Tracy Borman is perhaps Britain’s preeminent ‘royal historian’, and compared to, let’s say, France, this sceptred isle has a lot of royal history to sift through. Nearly a thousand years, in fact, which is the basis of her upcoming spoken word tour on the very topic. A date in Brecon provided a prompt for Carl Marsh to engage Tracy on her specialist subject…
What do you think fascinates people about royalty, especially when the divide between mega-rich and poor is vast? I’d say a majority of people can’t abide non-royal wealthy types.
Tracy Borman: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I think royalty has always had a kind of X-factor if you like, and there’s this mystique surrounding the Crown that you don’t get with just any aristocrat or rich person. There’s this sense that they’re almost otherworldly beings: you can’t imagine them as ordinary people like you and me, doing everyday things. Historically, that was very deliberate. The monarchy set itself up as being something separate, special, and appointed by God, and I think that sense has endured.
So the challenge in more recent times has been keeping that mystique in an age of mass communication, when we know everything about everyone; images are sent around the globe in seconds, there’s live streaming… But I think the palace still keeps that sense of separation while being in touch with the people and doing lots of, you know, public events. But at the core, there still has to be that mystique there has been for centuries.
You’re someone who’ll have had more dealings with the royal family and their staff than most, but it’s not like we’re just talking about the last few decades here. Your talk begins in 1066, so nearly a thousand years.
Tracy: I know. The Tudors are my speciality, and they literally built their palaces around this idea of mystique. At the centre of every palace, they had something called the Privy Chamber, which was basically their private apartments – very restricted access. Only the most trusted servants would get to go there.
Now obviously, that has expanded over the years. You get entire palaces filled with staff, but the same principle applies in that you only choose the very, very trusted people to surround you, to serve you in private. And I think that still really holds true today, even if it’s no longer the case that a monarch can just retreat into their Privy Chamber for weeks on end like they used to.

Did the Privy Chamber start to exist mainly due to the Tudors?
Tracy: They didn’t invent it. For as long as the monarchy has existed, they’d always had this kind of secret chamber, called various things. But the Tudors took that to a new level because they were brilliant at PR and really got what it was that was special about the monarchy. There was a lovely quote: “The further you go down the palace corridors, the more threadbare the carpets become.” In other words, you’ve got to keep that distance because you don’t let people in too much.
The Tudors really appreciated that. So, they made this sense of themselves as being something not like other mortals, and they retreated into their Privy Chamber – yet when they came out of it, they were beautifully dressed. Elizabeth I had that white makeup on and the wigs, but looked very different in private. And so it was the Tudors, I think more than anyone, who appreciated the kind of propaganda that lay at the heart of the royal family.
And there’s never been a dull moment concerning this giant propaganda machine over the last thousand years, has there…
Tracy: Never a dull moment! Of course, I’m biased because I’m a royal historian, so I find it all fascinating, but there just hasn’t been! When people talk about crises in the royal family, we’ve seen it all before – and usually worse. Yeah, the king who marries six times, the Virgin Queen… you’ve got abdications, murders, betrayals, revolutions, civil war when the king’s head was chopped off. There’s always something going on – and the monarchy is continually evolving to try to keep up with the times, I guess!
Tracy Borman: How To Be A Good Monarch, Theatr Brychieniog, Brecon, Fri 21 Apr.
Tickets: £25/£23. Info: here
words CARL MARSH
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