Tom Quinnjournalist and writer seasoned in unraveling the mysteries of Windsor’s house, has compiled in his latest book, Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, The testimonies of those who have shared, at a prudent and servile distance, the intimacy of the royal family. What emerges from its pages is a fresco as fascinating as disturbing, where the greatness of the protocol is intertwined with the daily meanness of the privileged.
In Buckingham’s halls, where watches seem to measure time with a cadence other than that of the outside world, the whispers of the servants who have served the British monarchy with the same devotion with which a priest watchs his altar, still resonate his altar. Because in royalty you do not work: it is worshiped. But even the gods have their hobbies, and the servants, if they do not know them in advance, end up learning them by force of glare or ice creamy silences that weigh more than a real decree.
Of all the princes and kings who have inhabited these walls, few have been as difficult to please as Prince Andrés, the eternal second with firstborn aspirations. Raised under the shadow of his mother, the Queen Elizabeth IIand convinced that his courage and masculinity would have made a better monarch than his brother Carlos, Andrés He has cultivated a sullen and capricious character that has made his staff victims of a perpetual bad mood. One was fired for the simple fact of having a mole in the face; Another, due to the unforgivable fault of wearing a Nylon tie. With such a selection criteria, it is not strange that your work environment has been more unstable than your reputation.
Queen’s silences
But if Andrés is the gross version of the aristocratic whim, his mother was, until the end, a teacher in the art of containment. Isabel II understood the power of the minimum gesture: preparing a cup of tea for an old Windsor rangers was his way of demonstrating closeness without crossing the royalty threshold. “It was a relief to do something instead of doing everything to me“The queen confessed in the intimacy of that cabin who had ordered to build for her faithful employee, perhaps with the secret hope that he would never dare to leave at all.
In that same house, far from the rigidity of the palace, Isabel could afford an unexpected joke. “Hopefully the children were as easy to educate as the Corgis“He sighed once, after throwing a cookie into the garden and seeing his dog shot after her.
Its relationship with staff oscillated between distant formality and silent complicity. Some employees became, if not friends, at least tolerated confidants. William Tallonthe queen mother’s butler for half a century, shared with her dinners and secrets with an intimacy that blur the hierarchies. Margaret Bobo MacDonaldNanny first and in charge of the costume later, he had the privilege of accompanying Isabel until his last days, installed in an apartment in Buckingham without another obligation than to have tea with his former protected.
The king of impatience
But not all members of the Windsor family have cultivated that elegant discretion. Carlos IIIdespite his image of peaceful man, he is prey to an irritability that his staff knows well. It is enough that the cup of tea is not correct, that the shoes do not shine with the precise luster or that the toothpaste is not applied in the brush with the obsessive accuracy that he requires, so that the monarch loses his stirrups. His anger is as fleeting as irrational, and usually regrets instantly, but by then he has already sown enough fear that no one forgets what is the level of perfection he demands.
His wife, Camilais less demanding with the details, but more reluctant to the pomp that surrounds it. He never wanted to be queen, and on more than one occasion he has told Carlos: “Can’t we get rid of all this protocol? It is nonsense“. But the blue blood has its own weight, and the king, who hates the swear words, only responds with an educated resignation:”You do it for me, honey“.
Tantrums and diplomacy
Princes inherit more than a title: they absorb, as sponges, the emotional tics of their lineage. Guillermodespite its impeccable public image, it also has anger starts, although those who have worked for it ensure that they consider them a natural part of their temperament, a kind of dynastic right to impatience.
His wife, on the other hand, has managed to move with the discreet intelligence of who understands that, in court, the most effective resistance is adaptability. Kate Middletonraised outside the aristocratic circle, has proven to be the most skilled in the silent policy of the palace. He knows when to give in, when to change things without causing an earthquake and, above all, when to shut up. Perhaps that is the key to their success: in a family where words usually have the edge of a decree, the art of diplomacy is exercised, many times, in the domain of the pause.
The echo of the centuries
What survives the British monarchy is not their scandals or their tantrums, but its unwavering ability to persist. Kings and princes pass, but the ritual is still intact. In Buckingham halls, servants walk with the same stealth, butlers open doors with identical gesture of secular servitude and tea cups are prepared with the millimeter precision required by tradition. Because the true power of royalty does not lie in its lineage, but in the inertia that keeps them standing, century after century, as an echo that refuses to extinguish.
