THAT the Queen should urge the Prince and Princess of Wales to divorce is not surprising.

She is simply confronting reality and an inevitability - as, by response, Charles does and Diana, in turn, must do also.

But what is an ironic departure is the throne now holding up divorce as a virtuous device for its heir to embrace.

Yet only one and two generations ago, for the royal family, it was an ethical and constitutional taboo powerful enough to force the abdication of King Edward VIII and destroy the romance of the Queen's own sister.

However, though common sense alone tells us that there can be no future in the marriage of Charles and Diana when, after three years of separation, its partners continue to snipe at each other - to the extent of taking turns to confess their infidelity on TV - it does not follow that the monarchy itself is strengthened by seeking to end the sham of this union.

For though divorce may no longer be a taboo for royalty and, indeed, is lamentably commonplace among its subjects - while the institution of marriage and that of the family are also in increasing decline - the Queen's advocacy of it can only help shatter the myth that underpins the throne. That is because the monarchy is held up as an ideal of stability, goodness and permanence. But divorce and the causes of it are an anathema to all of that.

And since the monarchy is ultimately only sustained as an institution, not by any natural or divine right, but only by popular consent and respect, then it jeopardises itself when it make itself, the supposed ideal, the focus of disillusion.

The majesty is then replaced by images of ordinariness and human frailty.

For instance, has not the mystique of the monarchy already been routinely tarnished by a string of royal scandals and titillation in the tabloids?

And more disillusion over the monarchy has been engendered by the evident hostility between the Princess of Wales and the Palace, with Diana winning the public relations war by portraying herself as the victim of callous and unsympathetic attitudes on the part of her husband's family and much of the Establishment.

Thus, despite its inevitability, the Queen's urging a divorce which the Princess says she does not want, particularly because of its effect on her children, may be seen by the public as an unfeeling desire simply to formally exclude her from the royal family and reduce her role as a public figure.

And, from a more practical viewpoint, we are sure that public disenchantment with royalty will reach new heights if these events are followed by attempts by Prince Charles to make Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles his Queen one day.

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