By Stephen Robson
Is the English royal family on a course of self-destruction? With the release of the book The Prince of Wales: A Biography by the broadcaster and journalist Jonathan Dimbleby we are treated to yet another episode in the ongoing soap opera called the royal family.
Perhaps the more cynical would expect the book to be dedicated to the International Year of the Family.
The point has now been reached that supporters of the constitutional monarchy are openly speculating on whether the royal family can last, and if not, what will replace it.
The crisis has been described by some as the biggest since the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936.
In the last few years the pages of newspapers and magazines have been filled each week with the ongoing Charles and Di saga. And if this got boring, Andrew and Fergie could be wheeled out.
That the Fleet Street media have played this role in systematically undermining the royal family is ironic indeed. The media are supposed to be one of the key institutions propping up the crumbling British way of life.
Foreign secretary Douglas Hurd pointed to this on October 17, when he said, "I am worried about the way in which chattering people concerned with headlines and mass circulation do chip away at our institutions in this country, of which the monarchy is perhaps the most important and in a way the most vulnerable".
The Duke of Edinburgh, though hardly a neutral in the matter, was hardly overwhelming when he defended the royal family to the London Daily Telegraph. "If it has lasted that long, it can't be all that bad", he said. One could say the same about war, or chicken pox.
The latest frenzy of speculation has coincided with Queen Elizabeth's arrival in Moscow. In other circumstances it might have been seen as symbolic of Russia's return to the path of capitalism, a welcoming back into the fold.
Relations between the British monarchy and the tsar's survivors became strained in 1918 when King George V refused to grant Tsar Nicholas II and his family political asylum. The tsar had been overthrown by revolution in February 1917. He and his family were executed by the Soviet government during the civil war.
A revolution in England would be likely to treat the royal family far more brutally than the Romanovs were handled: forcing them to read all the past books and newspaper articles about themselves, for example.