There are arguably more important takeaways from the High Court trial lawsuit against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail, in which Prince Harry and other celebrities are suing over allegations of privacy breaches dating back more than 30 years, but the death of royal flirting is still a significant one, well deserving of a proper funeral.
Once, poetic, lovestruck penmanship was as much a hallmark of the monarchy as ermine and haughtiness. In its place, on the evidence of this week, are dashed-off social media messages filled with typos, abbreviations and that most un-chic of punctuation, the exclamation mark.
“I don’t know if it’s the end of flirting, but what this does make me regret is the end of letter writing,” says Ian Lloyd, author of The Duke: 100 Chapters In The Life of Prince Philip. “Somebody like Prince Philip was an extraordinarily good letter writer, so was Queen Victoria, and so is King Charles. There will be a brilliant collection of those published one day.
“When it comes to Prince Harry and William’s generation, though, all we will have is the collected Facebook messages of Prince Harry, or the tweets of Prince William, which judging by today’s paper won’t be that entertaining… And I do lament that.”
The slide in articulation is certainly pronounced. Consider the following, written by King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn some 498 years ago: “I beseech you now with all my heart definitely to let me know your whole mind as to the love between us; for necessity compels me to plague you for a reply, having been for more than a year now struck by the dart of love.”
Wordy, yes. But compare it with this, written by Prince Harry to Charlotte Griffiths some 14 years ago: “Haha, Chartie I WISH I was there sugar but unfortunately stuck in Cornwall doing Army stuff 🙁 […] I’ve been seriously busy since I last saw u but plan on getting back in the mix for Feb! U best be around .. ? Hope you’re really Griff … Miss our movie snuggles!!”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
