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The Dutch way is not for us | Victoria Coren

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Abdication may be acceptable in Holland, but fiddling with institutions is not for the British

The abdication of 75-year-old Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, allowing the Dutch monarchy to be "rejuvenated" by her 46-year-old son, Willem-Alexander, has led many to start chattering about whether our own Queen Elizabeth should do the same.

There are many reasons why this is a terrible idea. First, the Queen is the best thing about the royal family – so dedicated, hard working and efficient, anyone would think she was German.

Genuinely, I love the royals. I admire the Queen in a fairly straightforward way, as many do: I believe she has a strong sense of duty and that she has behaved gracefully and good-humouredly throughout a life spent in service. I can't resent her for the gilding on the cage; it's no more her fault that she was born into palaces than someone else's fault they were born into poverty. She's played her hand a lot more altruistically than her uncle did.

The extended royal family live a challenging life, full of difficult decisions. Prince Andrew, for example, is faced daily with the decision of whether to have sex with a model on a yacht or play golf.

But I love the relatives for the soap opera, their contribution to the gaiety of nations. I wasn't sure as a teenager, but my feelings about the royal family changed significantly when EastEnders went to four episodes a week.

Two episodes, I could handle. The hour-long Sunday "omnibus" was timed perfectly for a cooked breakfast. In heaven, Sydney Smith will eat foie gras to the sound of trumpets and I'll have fried bacon to the sound of market traders moaning.

But a four-episode, two-hour omnibus was simply not justifiable, while I still haven't seen Citizen Kane. Thus, soap disappeared from my life – until I noticed how beautifully the Windsors filled the gap. They have plot twists, grand sets, daft costumes and sporadic comic characters – like Prince Edward, a sort of Nick Cotton figure who comes and goes from the narrative, and may even now be complaining to producers that he hasn't had a juicy storyline in ages. That family is the gift that keeps on giving.

I don't know about you, but my life is certainly jollier for news of Prince Harry naked at the snooker table, Zara Phillips riding in the Olympics and Fergie playing with her mobile phone at Lady Thatcher's funeral. I was properly sad when Princess Diana died; partly because I found her story deeply moving, and partly because it dashed my hopes that Mohamed Al Fayed would join the royal family. All he wants is to bedeck himself with gold and do preposterous things, he'd have fitted right in.

One of the strongest plot threads in this saga is the plight of Prince Charles, ageing and greying and looking for meaning as his parents sail cheerfully towards their 200th birthdays. When Kate Middleton was nicknamed "Waity Katie" after only seven years of dating Prince William and wondering if she'd ever be queen, he must have snorted: "Ha! What does she know from waiting?" (In my head, Prince Charles is quite Jewish.)

Don't get me wrong: I like Prince Charles, from afar, enormously. I like his concern for farming, the countryside and the aesthetic beauty of Britain; I like his anxious letter writing and his gameness for trying on hats; he seems like a warm and decent fellow and I shall be delighted for him when he's king.

But there is no denying that the waiting game has built a funny and memorable character in the royal soap. The idea of his having to attend this Dutch ceremony, sitting in a pew while the Queen explains to a cheering crowd exactly why she's standing down to allow her son to refresh and renew the monarchy, Charles there to represent our own Queen with his teeth bared in a rictus smile and knuckles whitening around his hymn book, is hilarious.

The rule of soaps, like sitcom, is that you never resolve a dynamic if you can possibly keep it running. And so Her Majesty must soldier on.

The other reason why the Dutch tradition of "abdicating to rejuvenate" would be a terrible idea for us is that, like all attempts to modernise ancient institutions, it would satisfy nobody. What is to be gained from these small fiddles to the rules? It's as daft as saying that changing the laws of succession, so William and Kate's daughter would not be overtaken by a son, has made the whole thing "fair".

For royalists, it's a dilution of tradition when tradition is the very point; for republicans, it's just rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.

Speaking of regal British women, I was very excited to get an email last week from Miriam Margolyes, of whom I have always been a fan.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a shouty column in this space when Margolyes took Australian citizenship and complained at the ceremony about England's class-riddled society. Roused to patriotic defence, I growled sardonically about Australia being "the most fluid and classless of all the countries that have massacred indigenous populations for the sake of a bigger garden".

Marvellous Margolyes would like me to make clear that, although she is now a dual citizen in advance of a civil partnership with her Australian girlfriend of 44 years, she has no intention to quit the UK.

I did speculate in the column that this new passport might be an act of metaphorical union, which I found very romantic. But Margolyes is having none of it. "We know we love each other," she says. "The civil partnership is for FISCAL reasons – to avoid Death Duties under spousal inheritance."

There you go: never presume. But hurray for the national treasure staying in Britain. In fact, says Miriam stoutly, she's not even planning to leave Clapham.

www.victoriacoren.com


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