 Hello. Stories about British royalty have been endlessly retold and they're internationally recognisable from the countless films, costume dramas, documentaries and from tabloids and endless biographies. In all of these stories, one of the constant recurring motifs, one of the threads that links them all, is divorce. And regardless of whether you're an ardent monarchist or a passionate Republican, I want to suggest that taking royal divorces seriously is a helpful way to think about the history of marriage and indeed the history of divorce. In other words, that royal marriages and divorces have had an impact on family law. So while it's a story of kings and queens and princesses and princesses, we can think of it as a form of social history that's had a broader impact. Alas, too often these stories are simply described as melodramas. And the word melodrama has had a slightly bad name. It's used as a pejorative term. But the concept of melodrama being something very serious has been made wonderfully by a writer called Peter Brooks in his book called The Melodramatic Imagination. Here he celebrates what he calls a mode of excess and reminds us that melodrama starts from and expresses the anxiety brought by a frightening new world in which traditional patterns of moral order no longer provide the necessary social glue. So in what's going to be a whistle-stop tour, I want to look at how royal divorces have indeed challenged the traditional patterns of moral order, how they've led to conservative defences of the status quo and at the same time spearheaded revolutionary reforms. Royal divorces in many ways is where constitutional law meets family law. So it's where the most public masculine type of law meets the most private and feminine and intimate type of law. And I think it's in that coming together of constitutional law and family law one of the reasons why royal divorces are a unique vantage point for thinking about law. Now the obvious starting point in this history is Henry VIII. The ending of his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon has been described as the most famous divorce in history. Without any doubts the ensuing reformation is one of the seminal moments in British history. But I want to suggest that the obsessive focus on him is problematic and the important things often get overlooked in the telling of these stories. So despite the popular rhyme, divorce beheaded died, divorce beheaded survived, Henry VIII never got divorced. His marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves were brought to a legal end by annulment. Henry VIII's battle with the Pope was about the interpretation of Catholic laws. Catholic refusal to commit divorce remains firmly in place. But if the recent procedural reforms by the current Pope now, Pope Francis, had been in place then, Cardinal Woolsey would have been able to rubber stab in the annulment without the need to seek the approval of the Pope. Confusing divorce with annulment, as the stories about Henry VIII repeatedly do, obscures the distinctive nature of Anglicanism. It obscures thinking about the distinctiveness of British history. Long after Henry VIII, England stood out as the only Protestant country without some form of legalized divorce. In addition, Henry VIII's dispute with Rome was also far from exceptional in Europe. Papal annulments and dispensations for marriages was a constant for centuries before him. Indeed, it's been argued that Catholic indissolubility of marriage remained in place, partly because the flexibility of the rules made strategic royal remarriages relatively easy, one way in which this was done by clever lawyers in the medieval age faking genealogies. So lawyers have been playing the rules game to enable their clients end their marriages for a long time. Henry's story as a melodramatic one becomes one of British exceptionalism. It creates a myth of plucky England standing out against continental powers. It's an enduring myth. A far more widely and successful king in playing the marriage rules was King John before Henry VIII, famous for Magna Carta and the villain in Robin Hood. His marriage to Isabella of Gloucester had been within the prohibited degrees and he had resisted calls at the marriage at the time of his marriage to request a papal dispensation. This was quite smart because it enabled him to effectively dispense with her at his will as he subsequently did in 1200 to make the strategically beneficial marriage with his second wife, the French princess. The focus on Henry VIII overlooks two later key moments when divorce is also critical for the constitution for the relationship between sovereign and the people. The first is the time of the glorious revolution in 1688, the removal of James II from the throne and the offering of the crown by the Whig aristocrats to the Dutch King William and Protestant Mary. In this power struggle political theorists like John Locke explicitly linked the emerging possibility of parliamentary divorce with the forced abdication of a king by parliament. In other words, getting rid of a wife often for reasons of succession as much as Fult was analogous with getting rid of a troublesome king. A contractual view of both the relationship between husband and wife and king and subjects was replacing a divinely indissoluble one and the symbolism of the ring in both contexts is also plays that out. The relationship between parliamentary divorce and the sovereignty of parliament came to the fore a century later when George IV who had been Prince Regent attempted to divorce his wife Caroline of Brunswick and he attempted to do this by the wonderfully named pains and penalties bill from 1820 and her trial was represented in all sorts of paintings and documents at the time. She was very popular and that's one of the reasons why the bill was dropped in other words why parliament wouldn't give the king the divorce but alongside all the salacious stories it was a constitutional drama while enabling divorce suited the Whig calls in the 1690s in this context resisting this particular divorce worked in the other direction. As the radical MP at the time William Cobbett said if the highest subject in the realm can be deprived of her rank and title can be divorced, defroamed and debased by an act of arbitrary power the constitutional liberty of the kingdom