No Respect For British Royals

This story was written by CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips

In the shop window, the usual range of royal souvenirs scramble for position like so many pet shop puppies. But it's no contest.

Among the mugs, spoons, dish-towels and plates sporting royal images, there is a T-shirt showing Charles in full hunting gear riding a horse with Camilla's head where the normal horse head would be. It's not very kind. It's not very respectful. And it's walking off the shelves.

Now, nobody has ever accused Charles of being a cover boy and not even Camilla's best friends have suggested she has a future as a super model, but the display of blatant disrespect for the royals, in the very shadow of Windsor Castle, speaks volumes for the challenge the British monarchy has before it.

Power is long gone. Obedience went out the window years ago. Deference quickly followed. But this kind of brazen impertinence is new. And it's trouble.

Only one member of the family, famously known as "The Firm," retains any measure of universal respect – the queen. All the others have become either sources of humor, ridicule, derision or indifference. Prince William is something of an exception and I'll get back to him in a moment.

Prince Philip, Charles' father, is widely regarded as a grumpy, anachronistic, nasty man who has managed to insult entire national groups and whose strict formality and coolness toward his children is blamed by pop-psychologists for the family's apparent dysfunction.

Charles' brothers, Andrew and Edward, are dismissed as ineffectual or irrelevant. His sister, Ann, is acknowledged to be involved with some good causes, but is otherwise occupied with the horsey set.

Of Charles' children, Harry is still trying to live down his unfortunate Nazi uniform choice for a costume party.

William is the great hope. Where his father – despite some admirable charity work of his own - seems to be getting increasingly detached and irritable, (note his mumbled dissing of the assembled press on the recent ski holiday photo op), William has become the voice of reason, maturity and responsibility.

"Keep smiling," he could be heard to tell his father, who had just referred to the gathered media as "bloody people." And, of course, William (thank his mother) is cover boy material, which in this celebrity age, counts.

Whenever Charles is involved in a royal gaffe the "Let William be king" chorus begins to chant. Forget it. Charles, who has spent his entire life waiting for the job to open up, isn't about to defer to his son.

But the Williamites can take heart in the likelihood that the queen comes from a line of long-lived women (her mother lived to 101) and that Charles, if he doesn't die before his mother – not out of the question – may not reign for long.

Charles' problems have not been diminished by the comedy of errors that led up to the wedding. If there's one thing the royals are still thought to be able to do, it's throw a party, especially a wedding party.

Yet the peculiar circumstance of a divorced future king and head of the Church of England re-marrying to a woman who is divorced herself and with whom he has a very public, very long affair, has complicated matters.

What kind of marriage ceremony could it be? (Civil.) Where could it be held? (In Windsor Castle at first, but then shifted to the local town hall when it emerged that licensing Windsor would allow anyone to apply to be married there.)

Who would be there? (Not the queen.) Would there be a lavish reception? (No, the queen would host a cocktail party for 750 of their closest friends.) Will Camilla be queen when Charles becomes king? (No – according to them. Yes – according to law.) And so it goes.

What's most striking in all this is how little it appears to matter. A future king marries and hardly anybody seems to care. The monarchy may still perform a constitutional function in Britain and still contribute to the Old World hail Fredonia appeal to tourists, but its days as an institution at the center of British life are over. The t-shirt is proof of that.