Many thanks for your informative and enlightening reply.
As you note, “But the media rarely reports it.” Seems the media is a problem on both sides of the pond, then. Certainly on this side, even an Anglophile such as myself has no clue about the Royals’ goings-on save what makes the tabloids.
What is to be done?
Is there anything the Royal Family can do to bring more attention to their example-setting? Is there anything they can do to “set the tone” more firmly? My perception, from my visits and my readings (media-colored though they are), is that Great Britain is growing both steadily less British and less Great, and my hope is that the most quintessential British institution—the Royal Family—might hold a key to stemming that tide.
I guess the people who would really follow the example set by the Royal Family would be either:
1. the elderly i.e. the generation which still lived through rather than simply studied the days when Britain was an imperial power, or
2. those who come from the public school and prestigious universities like Oxbridge or Imperial College. This point is supplied by a New Zealand monarchist who also happens to be a social democrat (!). He does explicitly say that “middle Britons” from provincial places have lots of hatreds towards Traditions including the monarchy and do not see eye to eye with the Old Commonwealth countries (Canada, Australia, NZ), but the Oxbridge and public school-educated upper classes still harbour some respect towards the Royal Family. Coincidentially he feels the Commonwealth people are far more similar to the British middle/upper elite classes than “middle Britons”.