will be shaken to its very base and here in this cartoon you can see even Prince Regent being dressed up as Henry VIII again the legacy went on. The attempted divorce of Queen Caroline was the first popular melodrama around a royal marriage it was debated by all classes and plates and mugs were made in support of Caroline so it was an attempted divorce and not a coronation or a wedding in which the invented tradition of crockery in people's homes arrived. As the power of the royal family at the monarchy is reduced the response of royalty to divorce became a key part of its legitimacy increasingly entering the modern era it becomes the symbol of the monarchy's search for a new role. The welfare monarchy in a way dances with companionate marriage at the same time so the starting point for the modern era is a speech made by the current queen in 1947 just shortly after her marriage. In this speech to the mother's union she said that we can have no doubt that divorce and separation are responsible for some of the darkest evils in our society. These incredibly strong words at least Labour government had just introduced legal aid primarily to assist people with divorce something that's often forgotten about the origins of legal aid. Ex-servicemen who benefited from legal aid here had arguably been fighting something more worthy of the epithet darkest evil. The speech plunged the young princess Elizabeth into an unexpected controversy. She was strongly criticised for taking such a partisan position on what was even then considered a contested issue so the incident challenges preconceptions of the late 40s the post-war period as one solidly based on deference and simple social conservatism. The royal family and upholding the social stigma against divorce was clearly expressed in other ways. Divorcees were forbidden from entering the royal enclosure Ascot until 1955 and divorce military officers were not permitted to attend shooting parties at Sandringham until the late 1940s so killing the king's colonial subjects and foreigners is fine but not the king's presence. Lifting of these restrictions in the late 40s and 1950s reflected an increasing acceptance of divorce in the royal family's own aristocratic social circles. There was then what emerged to be a clash between their rollers head of society and their other rollers head of the nation and this comes to the fore much more clearly again in the context of divorce and again around the particularly around the time of the queen's coronation in 1953. In 1953 the sociological review was launched and in the inaugural volume of that journal two sociologists argued that the coronation was an act of national communion and that devotion to the royal family means in a very direct way devotion to one's own family. It seems a striking comment now and later sociologists described it as the sociology of grovelling but it reflected widely held thinking at the time. In this what was described as a new Elizabethan era the contractual relationships underlying marriage and monarchy were both premised on a commitment by a woman the queen and lots of women wives inputting duty before individualistic pursuit of happiness and the link between the coronation and divorce becomes even clearer when we look at the conclusions of the Morton Commission the royal commission set up to investigate divorce reform which was set up in 1951 and reported in 1956 in rejecting calls for divorce to be made easier the Morton Commission concluded that the real remedy lies in fostering in the individual the will to do his duty by the community in strengthening his resolution to make marriage a union for life in inculcating a proper sense of his responsibility towards his children. Now that conclusion mirrors almost in extraordinary way the oath that the queen made to the people in 1947 again she said that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family the real parallels there that attention was emerging between the monarchy's alignment with duty and marital status over a growing demand for personal fulfillment and the crisis came to the fore in the what was described as the Townsend affair a drama centering on the question of whether Princess Margaret could marry group captain Peter Townsend a divorced man a classic melodrama doomed romance standing in for a battle of public morality and the relationship between church over state and the battle lines were deeply entrenched the Times editorial spoke for the embitted establishment which saw both marriage and monarchy as being threatened to allow this marriage to go ahead would undermine one of the reasons of course why Edward VIII had to abdicate because he wanted to marry a divorced woman so the Times in 1955 says that in her the queen the people saw their better selves ideally reflected if the marriage comes to pass it is inevitable that this reflection becomes distorted vast numbers of her sister's people cannot in conscience regard it as a marriage in this quote part of a last ditch battle to hold the line against divorce reform this extraordinary statement demonstrated that the royal family was being deployed as an instrument of social control and this was a very radical shift away from Walter Badger's ritorian ideal of the monarchy which was based on symbolism not really about the personal attributes of the royal family on the other side was public opinion a gallant poll at the time found that 59 percent of the public approved of the marriage against only 17 percent who disapproved as princess margaret is quoted as saying in the crown when discussing the matter with the queen think about this i have the country that is for me newspapers that sympathize with me i represent what a growing majority wants the future not the past a kinder more tolerant attitude towards marriage and divorce retold now it becomes a nostalgic reassuring liberal story of the bad old days and progress her announcement that she would not marry town send interrupted radio programs globally mount writing in the london review of books in 2018 reminisces that you need to be over 70 to remember the awful thrill of the announcement so this personal marriage or non marriage of a princess becomes a place a space where the public is looking at marriage looking at how marriage and families are being displayed observing it contesting it