The latest opinion poll on Britain's royals indicates Princess Diana is still the most popular, and her estranged husband Prince Charles is plummeting in the public's eye.
The Gallup Poll, published today in the Daily Telegraph, also found 65 percent of Britons to favor a more approachable, "democratic" monarchy, like that of the Netherlands.Twenty-four percent said Britain's royals should stay as they are, and 9 percent said the monarchy should be replaced by a nonexecutive president.
In the past three months the prince and princess of Wales have separated, both have been accused of leaking stories to the press and newspapers have printed transcripts of a sexually intimate telephone conversation purportedly between Charles and a married woman.
The poll, based on interviews with 989 people between Jan. 28 and Feb. 2, found Charles' popularity had fallen drastically in the past 18 months.
In a similar poll conducted in June 1991, 15 percent said Charles was their favorite member of the royal family. In the new poll, his popularity rating was 4 percent.
Diana had 22 percent of the vote, the highest rating, in both polls.
Asked if the nation still could be proud of the monarchy, 64 percent of respondents said yes and 34 percent, no. Eighty-seven percent thought Queen Elizabeth II did a good job but that some of her family let her down.
The queen's personal popularity rating rose from 12 to 15 points, putting her in third place after Diana and Princess Anne.
Seventy-six percent thought too many royals led an "idle, jet-set kind of existence." Approval for taxpayer support of aspects of the royal lifestyle was pretty slim.