Whichever royal is charged with the novelist's investiture can expect a very sharp assessment
Noblesse … Hilary Mantel. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
The literary world rejoiced this week when Hilary Mantel was made a dame, not least because fiction writers still seem under-represented in the ranks of Dame Commanders of the British Empire (the double Booker prize winner will join AS Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Penelope Lively and Jacqueline Wilson, all bar Byatt added in recent years as if in sheepish awareness of the need to boost numbers).
Whether the Queen will feel equally joyous when she comes before her for the investiture remains to be seen, however, given the new signing's description of an earlier encounter in "Royal Bodies", last year's lecture in which remarks about the Duchess of Cambridge attracted controversy. At a Buckingham Palace reception, Mantel wrote: "the Queen passed close to me and I stared at her. I am ashamed now to say it but I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal views his dinner, my gaze sharp enough to pick the meat off her bones. I felt that such was the force of my devouring curiosity that the party had dematerialised and the walls melted and there were only two of us in the vast room, and such was the hard power of my stare that Her Majesty turned and looked back at me, as if she had been jabbed in the shoulder; and for a split second her face expressed not anger but hurt bewilderment. She looked young: for a moment she had turned back from a figurehead into the young woman she was, before monarchy froze her and made her a thing, a thing which only had meaning when it was exposed, a thing that existed only to be looked at."
Perhaps, after reflection, she will discreetly delegate that particular investiture to the Prince of Wales. But he too will be subjected to the new imperial commander's withering gaze. Earlier in the lecture, Mantel recalled Charles at an award ceremony when his suit was impeccable (as with "Thomas Cromwell in my novels, I couldn't help winding the fabric back onto the bolt and pricing him by the yard") but a glance into the wings suggested how he must be repeatedly jolted by a sense of hollowness: "You see that your life is a charade, that the scenery is cardboard, that the paint is peeling, the red carpet fraying, and if you linger you will notice the oily devotion fade from the faces of your subjects." Still, better to be reminded of that than to be a cannibal's dinner.
Whether the Queen will feel equally joyous when she comes before her for the investiture remains to be seen, however, given the new signing's description of an earlier encounter in "Royal Bodies", last year's lecture in which remarks about the Duchess of Cambridge attracted controversy. At a Buckingham Palace reception, Mantel wrote: "the Queen passed close to me and I stared at her. I am ashamed now to say it but I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal views his dinner, my gaze sharp enough to pick the meat off her bones. I felt that such was the force of my devouring curiosity that the party had dematerialised and the walls melted and there were only two of us in the vast room, and such was the hard power of my stare that Her Majesty turned and looked back at me, as if she had been jabbed in the shoulder; and for a split second her face expressed not anger but hurt bewilderment. She looked young: for a moment she had turned back from a figurehead into the young woman she was, before monarchy froze her and made her a thing, a thing which only had meaning when it was exposed, a thing that existed only to be looked at."
Perhaps, after reflection, she will discreetly delegate that particular investiture to the Prince of Wales. But he too will be subjected to the new imperial commander's withering gaze. Earlier in the lecture, Mantel recalled Charles at an award ceremony when his suit was impeccable (as with "Thomas Cromwell in my novels, I couldn't help winding the fabric back onto the bolt and pricing him by the yard") but a glance into the wings suggested how he must be repeatedly jolted by a sense of hollowness: "You see that your life is a charade, that the scenery is cardboard, that the paint is peeling, the red carpet fraying, and if you linger you will notice the oily devotion fade from the faces of your subjects." Still, better to be reminded of that than to be a cannibal's dinner.
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