disputing it and from this incident we have a clear indication of shifting public attitudes towards marriage and divorce the doomed royal project of resisting legitimizing divorce was confirmed in 1967 when the queen's first cousin lord herwood became arguably the first member of the royal family to get divorce his remarriage as a divorce man placed the queen in a difficult position she effectively passed the bug she permitted it but only on the advice of the cabinet so she accepted it but because constitutionally there was no other choice for her to do so and in a way that became the official position towards family law reform generally and to divorce reform in particular reluctant acceptance because there was no considered to be no other option changing continuity however went hand in hand and this was evident in 1972 at the queen and prince philips silver wedding anniversary celebration the tele daily telegraph announced then that the queen the duke and their children have set a standard of family life and family happiness that everyone must respect and many envy they were of course tempting fate here and once again it was princess margaret's personal life that tested the boundaries the announcement that she and armstrong jones would be formally separating was announced in 1976 on the same day that the prime minister herald wilson announced his retirement been suggested that it was a personal favor of the prime minister to the queen based on the assumption that his resignation would blanket the separation however his press officer observed that wilson didn't understand the tabloids it was the other way around in the public announcement it was stressed that there were no plans for divorce but in 1978 just over two years later a statement announced that the marriage would be formally ended discreetly avoiding the actual word divorce the bbc coverage of this divorce is a careful choreograph attempt to normalize and treat it almost as something quite unremarkable they announced that the two sides have agreed that their marriage should be ended with the minimum of formality in our new streamlined divorce system in exactly the same way that thousands of commoners choose to end their marriage in our court each year reinforcing the shift in moral emphasis the tabloids focus more on the princess's lifestyle and whether she was value for money not the fact of her divorce so private behavior mattered but not so much marital status so we see her a shift towards responsibility as being a key way to understand and to judge behavior and this set the tone for the subsequent separations and divorces of the three of the queen's children princess and prince andrew and prince charles despite the extensive newspaper coverage the issue of separation and divorce per se appeared to be no longer that problematic evidence of this is a times editorial for 1995 which said that despite the fulminations of moralists and sentimentalists a divorce carries no constitutional implications a very stark change of tune from the times there as they had been the lead fulminator for decades while undoubtedly we're now in a markedly different terrain it's one of change and continuity first continuity the royal divorces all followed the precedent set by princess margaret a formal announcement of separation along aside a statement the divorce is not being considered followed by divorce using the fact of two years separation later this format has a ritualistic feel to it it's as carefully choreographed and formalistic as ceremonial events and as public as royal marriages which themselves were 20th century invented traditions so if if you're so inclined you can now buy a royal divorce mug to add to your collection of coronation and wedding mugs the distinction between separation and divorce indicates a degree of caution about the latter there's some pragmatism here as it avoids addressing questions of remarriages which have raised distinct legal questions there's a wonderful book by rebecca provert about royal marriages which explains why princess ann had to get married in the church of scotland and why prince charles was married or not depending on what how you'll view of it in the winsor registry office but the distinction between separation divorce also represents an acknowledgement of the traditional legitimacy of separation under catholic and anglican laws catholics and anglicans for a long time condoned formal separation divorce amens at toro it was a practical device however which were deeply offended zealous protestants consequently the modern royal separations represent a royal tradition of pragmatic high anglicanism but alongside this nod to the past and finally one other nod to the past of course is you can see in the case of sarah ferguson and diana uh that part of a much longer tradition of royal dispensing of women perceived as troublesome but alongside those nods to the past the use of the new no fault fact of two years separation represents a radical break again it sounds pragmatic it avoids the need for the royal family to provide lurid details to satisfy the fault-based facts of course i'm not suggesting that fault hasn't played a part in the numerous dramatic representations and narratives about these marriages on the contrary the blame game was played endlessly by the media and in the context of charles and diana by the parties themselves to vast audiences encouraged and eager to judge and take sides but drinal fault religious or legal was never part of these dramas never a part of the telling of these stories and that's despite the fact that the partial introduction of no fault divorce was the most controversial aspect of the 1969 act and only this year removed and despite the fact that fault-based facts remain in practice overwhelmingly cited so from resisting any reform and being associated strongly with resistance to reform the royal family has led the way and embraced no fault divorce as an acceptable and legitimate practice it's too fanciful to suggest a direct connection but at least its symbolic coincidence that prince charles heir to the throne and future head of the church of england had a no fault divorce in the same year that parliament passed the family law rack 1996 the ill-fated first attempt to break the connection between divorce and fault had fault-free divorce been deemed