LONDON: On the phone-in programmes on Friday morning, the Go Harry vote was running far ahead of the No Harry faction, but Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the British Army, would be unwise to be swayed by this while deciding whether to send the Prince of Wales’s younger son on active service in Iraq.

In an age resistant to authority, voters on the shout shows tend to give the answer they think the establishment least wants. If anything happens to Harry on the battlefield, the very same people will be screeching for the head of whoever sent him. The dilemma over whether Troop Commander Harry Wales should be placed in the line of fire is, though, symbolic of the problem that the royal family and their supporters face in modern Britain. The PR effort of the last 20 years has been dedicated to suggesting that the royals live like anyone else — paying tax, supporting football teams, inviting ordinary people to their houses.

But the presence of the prince in the army at a time of a failing and dangerous war pushes this process of tactical normalisation to its ultimate test. Can a son of the ruling family be asked to risk his life in the way that so many of his grandmother’s subjects already have? Those answering media polls seem certain that Harry is no different to any other army recruit. But the decision is treacherous and complex and questions the very concept of a modernised monarchy.

The forces, having recently endured the mess involving the sailors held hostage in Iran, will certainly be considering how their decision might play with the tabloids and the blogs, and they are right to do so. The easy rhetorical cry that Troop Commander Wales should be treated no differently to his colleagues — a plea that is said to have been heard from Harry himself — becomes, on examination, absurd.

The average British soldier, if killed in Iraq, is lucky to make the news-in-brief columns these days. Would Harry be treated like that? There would be days of special supplements and front-page coverage. The average British soldier, if attacked or taken hostage on the battlefield, is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Would Harry be treated like that? Insurgents and terrorist groups would devote huge resources to making sure they were in the right place at the right time. Admittedly, this is to reduce a question of military duty to an issue of presentation, but monarchies and wars fundamentally depend on their presentation to the public. Soldiers who are wounded are kept from the battlefield and Harry, carrying the wound of who he is, should most sensibly be given a sick note before he goes.

Because Harry Wales cannot possibly be treated like other soldiers by either his military superiors or by opponents, potential captors or journalists, the clear logic is that he should be kept from going to Iraq.

Such preferential treatment would result in a public relations embarrassment for politicians, generals and royals, but it would be far milder than the savage and career-ending blame game that would ensue if Harry were sent to Iraq and suffered the logical conclusion of conflict. All but the most demented anti-war or anti-monarchy campaigners must conclude that it’s better, in human and practical terms, for him to be called a pampered coward than to be brought home a corpse. The choice, though, should not have been necessary. This fiasco was created by the stubborn insistence of the Windsors that a spell at Sandhurst is what a real chap needs. There can only be a handful of families left in Britain in which it is assumed that the boys will do a spell in uniform; but, despite all the tax returns and open days and the iPods, it seems not to have occurred to the Firm (the Royal family that is) that letting Harry and Wills attempt a line of work that doesn’t involve being trained to kill people might have been a useful modernisation.

However, an institution that insisted that it wished to move with the times has stuck with traditional career lines, and so created an unsolvable paradox. Diana-ites will be tempted to suggest that, had the boys’ mother lived, she would have had them on a management course at UK high street giant Marks & Spencer, but her enthusiastic affair with a soldier, James Hewitt, suggests that she had no deep-rooted objection to men in uniform.

The problem is that soldiers are expendable but princes are protected, and so the professions are incompatible. You either have a royal family or you don’t, but the idea that a member of a family ruling by divine right and bloodline can be treated just like anyone else is ridiculous. The logic of rule by blue bloods is that their precious liquid will be protected. The charade of being one of the men should never have been attempted.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service