We know it's gripping. We know it's fun. But does it really matter? And does it matter enough to justify the current media hyperventilation about "the greatest crisis for the royal family since the abdication of 1936"? Certainly not, says constitutional historian and stout royalist Vernon Bogdanor: "It's a storm in a teacup." For him, all the Burrell affair has spawned is a string of accusations, aired in newspapers rather than made formally to the police, with nothing proven whatsoever. The frenzied speculation that has been piled on to these fragments of gossip would never have made it into print if the target had been a celebrity or politician, says Bogdanor. "But because the royal family will never sue for libel and can't answer back, the press has been allowed to run riot. It's a shame, he adds, because after the exertions of the jubilee the Windsors deserved a rest and "some peace and quiet".  He is right about one thing. There is no constitutional crisis here: that only happens when the sovereign and parliament are locked in a stand-off which the system itself cannot resolve. We'd have one of those if the Queen refused to sign, say, a law banning foxhunting. We're nowhere near that.  Strictly speaking, 1936 was not that kind of crisis either. Edward VIII always insisted he would go along with the wishes of his ministers and when that meant stepping down, he did as he was told. Even so, the abdication is remembered as a trauma for the royal family - it's the chief reason why the Queen has never countenanced an early retirement for herself - and that is the way the current drama should be judged. As Edward and Mrs Simpson proved, it's not only strict constitutional crises that can rock an institution to its roots.  At first glance, the stakes seem much lower this time: even the most hysterical of pundits is not predicting a 1936-style removal of a sitting monarch. Yet the damage the Burrell saga could yet inflict on the royal family should not be underestimated. It may not be on a par with the abdication, but this is surely the greatest threat to the house of Windsor since then.  For one thing, this affair touches the Queen herself. One of the remarkable features of Elizabeth II's long reign has been her sure-footed avoidance of controversy. Her five decades on the throne have included not so much as a gaffe. Indeed, one thing which has made life so hard for republicans these last 50 years is that the Queen has kept her copybook unstained: she has been the very model of an impartial, above-the-fray head of state.  Only now has she made her first error. Her 11th-hour intervention in the Burrell case - suddenly remembering a crucial conversation with the accused and thereby bringing his prosecution to a juddering halt - has, at the very least, saddled the Queen with the appearance of impropriety. Her failure to step forward earlier with such material evidence looks a lot like obstruction of justice. Her decision to step in when she did - just as Burrell was about to testify, spilling some embarrassing royal beans - looks like meddling in justice to save one's own skin.  A second factor puts the last 12 days into a different category from all the ructions that have gone before. For the talk now is of criminal, rather than emotional, wrongdoing. In the royal scandals of the past, the great revelation was that the Windsors were not as squeaky clean as their "model family" image cracked them up to be. Whether it was Margaret's thwarted love for Group Captain Peter Townsend or the icy reception granted to the young Diana, the big discovery was that the royals were all family Christmases on the outside - and cold-hearted dysfunction on the inside. Even the "war of the Waleses" in the 1990s merely revealed the prince as a callous man who was unfaithful to his wife. It wasn't flattering, but Charles was accused of nothing illegal, nor anything, in truth, that would make him unfit to be king.  The current scandal is different. Even putting aside the Queen's intervention in the Burrell trial, the latest "rape tape" claims pose a threat of a graver order than anything before. At the heart of the matter is the suggestion that St James's Palace hushed up a rape claim made by one employee against a trusted Charles aide. George Smith says he was raped in 1989; there was no investigation until 1996 - and even then, it was the palace, not the police, which did the investigating. Smith also testifies that he saw an incident involving a member of the royal family and a palace servant that, if made public, would cause "irreparable" damage. The guessing game about that has begun, and the suspicion is hardening that it was Smith's testimony which the royals were so anxious to keep out of court, and why they moved so swiftly to close Burrell's trial down.  Whatever the truth of Smith's second claim, the suggestion that a rape charge was not pursued in order to save the hide of a Charles favourite is serious business. Forget talking to plants, dreaming of life as a tampon or scribbling nuisance letters to government ministers - this casts the heir not as a crank, but as a perverter of the course of justice. The prince's creation of an internal inquiry is a bad joke: what could be more inappropriate, when the very charge that needs probing is that the palace saw fit to keep out the police and act as judge and jury on its own?   As for the other claims that have filled the popular prints, they could wreak some damage, too. No one minds that there is a gay circle below stairs in Britain's assorted palaces. But they do mind when they hear of high-value gifts, undeclared and sold on for profit. They do mind when they hear accusations of a corrupt, closed world where serious crimes can go unpunished. The closest parallel here is with Tory sleaze.  In the end, the details mattered less than the vague sense that the Conservatives believed their power was so unchallengeable they regarded themselves as above the law. If Britons come to see the Windsors the same way, as ridden with royal sleaze, it will be a hard view to shift. As the Tories have learned to their cost, sleaze can blight an institution.  And this, perhaps, is the biggest danger of all. The royalists' strongest argument is that the monarchy alone serves as a channel, connecting the British people to its past. That unique bond was on show at the death of the Queen Mother, they say. But what happens if that channel starts getting clogged with a whole lot of other emotions? At Sunday's remembrance ceremony, the Queen laid a wreath for our fallen service men and women. Today she will open parliament. She can perform that role partly because she has lived through some of the very moments of British history she symbolically commemorates, and also because her personal record has been so clean. But would we see a future King Charles the same way - especially if there was not just a crown but a legal question mark hovering above his head?