Why the limitations on criticising the royals, asked some. Why limit the capacity of the Freedom of Information Act to allow probing questions of the monarchy? Why not have a public inquiry into all of the recent revelations?
The government has said it will publish the documents relating to the appointment of the former prince 25 years ago. But they are more circumspect about those other requests, while saying they want to press on “at pace” in removing Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession.
But let’s see how sustained and broad — or the opposite — the appetite for radical change around conventions really is.
Such things have a British habit of being rather sticky. But perhaps the drip, drip of disclosures and developments may shift things. Let’s see.
It is also true that there is a subtlety to these conventions. Debate about the Royal Family isn’t banned – the House of Commons Library points to the Counsellors of State Act 2022, external, which was fully debated in the Commons and the Lords.
And, clearly, the Royal Family is treated as different to the rest of us, in Parliament and beyond. Some cherish this, some don’t, but it is a fundamental reality of a hereditary monarchy.
One final observation. In a parliamentary debate a week after the King’s brother was arrested as part of a criminal investigation into his conduct, no MPs stood up and made a first-principles, direct argument for the abolition of the monarchy.
Granted, the debate was sparsely populated for much of the discussion and there are MPs in the Commons right now who would prefer an elected head of state to the current constitutional arrangements.
But the case for a republic appears to be a first-order concern to fewer MPs now than it has been in the past.
And, perhaps counterintuitively to some given what many see as the rolling horror show of revelations right now, this moment is yet to provoke, among many parliamentarians at least, a debate about the fundamentals of the UK’s constitutional settlement.
For those in Buckingham Palace braced for whatever might come next in this saga, that may be at least some consolation.