Description
For their supporters the British royal family are often heralded as a key asset of British soft power, able to perform functions of advocacy, cultural exchange, trade and British brand enhancement absent of overt political trappings. Beyond this, they are also notable sources of ontological (in)security owing to their position as targets of vicarious identification and vicarious identity promotion for a broad range of communities. Intriguingly, this is also often the case for those of a republican persuasion since, whether citizens like it or not, the royal family represent and brand ‘us’ to outsiders… and, like it or not, even republicans know this. The royal family is therefore ontologically significant, a potential source of status, standing and self-esteem but also of embarrassment, shame and stigmatization. Indeed, in a situation in which branding operates as a cultural context for everyday life and a key mechanism through which individual subjectivities, collective identities and affective relationships are constituted, their role in this respect may even be increasing.
Having established the above, the paper explores the emergence of a growing sense of (post-Brexit) British status anxiety and desires connected to Global Britain through the commentary attached to royal events. While these events provide an opportunity for national vicarious identification, status enhancement and ontological security, they also ultimately contain within them anxieties and seeds of ontological insecurity that stem from the problematic nature of the royal family and how they are received internationally. Analytically, we contend it is possible to identify increasing and intensifying sensitivities at staged formal royal events, where almost everything is being read in terms of a decline in the country’s status and standing. Why is it, then, that royal events remain fantasised venues for the mediation of post-Brexit ontological (in)security?
