The Social World

Tag: Royals

  • Does Prince William need to ‘change’ the British monarchy?

    Does Prince William need to ‘change’ the British monarchy?

    Of all the people who might be expected to get revelatory public comments out of the Prince of Wales, the beetle-browed actor Eugene Levy would not be high on the list. Yet during the Schitt’s Creek and American Pie thespian’s new show, The Reluctant Traveler, Levy ticks off a series of “bucket list” experiences – one of which was getting close to the royal family. While it would, presumably, have been fairly easy to get an audience with Prince Harry, Levy’s intentions instead lay with Britain’s actual royal family, and so the encounter took place between him and Prince William.

    The most striking remarks that the heir to the throne made to Levy were that he clearly regards his father’s reign as an interregnum between two rather more significant periods on the throne: his grandmother’s, and his own. Not, of course, that he was so tactless or brazen to make such a comment, but Levy managed to elicit some unusually candid remarks from William, who was filmed drinking a pint of cider with him in Windsor’s best pub, the Two Brewers.

    “I like a little bit of change,” said William. “I want to question things more. I think it’s very important that tradition stays. And tradition has a huge part in all of this. But there are also points where you look at tradition and go, ‘Is that still fit for purpose today?’ So I like to question things.”

    Levy, scenting something of a scoop, pressed him by saying “it sounds like the monarchy will be shifting in a slightly different direction”, to which the Prince of Wales expressed agreement.

    It was notable that, while William talked fondly about his grandmother at several points during the interview, his father King Charles was barely mentioned, save for the rather blasé observation that: “My father needs a bit of protection but he’s old enough to do that himself as well.” In other words, recent gossip that the relationship between king and heir has been strained of late will only be fanned by this, rather than dispelled.

    There were, of course, fond comments about his family. Unsurprisingly, William described 2024 as “the hardest year I’ve ever had”, remarking that “it’s important my family feel protected and have the space to process a lot of the stuff that’s gone on [in the] last year.”

    Sounding more like his estranged brother than usual, he went on to sigh: “I enjoy my job but sometimes there are aspects of it, such as the media, the speculation, the scrutiny…” And, he might have added, participating in such pieces of entertainment as The Reluctant Traveler.

    Yet whether it worked or not as television, it was a fascinating insight into a very private man’s psyche. It is widely expected that William will be a transformative monarch in a way that his father has not been. His comments that he will not be looking to the past were more telling than might have been intended. William said that: “I think if you’re not careful history can be a real weight and an anchor around you. And you can feel suffocated by it and restricted… It’s important to live for the here and now. But also I think if you’re too intrinsically attached to history, you can’t possibly have any flexibility because you worry that the chess pieces move too much and therefore no change will happen.”

    This may be true. However, one hopes that if William has a trusted courtier or two at his side, that they might be able to convince him that change – presumably on the significant scale that he is intending – is not always a good or even necessary thing. In any case, a reign that many have pre-emptively dismissed as dull might yet surprise the world, although whether for good or ill remains to be seen.

  • Is Prince Harry’s charm offensive working?

    Is Prince Harry’s charm offensive working?

    Over the weekend, Prince Harry attracted the best headlines and coverage in Britain that he has received for months – possibly since he and Meghan staged their abdication of all responsibilities and fled to Montecito in 2021. This was all because of his carefully choreographed charitable and public endeavors. The praise included “how easy he made it look” and how Harry had “stopped sulking and played a blinder.” Even the Daily Telegraph wrote that “it was genuinely gratifying to see Harry back in Blighty, doing what he does best this week” and urged Prince William to reconcile with him.

    This was exactly what Harry had wished for with his quasi-royal visit to his home country. In order to celebrate, naturally, he gave an exclusive interview to the Guardian, that well-known bastion of royalist sentiment, to mark his trip to Ukraine after his British visit. Those expecting revelations about his father after their brief meeting earlier in the week would be disappointed. Harry stuck to the party line, speaking highly of his work with the Invictus Foundation and his military service. 

    This made Harry sound like a respected statesman. It also certainly makes a change from petulant serial litigant, although I suspect that I am in the category of the media that he detests. He said to the Guardian that:

    It is only in certain elements of the press where you see this talk about me being down or saying I am not smiling. This comes from people who think they know what I am thinking and how I am feeling. They are wrong.

    Some of us have had to sit through Harry & Meghan, where he’s definitely not smiling, but clearly that wretched show was not a fair insight into his psyche. He sniffed instead that “I think parts of the British press want to believe that I am miserable, but I’m not. I am very happy with who I am and I like the life that I live.”

