New Poll for Queen Elizabeth’s 100th Birthday Shows the Late Queen Outshining Today’s Working Royals Again

Let me tell you something the British press will never admit. That YouGov poll they released on what would have been Queen Elizabeth’s 100th birthday? The one with the Queen at 81% and Meghan Sussex at 20%? It is not a neutral snapshot of public opinion. It is a carefully curated piece of palace propaganda, wrapped in a spreadsheet, and sold to you as journalism.

And here is the best part: they still included Prince Harry and Meghan in the rankings. These are the same people they insist are “no longer working royals” – the same ones they call “irrelevant.” For six years, large parts of the British press have tried to strip this couple of legitimacy while still using them as a foil for the working royals.

You cannot have it both ways. Either Harry and Meghan are out of the family, in which case, stop using them as your comparison toilet. Or they are still relevant, in which case, admit that your entire media machine is obsessed with them. Pick one.

A poll is not proof of truth

Let’s start with the obvious. Britain has a population of roughly 69 million people. This poll sampled 2,129 Britons over two days. That does not make it worthless, but it certainly does not justify treating the results like tablets handed down from a mountain.

Yet that is exactly how these polls get used. A small sample becomes a national morality play. The public is told who is loved, who is loathed, who is respectable, and who has fallen out of favour. Then the media loops those results back into its coverage, reinforcing the same story over and over again.

That process matters, because public opinion does not form in a clean laboratory. It forms in a media climate. If one group is wrapped in soft-focus nostalgia while another is subjected to years of relentless character assassination, the numbers are going to reflect that.

So no, this is not some pristine snapshot of objective reality. It is a reading taken after years of institutional conditioning. And let us talk about that conditioning. Queen Elizabeth, now safely beyond criticism, gets to stand as the national grandmother. Diana remains frozen in public memory as the wounded princess. Prince William and Kate Middleton are covered like a heritage brand in human form. King Charles gets the soft rehabilitation package reserved for men who spent decades waiting for a crown.

Meanwhile Harry and Meghan have been treated like villains in a daily soap opera that never ends. Then the same people who helped create that image turn around and say, look, the public does not like them. Really? What a miracle.

The Real Villain Is the Media Machine That Manufactures These Numbers

You want to know why Prince William and Kate Middleton score so high? It is not because they are doing anything remarkable. It is because the British press has spent years protecting them. Soft-focus photo ops. Cute family moments. Carefully managed “relatable” engagements. Meanwhile, Harry and Meghan have been subjected to a non-stop barrage of hostile front pages, anonymous quotes, and bad-faith interpretations of everything they do.

Do you think William would enjoy a 76% favourability rating if the press covered him the same way they cover Harry? Imagine a five-day headline every time he took a private jet. Picture the media analyzing Kate’s every outfit for “commercialisation” whenever she wore a dress. And what about their charity events? The press would label them “quasi-royal,” “pseudo-royal,” or just plain “grifting.”

Of course not. The numbers are not a measure of genuine public feeling. They are a measure of how effectively the palace and its media allies have managed perception.

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The Queen’s Centenary Coverage Is a Whitewash. And Activists Are Calling It Out.

At the exact same time that People is running glowing stories about Kate wearing the late Queen’s pearl necklace, and King Charles is cutting cake with centenarians, activists from Republic are outside Buckingham Palace replacing exhibition posters with a very simple question: “What did she know?”

What did the Queen know about her son Andrew? Consider the Epstein connection. Think about the £12 million settlement paid to Virginia Giuffre. And do not ignore the decades of protection and cover-up. The press does not want you to ask any of these questions. Instead, they direct your attention to the pearls. They push you to feel sentimental about the “nation’s grandmother.” They also hope you forget a crucial fact: the same institution that we now celebrate harboured a man who was friends with a convicted paedophile. We still have not properly answered what the late Queen knew.

But the activists are not letting it go. And neither should you.

🚨🚨 BREAKING NEWS: Activists have replaced posters for the Elizabeth II exhibition in London with posters asking 'What did she know?' about allegations against Andrew. #AbolishTheMonarchy #Epstein #QueenElizabethII pic.twitter.com/2zjCb7i5e6

— Republic (@RepublicStaff) April 20, 2026

Would these numbers survive real scrutiny?

Here is the question the royal press never wants to confront. How would Prince William’s numbers hold up if he were covered the way Harry is? How would Kate’s image survive if every awkward moment, rumour, staffing issue, strategic leak, or family tension became a week-long scandal? Would Charles still enjoy the same support if reporters picked over his failures with the same glee they bring to every Sussex headline?

And how different would Queen Elizabeth’s legacy look if the media pursued questions about Andrew with the same obsessive energy it gives Meghan’s wardrobe, Harry’s tone, or anonymous body-language gossip?

That is the real issue here. The monarchy survives not just on tradition, but on protection. It survives because some royals are buffered from the kind of scrutiny that could seriously alter public opinion, while others are subjected to a level of hostility designed to produce exactly the kind of polling numbers now being recycled as proof.

So when people wave around this YouGov poll as if it settles something profound, they miss the real point. This is not a measure of truth. It is a measure of how well the system works, and how effectively the public has been fed one story about who deserves affection and another about who deserves contempt.

And maybe the most telling part is the age split. Older Britons were far more likely to have a very positive opinion of Queen Elizabeth. That matters. It suggests that the deepest emotional loyalty to the institution still rests most heavily with older generations, not necessarily with the future.

That is not a minor detail. That is the quiet warning buried under the celebration.

This is not popularity. It is image management

The royal family and the British press have spent years building an ecosystem in which certain figures are protected, certain myths are maintained, and certain people are there to absorb the blame. That is what this poll reflects.

It reflects nostalgia and managed memory. It reflects selective journalism and a press culture that still refuses to ask harder questions of the royals it wants to preserve.

And it reflects the absurdity of a system that keeps saying Harry and Meghan are no longer part of the family while dragging them into every public ranking the moment it needs to make the institution look stronger by comparison.

So no, I do not look at this poll and see some holy verdict from the British people. I see palace PR with percentages attached. And if William, Kate, Charles, and the rest had ever been covered with the same hostility, suspicion, and sustained aggression aimed at Harry and Meghan, I suspect this list would look very different indeed.

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