I remember when The Crown Season 4 premiered and “Lady Diana Spencer” was introduced. Then-Prince Charles freaked out and began a bonkers campaign against Peter Morgan, Netflix and The Crown. It was then that I realized that “support for Charles and Camilla” is a mile wide and an inch deep. Even today, now that we’re dealing with King Charles and Queen Camilla, that’s the extent of their support – a vague sort of “we appreciate the continuity but we don’t actually like Charles and Camilla all that much.” The Prince Andrew situation hasn’t helped at all, especially since Charles has made a point of including Andrew at many events during his reign, even though Charles has known this whole time that Andrew is a degenerate rapist who was BFFs with human traffickers. Well, the anti-monarchy group Republic paid for some new polling and they found that support for the monarchy has actually fallen drastically.

Support for the monarchy has fallen below 50% for the first time, according to a new poll. Campaign group Republic commissioned a poll by Savanta on the royal family under the reign of King Charles, who was crowned last year. It found that the monarchy is rapidly losing support, with fewer than half in all age groups under the age of 55 preferring the royals to an elected head of state. When asked if they would prefer the monarchy or an elected head of state – just 48% said they would prefer the royals.

Meanwhile, a third (32%), said they would like an elected head of state, with a large swathe of “don’t knows”.

Republic CEO Graham Smith said the results showed the UK desperately needed to discuss the future of the royal family and the country’s head of state, particularly in light of Prince Andrew recently being mentioned in the Epstein files.

“This is huge. Royalists have spent years saying the monarchy has the support of the country – that’s clearly no longer the case,” Smith said. “The monarchy is suffering a calamitous loss of support, yet one in five aren’t yet sure about the alternative. We desperately need a better informed, more robust and higher profile debate about what it means to abolish the monarchy.”

Smith added that the same poll carried out in November last year showed that 52% of the public supported the monarchy.

“In just six weeks they’ve dropped four points,” he added. “The monarchy relies on a fake mandate built on polling numbers, yet that argument no longer stands up. Andrew has clearly done significant damage to the monarchy, but Charles is the one responsible. He has been behind decisions on how to mismanage the scandal, and how to respond to Harry and Meghan. This is the result. The monarchy is on borrowed time. Britain will be a republic.”

[From The National]

While I think Graham Smith is going a bit overboard, one of his key points still stands: “The monarchy relies on a fake mandate built on polling numbers, yet that argument no longer stands up.” It’s true – the Windsors and their media handlers have found a way to game the system, publishing the results of right-wing push polls to claim that there’s widespread support for the monarchy, which the monarchy then uses as evidence of their own mandate. The bad news is that even a poll conducted as the Epstein files were being unsealed has revealed that there IS still a significant base of support for the monarchy. Oh, and limiting the poll to people under-55 isn’t slick either – it’s well known that the monarchy’s base of support is much, much older.

The photos in this post are from King Charles’s last three church walks in Sandringham, including this past Sunday’s church visit, where he was not joined by his queen consort. Instead, he walked with a mystery woman. She’s a mystery to me, I mean. Maybe y’all know who she is. Even the Mail didn’t identify her. Curious.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.