The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor places the Crown in a position without modern comparison and presents, in both its constitutional and personal dimensions, one of the most exacting passages of the present reign.
Royal commentator Alastair Bruce, speaking on Sky News, observed that the only historical precedent for such an event lies nearly five centuries distant.
“The only time a sibling of a serving monarch has been arrested was when Elizabeth Tudor, who went on to become Elizabeth I, was arrested in 1554,” he said, recalling the moment when the future Queen was taken into custody amid the anxieties surrounding Wyatt’s rebellion and the proposed Spanish marriage of Queen Mary.
The gulf between that unsettled Tudor world and the settled conditions of the modern constitutional monarchy is the true measure of the present shock.
“I think that gives you a sense of how distant it is to the concept of what monarchy is about and how it should serve,” Mr Bruce told Sky. The Crown, in contemporary understanding, stands not as a participant in faction but as the symbol of national unity and public duty; and the spectacle of a royal prince subject to the ordinary processes of the law is therefore felt as a profound dislocation of expectation.
There is, too, an acutely personal dimension. “For the King, it must be awful to face this,” Mr Bruce said. “He is the person in whose name, ultimately, police constables do their work, and now his brother is a subject of a judicial process.” In that observation lies the constitutional paradox: the Sovereign is the fount of justice, yet the administration of that justice proceeds without fear or favour, even where it touches the Royal House itself.
Public reaction is shaped in no small part by the traditional conception of monarchy as a life of service held at a remove from the controversies that attend ordinary existence. “The nation is not expecting this kind of thing from someone who was once the son of a sovereign and the brother of a sovereign,” Mr Bruce remarked on Sky, giving voice to a sentiment that will be widely shared, whether in sorrow, surprise, or sober reflection.
It would be mistaken, however, to see in the present difficulty any weakening of the constitutional principle that all are equal before the law. Indeed, it is precisely the endurance of that principle that distinguishes the modern Crown from its medieval and early modern predecessors.
If the sole historical parallel is to be found in the committal of the Lady Elizabeth to the Tower, the contrast lies in the transformation of the State itself: from a polity in which dynastic peril could determine a subject’s fate to one in which the rule of law proceeds by settled and transparent course.
The monarchy has, across the centuries, endured crises of far greater immediate danger than this; yet each such moment has tested anew the delicate balance between the personal fortunes of the Royal Family and the impersonal continuity of the institution. That balance is now under strain. The processes of justice must take their course, and the King, whose duty is to stand above them, can only watch as they do so.
History affords perspective but not consolation. The Princess arrested in 1554 emerged to reign with a distinction that restored confidence to the Crown and stability to the realm. The present circumstances are of another character entirely; yet they serve as a reminder that the strength of the monarchy lies not in the immunity of individuals but in the constancy of its service to the nation.
