'It just feels like a slap in the face'

The United Kingdom is preparing for King Charles III’s coronation on May 6 at Westminster Abbey in London. It comes at a time when the royal family has seen its reputation rocked by a series of scandals, including the continuing fallout from Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s departure, as well as deeper questions around what role the monarchy — which profited from the British Empire’s violent colonial past— should play in modern society.

Ahead of the coronation, Al Jazeera brought together four residents of Birmingham, the UK’s second-largest city, from different walks of life to talk about what they think of the British monarchy.

Are there positives to having a royal family?

Rubie: I would say the only positive [thing] is tourism. But then that money goes back into feeding them, to be honest, and living their lavish lives.

But for us, the people, it’s very outdated.

I see a lot of forced marriages. Even with Princess Diana and Prince Charles that was a forced marriage, devastation from the start. With Meghan and Harry, he’s like, ‘I don’t care. I’m going to do whatever I want,’ and that’s how it should be.

I think if it weren’t for scandals, or their personal things coming out, you wouldn’t hear about the royals at all.

Pat: There is one positive that Rubie just brought up, and that’s tourism. They bring a lot in, but how does that play out? I mean, last year, apparently, there were over 100 million pounds ($126 million) spent on royals.

Nathan: I feel I am an objective person, but I do struggle to find positivity. I think the only thing I can tap into is I think that there is economic value to the royal family, there’s a global brand.

I think we’re the most famous royal family that’s left, so that could be a positive in terms of the economic benefits. If you bring in tourism, you will probably attract new business opportunities and jobs.

And then, if I’m trying to be really kind, there’s the [youth charity] Prince’s Trust. It’s for people who are entrepreneurial and are trying to get a kick start in life. I have friends who were able to get grants from the Trust and start their businesses. So I could imagine for young people who have engaged with that scheme, that the Trust could be positive.

Elsbeth: I always think with the royal family, they do this charity work, but if I didn’t have a job, I would do lots of charity work.

I think there are some points of history that we can all think of when the royal family have done lots of good things, like when Diana shook hands with AIDS patients. [Princess Diana campaigned against the stigmatisation of HIV and AIDS and famously shook the hand of patients in the 1980s, at the height of the epidemic, when it was still believed by some that the virus could be passed on by physical contact.]

I think considering how much we spend [on the royal family], it really doesn’t do that much good.

Does the monarchy represent Britain’s colonial past to you?

Rubie: I just want to pick up the point that you [Nathan] mentioned — that they are a brand. Is it a brand in a positive way? Because the British Empire devastated a lot of countries, they took over and made a lot of money from them, and then you’ve got the Commonwealth Games where they make them all compete against each other, so it’s like a chessboard.

Nathan: The Commonwealth Games. In my community it was referred to as the stolen wealth games.

I think it is problematic in Britain that we don’t want to talk about some truths of the horrors of the past. I think about my grandparent’s story, being part of the Windrush generation African Caribbean community coming from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands to England to help rebuild the country after World War II. They came here through invitation. What a lot of people don’t understand is that Britain was devastated after World War II and the queen and the government at the time couldn’t find enough of a workforce and so they came from what we now call Commonwealth countries. At the time, it was called the British Empire. They were classed as British subjects, and they came over to help rebuild. Like my grandad’s first job was based here in Birmingham city centre to rebuild the iconic building called the Rotunda.

But I don’t feel like history has been taught and talked about the profits that the royal family and others have benefitted from. King Charles the III has agreed to an inquiry to look at the benefits that the royal family may have had through slavery, but it’s like how many years too late? How can it just happen in 2023?

Pat: I’m old enough to remember when the old king died. I went to a Catholic school [in Northern Ireland], and on the day he died, the Protestant school let their children out, and they were shouting, ‘The king is dead!’ And we just shouted, ‘Wayyy! Thank god!’ Personally, I think most Republican people in Northern Ireland don’t care about the royal family. I think the Unionists, particularly the Protestant people absolutely adore them. And they don’t see any wrong whatsoever. The rape of African countries for gold or silver, the crown jewels, and stuff like that. They don’t even think about that.

