There's always a sense of mystique with anything to do with the Royals — an establishment which keeps most of its affairs well and truly locked away behind heavy, gilded doors.
So the role the Queen may have played in the Australia's biggest constitutional crisis, and whether it was by her hand that prime minister Gough Whitlam's political death warrant was signed, was always going to garner a fair amount of interest.
But the release of the so-called "Palace Letters" showed the Queen didn't really do much at all. Or, at the very least, she left it to her private secretary to be her wingman, dealing with the back and forth between London and her charges in the Antipodes.
As former governor-general Sir John Kerr himself noted in one despatch after the dismissal, "the historians and academics can argue about it for years".
Palace was DEFINITELY interested but Queen was NOT told
The 211 letters exchanged between Sir John and Buckingham Palace at the time of the Whitlam dismissal were released online by the National Archives of Australia on Tuesday morning.
The letters suggest the decision to sack Mr Whitlam was made by Sir John, and seemingly him alone.
In his letter to the Queen on the day he dismissed the prime minister, Sir John said he made the serious and significant decision without tipping off the Sovereign first.
Sir Martin Charteris, Queen Elizabeth's private secretary, agreed in the following days that was the right call — that the power to kick Mr Whitlam out of The Lodge rested solely with the Governor-General.
He even capitalised the "NOT" in "NOT informing the Queen" to ram that point home, in sturdy typewriter font.
In saying that, the back and forth in the weeks and months leading up to the dismissal showed Buckingham Palace was DEFINITELY (author emphasis) interested in the developing political crisis in Australia.
Sir Martin told Sir John that just because nobody had used the constitutional powers to dismiss a government, didn't mean they didn't exist.
But the powers of last resort resided with the person inhabiting Government House, Canberra — not Buckingham Palace, London.
While that will be made as an argument to say the Queen was detached from the decision, people, including historian Jenny Hocking — who fought for years to access the letters — will be highly critical of Sir Martin voicing these opinions and providing such advice.
Accusations of overreach by the Palace will abound.
However, in a statement on Tuesday evening, Buckingham Palace said "throughout her reign, Her Majesty has consistently demonstrated … support for Australia, the primacy of the Australian constitution and the independence of the Australian people".
"While the Royal Household believes in the longstanding convention that all conversations between Prime Ministers, Governor Generals and The Queen are private, the release of the letters by the National Archives of Australia confirms that neither Her Majesty nor the Royal Household had any part to play in Kerr's decision to dismiss Whitlam."
Hell hath no fury like a prime minister scorned
The "Kerr's Cur" speech delivered by Gough Whitlam, standing on the steps of Old Parliament House in the hours after he was sacked, has been etched into the Australian psyche.
The letters also give an insight into how livid the Labor leader was on the day, and how anxious he was in anticipation of the crisis coming to a head.
As the saga reached boiling point, prior to him being sacked from the top job, Mr Whitlam apparently described the crisis as a "race to the Palace" — an indication of how unprecedented the circumstances were.
The prime minister was considering asking the Queen to sack Sir John as her representative in Australia, while the governor-general was considering getting rid of Mr Whitlam to end the parliamentary deadlock.
According to the letters, Mr Whitlam gave Buckingham Palace a call at 4:00am London time, asking to be reinstated.
Sir Martin noted to Sir John that while "the Establishment" hadn't backed his choice of sacking Mr Whitlam in the first place, nobody in the Palace disputed it was the right decision in the following months.
The ghosts of prime ministers past
The man who had led Australia for 17 years, former prime minister Robert Menzies, even lent his political heft to the situation the week after the dismissal.
His assessment of Sir John Kerr's actions in a letter dated November 19, 1975, were glowing, when he argued the governor-general's decision and conduct was "beyond reproach", and that he wasn't ever meant to be an "obedient servant" of those who appointed.
Some of that praise might not be too surprising, given the ousting of Mr Whitlam put a Liberal back in the prime minister's office.
But Mr Menzies's intervention came with a preamble that he had held his tongue for a considerable period of time before writing to Sir John. And that correspondence was personal, rather than Mr Menzies commenting through the media — something recent former prime ministers might learn from.
Constant and continued reassurance
Sir John and Sir Martin maintained their official pen-pal pairing for years after the dismissal, throughout the rest of Sir John's term as governor-general.
Again, that's not overly surprising. But the tone of the letters is telling.
The letters from the Palace contain constant and continued reassurances to Sir John that he has done the right thing, that he has made the right decision, that the stinging criticism of him was unwarranted and that he was just doing his duty.
Government House's official stationery got quite the work out
The 1970s are long before the era of instant messaging. It's a time even before the fax machine became ubiquitous.
Technological limitations notwithstanding, Sir John put pen to paper frequently. He was a prolific letter-writer.
Most of his missives to Buckingham Palace weren't directed to the Queen personally, rather going to her private secretary — but a few went straight to the royal apartments.
Seemingly a fan of scrapbooking, Sir John would include numerous newspaper cuttings to illustrate his commentary on the happenings in Australia.
The letters provide an insight into the issues he thought were of considerable interest at the time — the independence of Papua New Guinea, and Prince Charles's visit to Australia chief among them.
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