unacceptable for this high profile and constitutional significant divorce the path to divorce reform reform might possibly have been further delayed so what i want to move on to in the final part of this little talk is to suggest that the new terrain doesn't represent a laissez faire permissiveness but instead a new set of interpersonal moral standards a move from being governed by drinal rules to a more subtle form of self-governance and it's in this melodrama that we can see diana's playing a key role all the stories about diana represent this shift from govern to governance very acutely so in other words what i want to suggest is that we can talk about a dianification of divorce mandy murk a famous film theorist has coined the expression the floral revolution to describe the outpouring of grief at diana's death and launched a critique of the ideas expressed at the time that the floral revolution somehow reflected the beginning of a more feeling emotionally literate nation liberated from stiff upper lip repression this shift this revolution whether you believe it or not mats clearly onto the social and cultural changes in ideas about divorce because within this new framework the end of a marriage no longer requires the finding of legal fault but instead becomes a question of personal development in place of formal justice the emphasis now socially and culturally is on therapeutic justice adultery was of course key to the melodrama and the story of charles and diana but the judgments the public were being asked to make were not so much about the fact of adultery but attributing responsibility for the adultery and in those stories charles and diana's childhoods were looked at and both were explained by by having traumatic childhoods to explain their later behavior in the fashionable way of understanding things so truth is not unimportant here but the emphasis is on being true to oneself elizabeth wilson has observed that we no longer have fallen women we have confused women women finding themselves breaking free from restricting relationships richard colles commenting on the famous interview diana gave to martin pershear commented that she finessed the forensic guilt the forensic matter of guilt or innocence of infidelity by turning a cross examination into a romantic soliloquy she presented herself not as an adulteress but as a romantic heroine compelled by true love to finally throw off the shackles of a loveless marriage so secularization of divorce is socially complete here but there are echoes of the dramas of the past maitland has argued that the response to diana's death had a particularly catholic tone that she swiftly became in effect a secular saint and there are echoes here of kathryn of aragon and caroline of brunswick wronged and dangerously popular women discarded by adulterous royal husbands but as maitland notes in this new model of saintliness emotional sincerity is more important than truth self-discovery is superior to chastity love is more important than marriage privileging the role of emotion in a sense being part of the privatization privatizing divorce has been something that's been criticized by many family law commentators particularly around concerns about mediation and especially around the removal of legal aid from private for private family law disputes gillies has pithily argued that the feminist slogan the personal is political has been replaced or is rearticulated now as the personal is the only political and this coheres strongly with all the discourses and ideas circulating around the time of diana's death a more personal way of viewing things is also linked to a deep politicizing of issues a more feeling monarchy is not destructive a more for a more feeling monarchy divorce is not destructive rather their weaknesses become part of their strength they provide a vital link between the monarch and their subjects divorce demonstrates how ordinary they are but not that quite ordinary because in the telling of the drama of charles and diana and especially in the tabloids it was the decision of the queen that they should divorce that overshadowed any interest in the formal legal process you see in all these newspaper headlines indeed the headline in the garden was that day is exactly the same as that of the daily mirror the queen ordering divorce well in law of course she can't order divorce this is nothing to do with law but it does indicate that there may be a family on the throne but this is where the throne still rules the family this was for the queen in her own words her anus her ebless and in that telling of the drama of her children's divorce is it's the queen who is to be pitted this mirrors the portrayal of the queen in the aftermath of diana's death in the famous film the queen as mandy mercs reading of the film shows the queen is given lines that explicitly pit her values of duty against diana's commitment to the therapeutic term the queen is quoted as saying nowadays people want glamour and tears the grand performance i'm not very good at that i prefer to keep my feelings to myself foolishly i believe that that was what the people wanted from their queen not to make a fuss nor wear one's heart and one's sleeve duty first self second so here we see the culture of public duty stepping down to meet the culture of intimacy so in that 20th century you can see the way in which marriage has changed from the notion of duty to personal pursuit of happiness from it being a public institution very clearly associated with the public legitimizing legal aid to a private therapeutic issue which doesn't require legal aid anymore so progress but an interesting things to debate along the way so to wrap up in telling the 20th century story of marriage and monarchy a progressive liberal account would point to divorce to demonstrate how both institutions have moved with the times the success story for reform progress and institutional survival but in looking back to the role divorce has played in the reformation the glorious revolution the sexual revolution of the 60s the floral revolution the therapeutic turn i hope i've complicated that story a bit and encourage you to take these melodramas more seriously and perhaps to think about how they serve as a subtle and constant barometer for social attitudes towards families and divorce more widely thank you