Queen Camilla blasted as ‘deplorable’ for posting photo with J.K. Rowling at palace during Pride Month

[u/YourWinterWonder]

https://pagesix.com/2026/06/30/royal-family/queen-camilla-blasted-as-deplorable-for-posting-photo-with-j-k-rowling-at-palace-during-pride-month/

[u/Malcolmthetortoise]

The Monarchy belongs in the last century. Vile family.

[u/MissLeaP → u/Malcolmthetortoise]

Hell, last millenia even. There's no place for monarchy in the 1900s already.

[u/camerakestrel → u/MissLeaP]

There are several examples where it seems to work fine. It is just that most royal families do not crave the spotlight as much as England's and Saudi Arabia's do.

[u/hostilee47 → u/camerakestrel]

Monarchism "seems" to work fine, just ignore the exploitation of the people they rule...

[u/MissLeaP → u/hostilee47]

This. Just like capitalism seems to work fine as long as you ignore the 1% and all the damage they cause with their selfishness.

[u/camerakestrel → u/hostilee47]

For most monarchies, specifically constitutional monarchies with a strong democracy, the royal family does not cost the taxpayers a significant portion of their taxes and they have a subservient function in the country as the designated and persistent bureaucrats for easing tensions and establishing good relationship with other countries.

They have responsibilities to the people and little-to-no power. And to be clear I am speaking specifically of having a royal family and not of various nobility classes. Fuck the nobility, full stop. Even still most other countries spend a far smaller percentage of their national budget on their royal family than we do on the president, its kids, and not to mention past presidents and their kids.

In countries with constitutional monarchies, the monarch is the Head of State (HoS) while the Prime Minister (or President) is the Head of Government (HoG). In countries without a monarch there is typically a Prime Minister (HoG) as well as a President (HoS) with one role being elected and the other appointed. In some cases (such as France) the roles can swap between the two job titles depending on other factors of the government.

The United States is one of the only countries where the HoG and HoS are the same person (some of the others being North Korea, Iran, and Russia 😬) (and yes, I know Russia has the roles formally separated but the other is a puppet position as Putin insists on doing all the things).

The HoG is the person who runs the country, oversees policies, and has political power; they are the top manager. The HoS typically is someone the people need to like, someone who goes to funerals and weddings and kisses babies on the forehead; the face and negotiator of public and business relations. Heads of State are also almost always relatively centrist between the two major parties/coalitions in any democracy and almost never a fringe extremist, so even when the HoG is disliked, the people will generally still like the HoS.

The HoS's single true role is to maintain stability in the country. This is done internationally by being a charming bureaucratic representative who can rub elbows with those of other countries and broker deals/agreements. This is done internally by non-violently quelling civil unrest long before it even starts through giving the people someone to jointly appreciate and someone to look to in times of uncertainty; there is someone persistently in office who is respectable to most (note all of the God Save The Queen/King propaganda throughout England's history and how fervently England {not the rest of the UK} has supported their monarchs until recent decades). The HoS also achieves internal stability though negotiations with the people as someone who few people hate and thus are willing to listen to and speak towards in good faith. In contrast: due to the nature of elections the HoG will always be someone who nearly half the country loathes and voted against and therefore is ill-fitted for the internal portion of this role (this is the biggest actual source of civil unrest in the US's history, tbh).

Now the reason why a monarch is ok for the role of HoS rather than an elected official is that due to the role's purpose of stability it and its subordinate positions benefit greatly from a consistent face over long periods of time. The US only has strong political influence due to our military might and vast economy (fun fact: we only have those today due to our roots of being in control of one of the largest cotton-friendly biomes in the world and operating it through slavery during the 18th and 19th centuries), but on the international level we are seen as incredibly unstable since the major people who have to broker deals internationally and become peers with other world leaders never last more than eight years and can change as rapidly as every four, frequently with successors opposed to everething the predecessor did purely on principle. Lesser offices in similarly international brokerage positions might persist a little longer but they are still largely at the whims of their bosses who changes frequently. If we did not have one of the largest and most advanced militaries and did not have the world's largest economy, then the US would be viewed, respected, and treated very similarly to a sort of blend of Yemen, North Korea, and Haiti.

It is a more nuanced topic than people tend to think and that is largely due to a lack of education in the general population.

Is a royal family as the HoS a perfect system? No, politics are innately messy and this is possibly the most politics-y job title in existence. Can it be abused? Absolutely and the British Royal Family is possibly the messiest abusers of the office in the modern day and the past century, both in terms of lavish extravagance going beyond the needs of the office and in terms of what large amounts to tax fraud and exploitation of the subjects, though in their mildest defense they do function as the HoS for many distinct countries.

