This story was originally published by North & South and is republished with permission.

OPINION: For a week or two in November, we seemed to be up to our necks in the strange, anachronistic and sometimes downright creepy world of the royal family.

The background hum of vapid fawning and gossip never really goes away, thanks to those platforms that find the doings of the wider Windsor clan to be a proven earner. But the unfolding of three very different media events in the middle of the month generated an exceptional, almost unavoidable flood of coverage.

The most newsworthy of the three, by far, was the BBC interview with the Queen's second son, Prince Andrew, about his friendship with American financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

Facing growing criticism over his proven links with a man who was jailed for procuring an underage girl for prostitution, and allegations that he himself had sex with a teenager paid by Epstein, the Duke of York sought to defend himself, but instead provided a gruesome case study of hereditary tone-deafness and cocooned narcissism.

Nothing about the encounter played well for the duke, but two remarks in particular characterised the extent of his self-absorption.

First, trying to explain his stay of several days at Epstein's New York mansion, after Epstein's release from jail in 2010, he claimed his visit was with "the sole purpose" of breaking off contact.

"[At] the time, I felt it was the honourable and right thing to do, and I admit fully that my judgment was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable…"

Too honourable. Shucks. He could use that in a job interview when they ask for a weakness, though being a prince doesn't really involve job interviews, does it?

Later, he claimed staying with Epstein was not becoming of a member of the royal family, "and we try and uphold the highest standards and practices".

Wait. Really? The highest? So many examples of his family failing to live up to even quite low standards – from the abdicating great-uncle who hobnobbed with Hitler to the older brother who had "three people" in his marriage, or the hell-raising nephew who wore Nazi insignia to a party – suggest many of them don't try that hard, or certainly no harder than the rest of us.

The tradition is to invoke the "car crash" or "train wreck" in these cases, but this interview was more a one-man demolition derby involving not just cars and trains but jumbo jets, ocean liners and flaming Zeppelins, too. It led, after an intervention by the Queen and Prince of Wales, to Prince Andrew giving up his public duties "for the foreseeable future". Soon after, he withdrew from being patron of scores of charities and other organisations – in many cases, probably jumping before he was pushed. He remains, weirdly, the Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal New Zealand Army Logistic Regiment, though you would hope somebody is already working through the, um, logistics of ending that arrangement.

The second element in our November royalty binge was the release of the latest instalments of acclaimed Netflix series The Crown. Like its predecessors, season three employs high-calibre actors and sumptuous production values to depict all the drama and incident it can wring out of modern-day royal history.

Even those of us usually not much interested in royal doings can enjoy the mid-20th-century period detail – the cars! The stupid hats! – and performances by actors such as Olivia Colman, who as Queen Elizabeth II effortlessly demolishes the fretting of a Daily Telegraph columnist that Colman's "distinctly left-wing face" might impinge on her portrayal of Her Maj.

The historical record provides plenty of incident from which to knit – and embellish – suitable plot lines, and the characters are a scriptwriter's dream, a Crazy Gang of eccentrics, trapped in a gilded cage, grappling with notions of duty and relevance. Throughout, the institution itself provides its off-the-planet backdrop, like the far-fetched set-up for a reality-TV show designed to elicit neurosis, distress and occasional fireworks, although in this format nobody ever really gets voted off. Even a certain one-time pal of Hitler stays in the picture.

The latest series, covering events between 1964 to 1977, treads ever closer to the royal world of today, with Prince Charles, reaching adulthood, played by an actor (Josh O'Connor) who is convincingly wet enough for us to disregard his fairly normal-sized ears. (This contrasted with the kid who earlier played the younger Charles, who looked as if he might have a future in unassisted flight.)

One of the later episodes explores the love triangle of Charles, Andrew Parker Bowles and one Camilla Shand, with a lovesick Prince of Wales getting outmanoeuvred by those who don't regard Camilla as quite the thing. Spoiler: Nearly three decades later, he eventually gets the girl.

Which brings us to the final ingredient in our wall-to-wall month of Windsor: an underwhelming six-day tour of New Zealand by the future king and his second wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, now aged 71 and 72 respectively.

Good on them for flying halfway round the world at that age (yes, sitting up the front probably eases the burden), and doing their best to smile and wave like troopers. And they were welcomed warmly enough by those called on to provide the necessary hospitality.

Still, a couple of septuagenarians have nothing like the crowd-pulling star-wattage of the prince's sons and their wives. Charles' visits to a couple of environmentally minded organisations carried the whiff of "partnership marketing" more than any meaningful connection.

And just seeing Charles in a New Zealand setting, engaging fleetingly with various New Zealanders, invites us to contemplate an uncomfortable impending reality: sometime soon, our proudly independent South Pacific nation will have this odd Englishman from this oddest of families as our head of state.  

Something is wrong with that picture, isn't it? Even Charles thinks so, according to former diplomat and MP Chris Laidlaw, who reported a 1997 conversation in which the Prince of Wales – after a glass or two of pinot noir, apparently – said it would be "a lot easier for everybody" if we had our own head of state.

Lobby group New Zealand Republic commissioned a poll in May that showed 55 per cent of New Zealanders want one of their own as their next head of state, compared with 39 per cent who would prefer to stick with the next British monarch.  

Trouble is, nobody in a position to divert us from the track we're on is remotely interested in doing so. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern thinks that within her lifetime – what, a whole half century or so? – we will "transition" away from the monarchy. National's Simon Bridges calls himself a "reluctant monarchist".

Their stances reflect a seemingly indifferent electorate, despite those poll numbers. Ardern said in a 2018 interview that she could not remember the last time a voter asked about New Zealand becoming a republic. And it's true the issue is trivial compared with, say, child poverty.

It might be, too, that in an era of passionate ideological schisms, nobody particularly wants to open hostilities over what is an essentially symbolic position.

The timing is also tricky. It seems only polite to put off any action until after Elizabeth has gone, but swinging the metaphorical axe on a brand-new monarch could also look a bit brutal.

The answer probably lies in a "road map", softly launched by someone like Andrew Little, or a similar figure on the National side, by which we could track our way, across two or three parliamentary terms, through a referendum, and culminating in a quiet, ceremonial cutting of ties. We could simply turn the role of governor-general into our head of state, with that appointment being made by a three-quarters majority in Parliament. A decade – rather than Ardern's 50-odd years – should do it. 

To help nudge things along, please feel free to raise the matter with any politicians you happen to encounter. If you're not really bothered, have another look at the Prince Andrew interview, through your fingers if necessary, and stay tuned to The Crown.

The Brits are bound to stick with them for tourism purposes, but viewed from this side of the world, the "firm" itself