It was an unprecedented move as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced their intention to step back as senior royals. Even more surprising was the personal statement issued by the Queen following a royal summit at Sandringham. Yesterday's opinion columns were largely dominated by the saga and how it will unfold.

Simon Jenkins, writes in The Guardian, that there are a few lessons in this for the British monarchy.

He says: "It remains in mystique, fashioned in the image of the monarch and not really susceptible to 'progressivism' or some vague broad-church concept. It does clearly need to be slimmer." He adds that "if any characterisation is applicable to it, it is that it cannot have a 'theme' or particular 'character' at all.

Jenkins goes as far as saying the monarchy survives because it is not significant, not influential, not even definable.

He added: "It is clearly and eerily present, the notional embodiment of the state in human form. It is not going to go away. But I sense that as things are in a few weeks' time we will wonder what all the fuss was about."

The Daily Mail's Richard Littlejohn ties in two major breaking stories of the day. As the Oscar nominations were unveiled, Littlejohn writes how the Oscar for Best Actress goes to Meghan Markle.

"There appears to be no limit to Meghan's self-absorption and obsession with her privacy, when it suits her," he says.

He goes on to say: "Meghan has announced via 'friends' that she won't live in the US while the evil Donald Trump remains President. Don't you just love the arrogance of the woman, presuming to tell 327million Americans who they are allowed to elect?

"Funny how she won't live in a country run by a 'racist' Trump but sucks up to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, who has been caught blacking up. not once but several times."

Littlejohn goes on to say that Markle is also playing the victim card for all it's worth - with those 'friends' again threatening a warts 'n' all interview with Oprah Winfrey in which she will smear the Royal Family as racist and sexist, unless she gets the settlement she wants.

In contrast to the SussexRoyal story, Melanie Phillips writes in The Times about the death of Sir Roger Scruton.

Indeed Phillips says his death is a loss that "our troubled culture can ill afford."

She hailed him as Britain's greatest contemporary philosopher and also its most lyrical.

Phillips says: "Much misrepresented and traduced, Sir Roger analysed, defended and embodied conservatism which he understood to a rare degree. He articulated and championed the deep connections between conservatism, the English countryside and national identity.

"He recognised that without a shared home and culture based on the inherited values, customs and laws of a nation state there can be no sense of “we”.

She want on to say: "Above all, Sir Roger realised that conservatism was about defence of collective memory and freedom or it was nothing.

The Scotsman editorial turns its attentions to matters closer to home. As a local public inquiry into the dualling of the A9, on the site of the 1689 Battle of Killiecrankie, begins, campaigners argue the current proposals to widen the road as part of a £3 billion dualling project would be a “travesty” for a site rich in history.

The paper said the battle should cause no more deaths. The dualling would be a bid to cut the number of accidents on the route.

It states: "Three centuries on a new battle is brewing over Transport Scotland plan to turn about 80 miles of this important trunk road into a dual carriageway as, at Killiecrankie, this would result on part of the battlefield being build."

They say the 1745 Association claims there would be a risk to "irreparable and irreversible damage" to a historic site.

The paper argues that short of a compromise solution in which the road could be widened while avoiding the battlefield, the safety and economic arguments should outweigh the historic ones. It reflects on how the present is always more important than the past, adding it is a fact lost on some who still celebrate a battle the following year in ways that perpetuate sectarian conflict to Scotland's enduring shame.

It added: "With the advantage of hindsight it's hard to see what was achieved by the deaths of thousands of people that day in 1689."