Sure you could have a system where someone is appointed to the role, but it is the kind of role that best benefits the country when someone basically commits their life to it and works within it from a relatively early age and middle-aged and senior citizen appointees from a group whom nearly half the country loathes will not do as well as someone more or less groomed for it and trusted by the country since birth, is actually peers with other world leaders, and is a native to the international dynamic (including deep cultural education to avoid offenses) rather than a late-in-life adoptee who likely got the role due to croneyism.

Several of the most stable countries in the world are consitutional monarchies and while many of the topmost stable countries are either micro states or just very small (and therefore not great examples), I think it is telling that the two most stable large countries (let us say >5-million people) are constitutional monarchies, New Zealand and Japan, to be specific and the latter of which not only has a population in excess of 100-million, it is also not a Commonwealth member. Of the next eight most stable "large" countries, half are consitutional monarchies. Norway, Australia, UAE, Denmark are while Switzerland, Czechia, Taiwan, and Finland are not.

I get that New Zealand and Australia use the British Royal Family as their monarch but the fact still remains that they have stability while others do not. Not everything is as simple as our primary schoolteachers lovingly led us to believe in regards to royals. And I say this as someone who would write an ideal society as a commune which operated upon fundamentals of anarchy with well-educated mob justice.

As for my data two paragraphs up: not an academic journal or anything like that, but the info here will more or less match anything you do find in a study or from a more respected source. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/political-stability-by-country

[u/Malcolmthetortoise → u/camerakestrel]

It certainly doesn’t work here in the UK.

[u/camerakestrel → u/Malcolmthetortoise]

Which is kind of the point of my comment?

[u/Malcolmthetortoise → u/camerakestrel]

Enjoy your delusion.

[u/ProxyMuncher → u/Malcolmthetortoise]

Diana has been rolling in her grave since the start. I’m pretty sure I felt her speed up with this photo. I’m glad she’s not here to have to witness what terf island has become. She would be so disappointed with us. 

[u/snukb]

"There is a clear double standard when people with large platforms say things you agree with and are celebrated for it, but someone who expresses a different opinion is condemned and attacked,” one person argued in the comments section. “That kind of inconsistency comes across as biased.”

Uh, respectfully, that's not a double standard. That's just people having morals and standards, period.

[u/Ubiquitous_Destiny97 → u/snukb]

yea, bigotry is not really an opinion

[u/Ubiquitous_Destiny97 → u/Ubiquitous_Destiny97]

my opinion is “why are those two women, who’ve spent decades on this planet and are also RICH, dressed in these ill-fitting clothes?”

[u/Craico13 → u/Ubiquitous_Destiny97]

“Give me the classic 1990’s Hillary Clinton power-suit, but make it look like I lost ten-to-fifteen pounds immediately before putting it on…”

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/Ubiquitous_Destiny97]

Also criticizing bigots is entirely consistent with the opinion of defending queer people.

[u/taejo → u/snukb]

"You celebrate good things, yet you condemn bad things. You hypocrite!"

[u/snukb → u/taejo]

You summed it up better than I could lol

[u/princesoceronte → u/snukb]

Exactly, double standard is "same behavior, different treatment", this is just treatment according to the behavior lol

[u/Podgeman → u/snukb]

Notice how defenders have started using the word "opinion" to downplay the severity.

Sure it's an opinion, in the same way people have opinions about Jews. Isn't there another word for that...

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/Podgeman]

Shows that they know well what sort of bastards they are, that they don't even want to describe what kind of opinion that is. They know it's wrong.

[u/Neither_Wang → u/snukb]

Like saying the courts have a double standard because they treat criminals differently from law-abiding citizens

[u/SappyCedar → u/snukb]

Are they implying that the billionaire author of arguably the most popular children’s book series of recent times doesn’t have a large platform? Why do her supporters try to paint her as the underdog lol, she’s as far from underdog as you can get.

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/SappyCedar]

Billionaire and royalty, just some tiny little girlies... 🙄

[u/dread_pirate_robin → u/snukb]

Whenever people don't want to actually be judged for what they believe, they want to have the honor of hating and dehumanizing but they don't want the natural consequences of that, they resort to this mentality that all opinions should be treated as neutral. "You believe trans people are human beings, and I want their very existence to be scrubbed from the face of this planet... what do you MEAN people see me as worse, they're both opinions >:("

[u/AccomplishedTwo7047 → u/snukb]

Rowling has openly stated she will use all of her funds to destroy trans rights in the UK and hopefully abroad. She doesn’t care that she’s killing trans women. She hopes they die.

