The French are obsessed with our Royal Family

Buckingham Palace has never known such a box-office success. ‘Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style’ is the hottest ticket in town and the most visited exhibition in the Royal Collection Trust’s history. The display of hundreds of the late Queen’s dresses and other garments was scheduled to run from April to October 2026. Due to popular demand, the exhibition has been prolonged until April 2027. ‘We are delighted to extend its run, ensuring that even more people from across the UK and around the world will have the chance to experience this once-in-a-generation tribute,’ explained Tim Knox, Director of the Royal Collection.

In reporting the extension, the French newspaper Le Figaro said it was proof that ‘Queen Elizabeth II continues to fascinate as much as ever’. Nowhere more so than in France. My daughter visited the exhibition on the first Saturday of this month and reported that the King’s Gallery was teeming with French tourists. The exhibition has been heavily plugged in the French media, from newspapers to radio and television stations.

So fascinated are the French by the late Queen that they even run their own exhibitions. The city of Caen hosted a tribute to Elizabeth this summer in the Abbey of Saint-Étienne (founded in 1063 by William the Conqueror), which was a roaring success. ‘Elizabeth II: Return to William’s Abbey’ in Caen offered what Paris Match described as a ‘unique retrospective on the woman who has come to symbolise elegance and enduring legacy’.

The exhibition attracted nearly 60,000 visitors in three months, prompting the mayor of the city, Aristide Olivier, to boast that ‘the Queen has won the hearts of the people of Caen’.

But Elizabeth won over the French decades ago. More than eight million of them watched her funeral on television in September 2022, and 60 per cent said they were ‘affected by her passing’. A year before her death, one French newspaper pondered why it was that a country that had lopped off the heads of its own king and queen was now ‘obsessed by the British Royal Family’.

Good question. From Harry to Kate to King Charles, the French can’t get enough of ‘Le Firm’. Season Four of The Crown, for example, which was released in 2020, spent 29 days in the top 10 of the most-watched shows on Netflix in France, including five days at number one.

The newspaper that posed the question believed that the attraction is twofold: older, conservative France admires (and in some cases envies) the British monarchy’s ‘pomp, ceremonies, and decorum as an exotic form of power display’. A younger generation, on the other hand, gets its kicks from the celebrity side of the Royal Family: the gossip, the glamour and the gowns. Nine million French people watched Wills and Kate tie the knot on TV in 2011, one million more than the number who tuned in to see Harry and Meghan exchange vows in 2018.

There was a particular bond with Queen Elizabeth II. She first visited France in 1948, not long after her marriage to Prince Philip. It was the first time the 22-year-old princess had been abroad. She made six state visits to France during her 70 years on the throne – more than to any other country – and, during her last, in 2014, she described her excitement at the prospect of her first visit in 1948: ‘I recall my own happiness, discovering this beautiful country for myself and for the first time, and developing my own great affection for the French people.’

The late 1940s was a difficult period for France. The communists were a force to be reckoned with, and there were many violent strikes and protests. In December 1947, trade union saboteurs derailed a train in northern France, killing 16 people and injuring 50. For many French people, the graceful young Elizabeth was a poignant and painful reminder of what Robespierre and his revolutionaries had done to their country.

Following the Queen’s death in 2022, the influential cultural and political magazine Revue des deux mondes published an article examining France’s relationship with the British monarchy. Its author, Stéphane Bern, a celebrity royal expert, put a question to his compatriots: ‘How many events in our country are still capable of bringing crowds together, transcending political divides, religious beliefs, or social backgrounds?’Very few, except perhaps when France play football. But even World Cups have been marred by thuggery on the streets in recent years.‘If the British royal family is so popular in France,’ continued Bern, ‘it is precisely because it embodies that symbolic power capable of uniting an entire people – a power we feel we have lost.’

This power should come from the president of the Republic. But the men in the Élysée are no longer up to the job. The gaudy Nicolas Sarkozy was known as President ‘Bling-Bling’, while his successor, François Hollande, went by the nickname of ‘Flamby’ on account of his resemblance to a popular blancmange pudding.

As for Emmanuel Macron, there was a regal air about him when he was elected to office in 2017. One French historian, Joël Cornette, remarked that the then 39-year-old Macron ‘is keen to appear inscrutable, aloof and sovereign – the distinctive traits of Louis XIV’. This was a carefully cultivated image. In an interview in 2015, when Macron was a little-known young economy minister in a struggling Socialist government, he told an interviewer where he thought France had gone wrong.

‘There is something missing in the democratic process,’ he explained. ‘In French politics, that missing element is the figure of the king, whose death, I fundamentally believe, the French people did not want. The Reign of Terror created an emotional, imaginary, collective void.’Macron believed he could fill this void. Alas, no. His latest approval rating is down to 18 per cent and increasingly -whether it’s being slapped by his wife or giving indoor speeches in aviator sunglasses – he has become a figure of fun for the French.

A rare occasion when Macron did speak eloquently on behalf of his people was after the death of Elizabeth. ‘To you, she was your Queen. To us, she was the Queen,’ he said in a message to Britain. ‘We are grateful for her deep affection for France: Elizabeth II mastered our language, loved our culture and touched our hearts.’ It’s been a long time since a president touched the hearts of the French. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Unpopularity.