Nathan: You’re from Northern Ireland, right? My grandparents tell me stories of when they first came to England they saw a sign, let me find it [pulls out phone].

Rubie: Was it, ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’?

Pat: Yeah. I saw them many a time in London, but never in Birmingham.

Can today’s British royal family change its image?

Nathan: I’m not here to just attack. I think they could have been modernised. I think they could have benefitted from the different thoughts and opinions of a multicultural Britain, but they clearly haven’t; look at what’s happened with Harry and Meghan.

Pat: Harry is his mother’s son. No doubt about that.

Rubie: Picking up on what you [Elsbeth] have said about charity work. You’ve got a point there, it’s just because they don’t have anything to do? Yes. But I am also on [Princess] Diana’s side because she did it from the heart. She was absolutely slated by the royal family because she wanted to do something different. She wanted to be her. And I think she’s the one that actually shook the whole royal family.

He [Harry] is doing what his mum couldn’t do. Even when she was dating different races of people, she was frowned upon. When they knew he [Harry] was going to marry a woman of colour, he got scared for his life.

How much did the stories about Meghan and Harry divide British society?

Elsbeth: I think it divided people the same way that Brexit divided people. You either loved Harry Megan or you were completely against them. You either thought that Harry and Megan was like reliving Diana all over again. Or you thought that Megan was this cruel woman stealing Harry away. [In early 2021] I was working in the community with lots of elderly people the week of the Oprah [Winfrey] interview, and a lot of people said to me, ‘We just don’t like that woman’.

I was just like, ‘Why? What has she done?’ And it was always just, ‘there’s a thing about her where we don’t like her’, there was just something unspoken.

Rubie: I think it was because she was of mixed heritage, and nobody wants to be seen as racist. They don’t want colour. It’s seen as dirty.

Nathan: Harry and Megan, I was confused by it to be honest, because from my lens, I just saw love. Maybe I was too biased, too naive, but he just looked free, and happy. And she’s obviously very beautiful. She seemed very elegant and had a lot of grace. And I just couldn’t understand why she was getting this backlash in the press, and then when you start to look at the history of Britain, then you can start to understand, and it’s kind of sad really.

Rubie: It’s not just colour. It’s if you’ve got special needs. If you’ve watched The Crown series [on Netflix], the queen had two cousins that had special needs, and [in the 1940s] they locked them away. That absolutely killed me because I thought, oh my goodness, my daughter’s got special needs, and I’m like, she’s not classed as a human being.

What would it have meant to you if the monarchy had embraced their relationship?

Nathan: It is not only just embracing Meghan but publicly embracing some of the things that we heard [from Harry] in terms of the mental health challenges and having open discussions about some of the [social] challenges that Britons face. If you take Prince William, for instance, you don’t get a sense of his character, his emotions. How can you have people like that representing the country or you?

If you look at where we are now in society, we’ve been having unprecedented protests in loads of different industries, from bus drivers to nurses, doctors, and teachers across the UK, who are protesting and striking because the cost of living is getting really real. Now, if you have no opinion, why are you there? There are so many key watershed moments happening, and you’re just getting no comment. You just come in and, you know, wave to the crowd.

Rubie: But that’s because they don’t know what it feels like to pay bills. They don’t know what it feels like to work.

Nathan: That’s why I kind of rate Harry because Harry’s shared the emotions of losing his Mum. Like we can all connect with him. He’s talked about mental health, falling in love.

I feel like if they came down to the ground, came down to local communities and were really seen helping people that are really going through stuff and in a big way, I think it could potentially turn the tide slightly in certain pockets with the next generation.

How do you feel about the upcoming coronation?

Elsbeth: I don’t think anyone had strong thoughts against the queen. I’m a student nurse, and I work in hospitals. And when it was the Platinum Jubilee [in 2022 to mark the 70th anniversary of the queen], we had an afternoon tea service, and the patients were really, really excited. And there were like banners everywhere.

Now’s the coronation, and no one really cares. It’s because we’re all in sort of crisis mode at all the hospitals.

Nurses are on strike, doctors are on strike, ambulance workers are on strike, everyone’s on strike. And we’ve got this coronation and it just feels a bit like a slap in the face.

Edited and condensed for clarity and length.