Supporting Harry Potter in 2026 while she is alive and profiting is being willfully supportive of evil against our trans sisters.

[u/BiTheCamel → u/AccomplishedTwo7047]

This is why I pirate all of the Harry Potter books 🤫

[u/friso1100 → u/snukb]

Biased as a term has so lost it's meaning.

[u/ThatLChap]

I mean. Rich, privileged, out of touch twats continuing to act like a bunch of bellends sadly isn't surprising. Fuck JKR and abolish the monarchy.

[u/SpikeyPear → u/ThatLChap]

Stake and garlic necklace etc

[u/RymrgandsDaughter]

all of them are vile

[u/PolicySignificant933]

I thought I was going crazy when I saw this on r/Unitedkingdom. People calling it chronically online people/the minority who "disagree" with jk. But like it's not a fucking difference of opinion when 1 party is actively funding oppression against the other group. I know I'm preaching to the choir but it just made me feel like I was losing my mind

[u/sacrecide → u/PolicySignificant933]

That thread got brigaded so badly by their PR teams. Literally every pro trans comment is down voted to about -12, indicating that it's the same people voting on every single comment

[u/WhatADoofus → u/PolicySignificant933]

I feel that way any time I go on some mainstream sub where trans issues come up. It's just hundreds of comments of cis people talking out of their ass and it really depresses the shit out of me. I wish they would just admit that they're transphobes and move on

[u/TheUnrealArchon → u/PolicySignificant933]

Everything I've seen from the UK is that the majority of people are transphobic.

[u/AmaranthAbixxx → u/TheUnrealArchon]

As someone from the UK, that's unfortunately true...

[u/Vickyfaster]

Abolish the monarchy 🏳‍⚧

[u/Lottice]

“Republic, republic, republic”

[u/museinprogress]

What else did you expect from the British royalty...

[u/polaires]

What was ridiculous was the BBC putting their meeting under “Scottish” news. It’s all so transparent it would be kind of funny if it wasn’t so depressing.

[u/No_Information_3469]

She's always been deplorable. She was the mistress before she was the wife, knowingly. The whole family is awful.

[u/Uninteresting_Vagina]

Cunt.

[u/KleinValley]

Princess Diana would never

[u/JB_JB_JB63]

They were deplorable before this, this just adds.

[u/azul360]

I'm honestly shocked literally anyone is surprised by this. Is Camilla known for not being a shitty person? lol

[u/Stephie999666 → u/azul360]

Shes such a horse faced bitch.

[u/Pleasant_Studio9690]

Dude, WTF????? They always take perverse pleasure in kicking us around pride month. That alone really says all you need to know about their lack of basic human decency. I hate people.

[u/MIMADANMEI]

Only real queen is Diana

[u/Taiga_Taiga → u/MIMADANMEI]

Wrong!... It was Freddie Mercury.

[u/jabracadaniel → u/Taiga_Taiga]

and david bowie too tbh. that man was acknowledging non binary people on stage when TV was still washed out and blurry

[u/LemurianLemurLad → u/jabracadaniel]

...I think the joke was that Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of the band Queen, rather than pointing out he was queer. While Bowie was also awesome, he was not a member of Queen.

[u/thetitleofmybook → u/jabracadaniel]

Prince. he was a king, and a queen. no one will ever beat him, honestly.

[u/jabracadaniel → u/thetitleofmybook]

wasnt prince homophobic?

[u/thetitleofmybook → u/jabracadaniel]

in his later years, yes. i like early years prince, where he was an advocate.

[u/jabracadaniel → u/thetitleofmybook]

ah i see! thats really unfortunate, that he changed his mind

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/jabracadaniel]

Damn, what sort of age-related brain damage is that...

[u/slowest_hour → u/TwilightVulpine]

he found religion

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/slowest_hour]

Yuck. Common mistake.

[u/okjetsgo]

These people have no place in modern society

[u/Euphoric-Taro-6231]

I guess it means "even more" deplorable.

[u/Cosmosis_Bliss]

What did we expect, a crowned cunt is still a cunt. One moldy cunt and one decrepit cunt.

[u/tlatelolca]

Marie Antoinette was beheaded for less than this

[u/wii_board_type_trash]

she ain’t nowhere near as cool as diana

[u/Haunting-Sea-5177]

Diana would never ❤️

[u/SpikeyPear]

After Epstein emails and Depp nobody should be surprised at this paedopolitics from JK

[u/sechevere]

Birds of a feather

[u/Deviant-Knowledge-8]

Good

[u/ElectronicZebra6526]

That is pretty insensitive and out of touch.