    The interview was positive – almost sycophantic in places – and included the attention-grabbing hint that Harry probably had a private audience with Zelensky during his visit. If that had been made public, it would have gone down poorly with the British government, who tend to frown on freelance diplomacy of that sort. Harry was asked whether he had regrets over any of his actions, and he responded with typical bullishness:

    I don’t believe that I aired my dirty laundry in public. It was a difficult message, but I did it in the best way possible. My conscience is clear.

    He refused to acknowledge that he may have been recalcitrant (“it’s not stubbornness, it is having principles”) and described Spare as “a series of corrections to stories already out there. One point of view had been put out and it needed to be corrected.” Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. 

    The Prince Harry charm offensive stands at an interesting crossroads. Many people would prefer that he were in closer touch with the royal family, less out of filial obligation and more because he might be easier to influence or control. He himself appears to wish for more regular family visits to Britain, saying, “I feel a lot of support from the British public. Even now, when I feel like I have been destroyed by certain members of the British press.” Even those who are now praising him are not spared. Instead, Harry remarked that:

    For as long as I have known, certain elements of the British press have tried to speak on behalf of the nation. I think they are out of touch with the nation on lots of things. They hope to bring the public with them, but… I think the British public can speak and think for themselves.

    Although Harry tried to conjure up his mother’s spirit in the interview, remarking, when it was said that he followed his own path, “You know who else did that? My mum,” I was also reminded of another America-based royal, the Duke of Windsor. Like Harry, he left the country because of his love for a divorced American; like Harry, he became bored in exile and started pining for England. While the former Edward VIII initially believed his people’s great love for him would see him returned to popularity, he soon discovered that their affection for him only went so far, and he ended up spending his days miserable and alone in Paris, with only Wallis for company. 

    It remains to be seen which path his great-great-nephew will take, but Harry might be well advised to bank the goodwill that he’s received from this visit, concentrate on mending relations with his father and wider family behind closed doors and then – and only then – give any more interviews. Otherwise, the whole process of blame, anger and media outrage is likely to repeat itself all over again.

  • Will Virginia Giuffre sink Prince Andrew?

    There’s an old saying that revenge tastes best when served cold. The late Virginia Giuffre has gone a step further by serving up her final helping of vengeance against Prince Andrew by publishing her sure-to-be-revelatory memoir, Nobody’s Girl, from beyond the grave this October. Giuffre collaborated with the writer Amy Wallace on a 400-page book that is expected to divulge in no doubt excruciatingly painful and embarrassing detail, the various relationships that she had with the notorious likes of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and – of course! – the Duke of York himself.

    Announcing the book, her publisher Knopf claimed that it would offer “intimate, disturbing, and heartbreaking new details about her time with Epstein, Maxwell, and their many well-known friends, including Prince Andrew.” Although Giuffre died by suicide in Australia in April this year, at the age of 41, she sent Wallace an email expressing her wish that the book should be published in any event, saying that: “The content of this book is crucial, as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders. It is imperative that the truth is understood and that the issues surrounding this topic are addressed, both for the sake of justice and awareness.”

    Knopf supposedly paid millions of dollars for the memoir, matching the rumored multi-million pound settlement that Giuffre reached with Prince Andrew in 2022 out of court, which allowed him to avoid the potentially disastrous – and legally hazardous – prospect of testifying in court in the civil sexual assault case that she brought against him.

    It was widely speculated that Andrew was informed by his family (or, at least, his late mother) that if he was not entirely certain that the case would go in his favor that he would have to pay up, but that if he was not cleared in a public forum that he would no longer have a place in the royal family. This has largely proved to be the case ever since, and although the Duke occasionally appears, embarrassingly and briefly, at set-piece events such as Christmas get-togethers at the royal country retreat of Sandringham, he has effectively become a non-person.

    Will the book be great literature? That seems doubtful

    Although Andrew might wish that his withdrawal from public life is enough, that seems unlikely to be the case. The rumors surrounding his behavior with Giuffre (and others) are sufficiently widespread and persistent firstly for a recent biography of him, Entitled, to be a number one bestseller in the United Kingdom (although some critics, including me, found the book to be a relentless hit job that grew wearying long before the end) and now for the publication of Nobody’s Girl to be one of the biggest literary events of the year, perhaps even the decade.

    Will the book be great literature? That seems doubtful, but it will, without any doubt, be essential reading for anyone who is interested in the downfall of wealthy and powerful men. It’s not even impossible that it might have some light to shed on that most vexed and controversial of issues, namely whether her tormentor Jeffrey Epstein really did repent of his sins long enough to commit suicide, or whether someone else stepped in during one of the convenient periods that the prison CCTV cameras were turned off.

