Jack Tame: The challenge for Royals is relevancy

<p>When I was a boy, I used to love going my grandparents’ house and reading about the<span> </span>royals in my grandma’s trashy magazines.<span> </span><span> </span></p> <p><span>My grandparents had come out from the U.K in the sixties and they were still very British, working class, and my grandma was absolutely consumed by the various scandals and shifting dynamics within the Buckingham Palace set.</span><span> </span></p> <p>Well... I say she was. I think, actually, I was. To a little boy it felt like a fantasy World.<span> </span>I used to perch up on my Grandma’s<span> </span>La-Z-Boy, recline the seat, and pore<span> </span>over all the details<span> </span>of how William and Harry lived their lives.<span> </span>I was obsessed with how rich the royal family must have been, and I can still remember some of the stories, almost thirty years on. William and Harry at a birthday party with Diana. William and Harry run amok in a fireworks shop.<span> </span><span> </span></p> <p>Times have changed.<span> </span>Back then, we<span> </span>voraciously<span> </span>consumed<span> </span>royal gossip just as we do today, but we<span> </span>didn’t question the institution<span> </span>nearly as much.<span> </span></p> <p><span>The challenge for the Royals today is relevancy. Just as the influence of Britain has declined, the royal family is increasingly irrelevant to younger people. Polling released this week shows that just 12% of Britons aged 18-34 continue to see the monarchy as ‘very important,’ compared to 42% of people over the age of 55. The numbers in the U.K have steadily decline for several decades, and I expect they’re even starker in New Zealand.</span><span> </span></p> <p>King Charles’<span> </span>coronation will be a grand spectacle,<span> </span>a magnificent oddity,<span> </span>but I think one of the most interesting things will be<span> </span>observing how<span> </span>it’s processed across different media. Queen Elizabeth’s coronation was the first to broadcast on TV. King Charles’ coron