Has The Modern Royal Family Reinvented The Royal Family?

There's a photo taken a few years ago, in slightly happier times, of the then Prince Charles, Camilla, Harry and Meghan, Wills and Kate, and the grandchildren. Camilla is pointing at the camera, and little Princess Caroline is giggling. Prince George is on his grandad's knee. It's all very sweet, and falls cosily into a long line of such portraiture.

- Sean O'grady

It also strikes one in a different way, though, because, to the casual or younger observer, it looks very much like Camilla is the matriarch in the image. To those who can remember her, it feels like Diana "should" be there, but of course, she cannot be.

It didn't need to be a conscious act of usurping her, and no doubt Camilla dotes on them all, but it was a manifestation of something the royals are good at - reinventing themselves and, if you will, re-idealising themselves as an idealised family.

Looking again at the picture, the obvious next step has already been taken by the Sussexes and the palace collectively, which is to concentrate public duties and attention on the King and the Prince of Wales's families, with Princess Anne, Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, doing a bit more to make up for the loss of Harry, Meghan and, in disgrace, Prince Andrew.

Likely for the rest of the reign, the Super Seven adults and the three kids will be the functional royal family - with just the three divorces between them.

I wouldn't say Diana has been airbrushed out of history by a wicked stepmum/stepgran because that's grotesque. But they've had to make the most of their new family circumstances, which, after all, reflect the increasingly varied and complicated family lives of the people they purport to reign over. Britain is a land of unmarried "partners", stepbrothers and half-sisters, stepdads and Dutch uncles.

The royals had to give up on trying to set an example of an ideal "nuclear family" when they all started getting divorced, and the most intimate details of their private lives were being freely printed in the newspapers. They've had to adapt. Diana has naturally faded as she recedes into history - few under the age of about 30 will have much first-hand memory of her, and fewer still can recall her doomed fairytale wedding to the Prince of Wales in 1981.