too well,
breaking with royal tradition can be risky.
For William or Kate or Harry to say,
"I had therapy, I wasn't dealing with this or that very well,"
it makes them enormously vulnerable.
They are putting themselves at risk of being laughed at by the tabloids,
the great enemy of the British Royal Family.
And so they are taking a huge, huge gamble when they say,
"Look, this is something I'm gonna talk about
"because it's something that lots of people go through all the time."
I really take my hat off to all three of them on this.
I think they have changed the way we think about our mental health,
and the stigma's gone now.
We know that it's vital to protect and promote our mental health
and our mental wellbeing,
and this is very much down to the two princes and the princess.
Coming up, a brush with royal tradition.
There's definitely an artistic strain within the Royal Family.
And traditions that take their toll.
Oh, Victoria!
Little Victoria, come and let me cuddle you.
CHERIE LUNGHI: The state opening of Parliament...
..with its curious blend of pageantry and politics...
KNOCKING ..is one of the most magnificent
and meaningful of all royal traditions.
It's a reminder that we have a constitutional monarch,
that we have the Lords and the Commons operating together,
and it's a real clear display
of how these different sides of democracy work together.
Monarchy and Parliament are the two pillars of British Government.
Their ancient bond is a tradition
that monarchs neglect at their peril.
There are many occasions when the monarch is allowed
not to attend the state opening in Parliament,
and indeed hasn't done so.
Linked to ill health, occasionally poor weather,
but also death in the family, childbirth.
At such times, the next in line or a senior Lord step in
to ensure the tradition is upheld.
It's made very clear that they are acting as a proxy.
There's an etiquette that's used
to underscore this is a caretaking move.
If a monarch neglects this tradition
and fails to attend or provide a proxy,
it's far more than simply a breach of etiquette.
It threatens the delicate balance between Crown and Parliament.
In 1862, devastated by the death of her beloved consort, Prince Albert,
the grief-stricken Queen Victoria
refused to attend the state opening of Parliament.
People forgive her absence from the opening of Parliament in 1862.
She is the widow of Windsor, she's draped in black,
she's absolutely grief struck.
But it becomes an increasing crisis
when she's nowhere to be seen in '63, in '64.
Questions are being asked.
Throughout their marriage, Albert stayed close by the Queen's side
at the state opening of Parliament.
So when he dies,
she is left literally feeling she cannot possibly do this
cos she hasn't done it alone for so long.
But public sympathy soon turned to resentment,
as Victoria repeatedly refused to respect royal tradition.
She didn't have the excuse of being unwell
or in any other way incapacitated from doing her job.
So critics could point to it as an example of wilful neglect.
Victoria makes the situation even more difficult
through the fact that she doesn't want to perform these functions,
but she also doesn't want to delegate them
to her eldest son, the Prince of Wales.
They are either hers to perform or nobody's.
Even supporters of the monarchy
feel that Victoria is derelict in her duty
and that despite her heartbreak,
she is still receiving the privileges,
the luxuries and the prominence that come with the Crown,
so she is going to have to accept the duty that comes with it as well.
Anti-monarchist newspapers and clubs began appearing across the country,
and radical politicians called for the Queen to abdicate.
There is no doubt that her behaviour in the 1860s
and into the early 1870s does cause a crisis for the monarchy.
Five years after Albert's death, Victoria was finally persuaded
to put in a rare appearance at the state opening of Parliament.
If you read her diary and personal accounts
of how she felt opening Parliament
for the first time since her husband's death,
in modern eyes, what she's describing
sounds very like a severe anxiety attack.
She wrote, "When I entered the House, which was very full,
"I felt I should faint.
"All was silent, and all eyes fixed upon me.
"And there I sat, alone."
Oh, Victoria!
Little Victoria, come and let me cuddle you.
You feel that sympathy for her.
Can you imagine all those smelly old men
staring at this poor grief-stricken queen?
She's really having what we'd call nowadays a panic attack.
So anxious was the Queen,
she only attended the state opening of Parliament six times
during the remaining 35 years of her reign.
And she never again read the Queen's speech,
delegating it instead to the Lord Chancellor.
Traditionally, in times of stress,
the Royal Family have often turned to art for comfort,
enjoying their dazzling collection of paintings and treasures,
and sometimes, even picking up the paintbrush themselves.
There's definitely an artistic strain within the Royal Family.
Princess Louise, Victoria's sixth child,
was a very accomplished artist and sculptress,
studied at what's now the Royal College of Art,
which was considered very radical for her time.
There's a statue made by Princess Louise
of her mother, Queen Victoria,
which is in pride of place outside Kensington Palace,
and it's a very, very fine statue.
Queen Victoria herself, no mean draftswoman
and quite a good watercolourist,
so there is definitely talent in the family.
And today, the royal paintbrush is back in action in the King's hands.
There have been exhibitions of his painting,
and he's really quite good, I think, at them.
For Charles, it seems painting is more than just a family tradition.
I think for Charles, painting is... it's almost a therapy.
Diana once told me, actually, she felt, you know,
she doubted whether he was cut out to be
or would be happy in "the top job", as she called it, being King.
She said, "You know, I just think he would be so much happier
"sitting in Tuscany, painting."
From opening Parliament...
to collecting treasures...
..lending their name...
..to protecting their successors...
..for the Royal Family, following tradition is more than simply habit.
It's a strategy, a way of securing the monarchy's survival
and steadying the nation.
The role that the Royal Family see themselves in,
it's one of guiding good ship Great Britain
through sometimes choppy waters and coming out the other side.
And a lot of the time, it means holding on to your history,
flaunting your traditions, wearing them publicly,
so that people can come together around them.
The cleverest monarchs appreciate the power of tradition,
how essential it is to convey this idea of something permanent,
something rooted in history, something that will never change.
Next time, the bloody origins
of the royal tradition of honouring Britain's best.
It was a very wonderful thing on that day,
just to be at a marvellous ceremony in this amazing setting.
The dangers of the royal court jester.
Henry VIII hit him so hard
that he fell through several rooms and down a flight of stairs.
And the enduring royal custom
that reveals an all-too-human side of the monarchy.
Royalty and scandal go hand-in-jewelled-hand.