    In any case, Giuffre’s book will be unmissable proof that, even with its author no longer present to point the finger, she is still wholly capable of causing reputational damage to the great and the not-so-good. Many of those surviving may have breathed a sigh of relief at her death. This news has proved that such an exhalation would have been deeply premature.

  • I actually feel sorry for Prince Andrew

    I actually feel sorry for Prince Andrew

    “Many would have preferred this book not to be written, including the Yorks themselves.” So Andrew Lownie begins his coruscating examination of the lives of Prince Andrew and Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson, which has excited significant media attention due to its scandalous revelations. Lownie, a historian and literary agent, has pivoted away from an earlier, more conventional career as a biographer of John Buchan and Guy Burgess to the self-appointed role of royal botherer-in-chief. After earlier, similarly scabrous books about the Mountbattens and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII and his wife, Wallis Simpson), he now finds his first contemporary targets, and the results are predictably marmalade-dropping.

    Prince Andrew’s decline in public popularity over the past decade, exacerbated by stories of his ill-considered friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and rumors of the sexual abuse of the underage Virginia Giuffre, was capped by his disastrous 2019 interview with a disgusted-looking Emily Maitlis, a presenter on Britain’s Channel 4, in which he tried and failed to salvage his reputation with a series of bizarre admissions that made him look both stupid and sinister. Today, he has an uneasy relationship with members of the wider royal family, who would like to be shot of him but are reluctant to cast off one of their own; and suspicions persist that it will only take one more scandal for him to be banished to reputational Siberia.

    Entitled, then, is designed to serve two complementary but distinct purposes. It is the first serious attempt to deal with the life story of a grotesque man who was nicknamed “Baby Grumpling” shortly after his birth in 1960. He was his mother’s favorite child, but even she acknowledged that he was “not always a little ray of sunshine about the house.” The bullying, arrogant boy who would rhetorically ask his Gordonstoun contemporaries “You do know who I am?” would grow up a lonely, essentially friendless figure. Even the knowledge that “Randy Andy” was, in the words of one former lover, “a well-built gentleman” would eventually become his undoing. Lownie writes that Andrew reputedly slept with more than 1,000 women, of whom by far the most notorious (supposedly) was Giuffre, who eventually won an out-of-court settlement rumoured to have been around £10 million.

    But Entitled also aims to delve beneath the benignly useless exterior of Ferguson – described by one source as “all high jinks and jolly hockey sticks and practical jokes.” Lownie suggests she is rather a pitiful figure who has clung to her ex-husband’s coat-tails in an attempt to maintain her status and income alike. She has always suffered insecurity about her appearance and weight, but her financial illiteracy was such that a court case revealed: “Sarah had explained her actions by saying she was drunk, was trying to help a friend and in debt.” Perhaps only drink could account for the decision to write a series of lifestyle books entitled Madame Pantaloon.

    Lownie achieves the near impossible: one almost feels sorry for Prince Andrew

    Yet if Fergie comes across as an essentially comic character, the Duke of York is a villain. Lownie clearly loathes the man, who is depicted in the most unflattering light at virtually every turn. If one contemporary attempts to excuse the worst of his behaviour as being driven by shyness or a desire to help friends, another source, usually anonymous, will testify to his arrogance or snobbery or some other unpleasant trait. He gets some grudging credit for his courage during the Falklands War, in which he participated as a helicopter pilot; but it is made clear that the exaggerated reporting of his exploits was driven more by duty than genuine admiration. And by the time we are offered a minutely detailed account of his Epstein-triggered disgrace and downfall, Lownie achieves the near impossible: one almost feels sorry for Prince Andrew. 

    This is not a book that any of the royal family will enjoy reading. There are casually delivered revelations, such as Prince Philip (Elizabeth II’s consort) having had an adulterous affair with Ferguson’s mother Susan in the 1960s, that no other biographer has ever made public. And there is a discussion of Andrew and Harry having a fight in 2013, following which Harry allegedly told William how much he hated his uncle Andrew. Lownie concludes cheerily: “It is ironic that the Duke and Duchess of York, ostensibly the strongest defenders of the monarchy, may through their behavior between them have done most to hasten its demise.” It is hard not to believe that the author would relish such a downfall.

    One cannot help wondering whether Entitled, which combines high-minded contempt and bitchy gossip in readable but seldom inspired prose, is the precursor to another, yet more scandalous account by Lownie of the younger members of the royal family, specifically Harry and Meghan. Perhaps it will be called Dumb and Dumber. In any case, this is a fascinating if oddly joyless book that will no doubt sell in huge quantities. But be prepared to feel queasy after this wallow in the dark side of noblesse oblige.