Will Varner
· 8 min read
In the Buckingham Palace Shop at the intersection of Buckingham Palace Road and Palace Street—the official royal gift shop—the windows have been blocked out with thick, velvety purple curtains since the death of Queen Elizabeth II earlier this month. It evokes (perhaps unintentionally) a coffin, and that association is even sharper next door, at Majestic Gifts, where an explicit shrine of mourning is surrounded by a display offering queen-themed keychains, mugs, salt and pepper shakers, posters, pens, teddy bears, dishes, wine glasses, and bobblehead dolls. Much of it is still celebrating the queen’s Platinum Jubilee, which ended in June. Queen Elizabeth merchandise is a dying breed.
I asked the floor manager at Majestic Gifts, Nasir, a seemingly straightforward question after the accession of King Charles III: Does this shop have any Charles merchandise?
He squinted and turned his face as if he runs a candy shop and I had just asked for something that tastes like broccoli. “No,” he said decisively. “There’s nothing.” When I pressed, he said that over a month ago he had some Charles mugs, but they didn’t sell.
At store after store across London, it’s the same story: royal merchandise almost exclusively dedicated to the late queen, and a series of askance glares when asked about the desirability of Charles merchandise.
It’s not a matter of being too soon. Down the street from Majestic Gifts, at Cool Britannia, the staff were already walking around in sweatshirts marking the queen’s death with the phrase “Forever in our hearts…1926–2022.” Merchants have the ability to produce Charles-themed memorabilia; it’s just that no one wants it.
Around some of London’s biggest tourist neighborhoods—Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Notting Hill, Covent Garden, Leicester Square, and Piccadilly Circus—there is a far greater chance of finding merchandise of Mr. Bean, the British cult television star whose eponymous show ended in 1995, than of the new king. There’s even a better chance of finding Donald Trump merchandise in a British souvenir shop in 2022 than there is of anything Carolean.
A 2021 poll found the queen’s brand allure was “greater than Nike, Ferrari and Pepsi.” For good reason: a 2018 YouGov poll found that 31 percent of Britons had seen or met the late queen in person, as opposed to 16 percent for then-Prince Charles, five percent for Prince William, four percent for Prince Harry, three percent for Kate Middleton, and only one percent for Meghan Markle. Put plainly, the queen was the British monarchy, and without her, international interest in the Windsors seems uncertain, as does the entire business of selling royal merchandise.
According to the Centre of Retail Research, the British public spent £282 million on memorabilia for this year’s Platinum Jubilee. Only the weddings of other royals—Charles and Diana in 1981, and William and Kate in 2011—even come close to the queen’s regular merchandise hauls. William and Kate’s wedding, for example, saw £134 million spent on merchandise, and many shops still sell things like tea towels to commemorate the blessed event.
An analysis of Google search trends conducted by the website Middletons.co.uk determined that from May 2018 to March 2022 “the top categories of merchandise are plates, china, mugs, biscuit tins, tea towels and glassware.” For example, the fastest-selling Platinum Jubilee merchandise this summer was a set of champagne glasses etched with the queen’s monogram (EIIR) from the Royal Collection Trust, of which only 70 sets were made, going for £120 a pop.
“The audience for anything royal—news, merchandise, fashion, anything—has been a world by women for women,” said Elizabeth Holmes, proprietor of an Instagram that offers insights into the royal family and writer of a New York Times bestseller on the subject, HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style.
“The queen is so present in daily life—her face is on the money!—that you want to participate in the conversation created by all the visual language around her,” she said, noting that this summer she bought a royal-inspired scarf while in London for the Platinum Jubilee.
“I’m not going to want to see Charles’s face on a teacup or tea towel.” Charles has never been able to match his mother in popularity; shortly before her Jubilee, 81 percent of Britons said they viewed her favorably. Meanwhile, 42 percent said in a separate April 2022 poll that Charles should abdicate in favor of his son.
There are many possible reasons, all conjecture. Perhaps men’s fashion and the current conversation around gender flatly lacks the sophistication to take on any king being every bit the monarch this queen was.
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“Charles painted himself in a corner style-wise by criticizing Diana so heavily for her fashion,” said Holmes.
Perhaps the igniting spark of interest is absent, given that Charles’s accession lacks the ingenue charms of Elizabeth’s, who was 25 at the time (at 73, Charles is the oldest British monarch ever to assume the throne). Perhaps it’s just a harder, meaner fact that Charles is too unloved to carry the queen’s torch, seeing as other men (such as Barack Obama, or every pope) have no trouble selling the hell out of merchandise. Then, of course, Netflix’s The Crown set back decades worth of Charles’s royal rehabilitation, exposing a new generation to the Diana saga and reopening old wounds for those who already knew the story.
Lakhvir Kaur agreed that Charles doesn’t have the “it” factor. Kaur has run a British souvenir shop for 10 years in Dover, the nation’s chief port town along the English Channel that’s home to World War II memorials, museums of Roman Britain, one of the most distinguished castles in the country, and the natural splendor of its famed White Cliffs. Her shop still sells a £3 tea towel commemorating the marriage of William and Kate, but nothing bearing the face of King Charles.
“Nobody will buy anything to do with Charles,” she said. “I think that will be true even after he dies. We will have to wait until the next king, King William.”
In Canterbury, Margaret Davies, a self-described “lunatic for all things royal” was buying several throw pillows honoring the queen’s corgis. “Look at me,” she said, gesturing to her haul. “I’m an absolute madwoman when it comes to the royals. But Charles’ reign is going to be a bit of a rough go for me. Of course I want him to be a good king like his mum, a good monarch, but she is irreplaceable.” She added, “And please don’t get on talking about Camilla as queen.”
When Morning Brew inquired about Camilla merchandise at gift shops, the responses ranged from laughter to, in one instance, being asked to leave the shop.
Some royal merchandise only finds an audience because it is erroneous. A Wedgwood cup marking the coronation of Edward VIII in 1937 can go for £600 because the coronation never happened, as he famously abdicated the throne. Similarly, a coronation coach made by toy manufacturer Lesney for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 can fetch £1,000 despite originally selling for £1 because some editions include a king and queen, as they were originally created to mark the Silver Jubilee of King George VI in 1952 (he died before the Jubilee commenced).
Edward VII’s 1902 coronation and Charles’s 2005 wedding to Camilla were both postponed—the former for appendicitis and the latter for the funeral of Pope John Paul II—and so merchandise with incorrect dates can be worth more.
“It’s not that souvenirs tend to have monetary value,” said Ron Smith, a Plymouth man who runs commemorabilia.co.uk. “They have emotional value.” He noted that, at 71 years old, almost the entirety of his life has been under Queen Elizabeth’s reign. “People have real feelings about her,” he said. “Whereas with Charles they are still finding those feelings, as it were. It may not happen.”
In the queue for viewing the queen’s coffin this week, mourners stretched across more than five miles along the Thames. One was Vicky Hogg, a retired florist from Nashville who spent $2,200 on a spontaneous flight to London to pay her respects.
“I was surprised it’s not as commercial as it would be in America,” she said of the entwined mourning of the queen and accession of the king. “In America, at the end of the Super Bowl, they already have shirts of the winners. Here, not so much.”
In a stroke of irony, historians consider that the first royal merchandise was a 1661 coronation plate for the previous King Charles, Charles II, whose reign ended the English Civil War and its interregnum period. But Charles II took the throne at 30 years old and quickly became known as the “Merry Monarch” for his sexual appetite and hedonism. It remains to be seen what nicknames Charles III will earn, or if any of them will be worthy of a coffee mug.
Richard Morgan is a freelance writer in New York.
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