Click to see who's ahead of you in line to the throne

It is 10 years since the British Royal Family's web site went live at www.royal.gov.uk as a response to endless photos of Fergie's knickers in the red-top press, but its success lulled the Palace PR people into a false sense of security.

• Click to see photos of Fergie's knickers

Suddenly there was a New Labour government, and Her Majesty began to sustain important losses: her mother, who I thought was engineered entirely from intricate Victorian machinery and thus immortal, Princess Diana, and of course the Royal Yacht Britannia. She also began to lose people's deference.

• Click for helpful curtseying diagrams

However, the Royal Family has been our last defence against the politicians we arbitrarily elect from time to time ever since King John was taken behind the bicycle sheds at Runnymede. Since Magna Carta our Royals have always had to look over their shoulders - and for some of them the last thing they saw was from this perspective. The last thing they saw was an axe.

• Click to see an axe

So today's deal is that the politicians get the taxes while the Royals get the palaces, jewels, salmon fishing, grouse shooting, deerstalking and rights over various other flora and fauna.

• Click for recipes featuring sturgeon, swan and corgi

In this arrangement the Royal Family, by and large (ie excluding Prince Charles), would prefer to be left to get on with its own arcane agenda involving all the above plus castles, ceremonies, postage stamp collecting, garden parties, racehorses etc.

• Click if you've got any of the royal racing pigeons in your back yard. Or freezer

And most of us are content to accede to this - our politicians too, which is why both sides are usually so nice to each other in public. If we saw them falling out we'd have to take sides, and that would mean all-out civil war in which we'd happily adopt cool signature hairstyles and cut each other to pieces (again).

• Click to upload your photo and see your head on a spike

The royal web site has evolved over the decade though, and is helping to keep the peace around here. There are some good things about it - it's the only one in the world for which you should stand to attention, and it's surely one of the very few where you can click to pit your sanity against the sound of bagpipes.

God Save the Queen 2.0.