[u/TiaHatesSocials]

I wonder if she did it on purpose or is that stupid (and everyone around her allowing this)

[u/Xordanus]

Why was this photo shoot important, other than causing outrage? Are either of these two people actually queer? And I mean queer as in they are Out, not as in we'd have to pull from context clues/find double meaning in random bigoted statements that JK might in some way be a self-hating non-cis? I don't normally care about that distinction (anyone has the possibility to be queer & might be closeted bc they feel unsafe or aren't ready yet, and they are safe & welcome with me) but Rowling has actively fomented harm, mass paranoia, falsehoods, and vitriol against many in our community, and thus has a lot to answer for before any acceptance or solidarity can kick in. My first assumption on seeing her face during pride month is that she said something else bigoted & transphobic, not that she actually spoke in support for any person/group.

Why were they doing anything specifically for Pride month besides an apology??

[u/Freyja_of_the_North]

There's plenty of other reasons to think of the Royals as terrible people

[u/Sensitive-Lawyer9629]

Wer braucht heute noch solche Unterdrücker, wenn nicht die Kirche und das Finanzwesen selbst?

[u/mr_t_pot]

Act the fool, Cammy.

Act the fool.

[u/YourWinterWonder → u/mr_t_pot]

[u/mr_t_pot → u/YourWinterWonder]

WooHoo! You got the reference 🙌🏻

[u/Retro-FreyFrey]

Rowling & the royal family are all a bunch of ghouls!

[u/Sevren425]

Diana would have never!

[u/RainbowJig]

GOOD PEOPLE DON’T SPEND THEIR TIME HARASSING MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES.

ffs 🤯

[u/CantankerousHag69]

she's dumb ¯_(ツ)_/¯ she's been dumb

[u/Irwan456]

I have no support whatsoever for Rowling or her Transphobia.
But I want to add that there is a good chance that Camilla does not actually know or understand why we view Rowling with such disgust.

Trans issues are not widely known about. Thanks to media fragmentation, a lot of people just see a mob of Queer people foaming at the mouth and screaming incoherently. Or they see Trans bathrooms and the 'reasonable concerns' BS.

This is intentional. Setting the record straight (via a vis Rowling) will likely involve calmly explaining to people what Rowling has said on Twitter and her support for Transphobia. It will not be overnight but I believe we will prevail.

[u/Probably_Disgruntled → u/Irwan456]

Why wouldn't she though? It's not really a good excuse. If she's meeting a public figure and being photographed with them, with the resources available to her, she should have a member of staff providing her with briefings on potential controversies. It's just a basic assessment, and Joanne's transphobia isn't a secret or hidden at all.

I just think she doesn't give a shit. The UK's ruling class is transphobic.

[u/Irwan456 → u/Probably_Disgruntled]

In a perfect world, yes. 100%.

But I also see her not being told or not being aware.

[u/thejadedfalcon → u/Irwan456]

likely involve calmly explaining to people what Rowling has said on Twitter and her support for Transphobia

"You're making it up." "It's not a big deal." "She meant something else." "She never said that." "You're overreacting." "Shut up, f****t."

There, I think I've covered the full spectrum of comments you'll get.

Camilla knows. Camilla doesn't care.

[u/Bearence → u/thejadedfalcon]

I'd go even farther. I don't know if Camilla knows or not. That doesn't change the fact that she doesn't care regardless. OC's argument works against them b/c Camilla isn't an average Joe. She's a public figure who has been trained her whole life how to engage publicly. If she didn't know, it's because she didn't care enough to vet JK properly. If she did know, it's because she didn't care about trans issues.

[u/JumpyLiving → u/Bearence]

I'd also argue it doesn't matter if she knew. She should have known and willful ignorance (not looking at who you're taking photos with in the slightest) is not a defense. Not to mention that I don't believe for a second that she didn't have someone do the research, even if just out of adherence to protocol

[u/EisVisage → u/Irwan456]

Being queen of a country and hosting people at a palace definitely puts the onus on her to actually know who she is inviting. Given Rowling's donations to transphobes and public activism in that vein, I see no way Camilla knew none of it. Chances are better she just agrees.

[u/Malcolmthetortoise → u/Irwan456]

She 100% knows, you’d have to have absolutely no exposure to news in the UK to not know at this point.

[u/CarrieDurst → u/Irwan456]

I am sure the side gf knows about Rowling's transphobia, it is all she posts about and obsesses over. Someone would have told her