‘I hate it when people moan about how much money royal weddings cost – this country has more important problems to worry about.’
This is a conversation I overhear at my local gym. It is 12 October 2018, and Princess Eugenie has married Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle, funded by the Sovereign Grant. The ceremony aired live on ITV but to significantly less fanfare than other contemporary royal weddings, such as those of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
This is a sentiment I have battled throughout my research on the royal family, and I have been regularly asked why the monarchy is important and worthy of study. Running the Family Firm aims to demonstrate why the ‘more important problems’ described above are not detached from the institution of monarchy. In fact, it is not that we might talk about the monarchy when we talk about growing inequalities in Britain but that we have to in order to understand how inequality works. I would go further to suggest that we cannot talk about inequalities in Britain without talking about the monarchy. Running the Family Firm argues that the principles by which monarchy works are key principles by which the whole system works, and in understanding monarchy we can begin to make sense of the system.