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Harry and William: still fighting
Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand’s book about Meghan and Harry, Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family, did not exactly help William and Harry’s troubled relationship. However, there had been hopes that subsequent events this year, including Covid and Meghan’s tragic miscarriage, might have helped the brothers get their quarrel into perspective.
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Alas not. Despite reports in the Sun that the two have “exchanged presents,” a source described as “a friend of the brothers” has told The Sunday Times that things are “still not great” between the two siblings.
The comment appears in a review of the year by the paper’s royal correspondent, Roya Nikkhah, who also casts an eye forward to the review of the terms of Harry and Meghan’s departure from the royal family which is due this coming March. She suggests that the feeling at the palace is that there will not be a huge amount to talk about and, bar a few minor adjustments, the Sussexes will be more or less cut loose completely.
“The feeling at monarchy HQ is that the Sussexes are making their way in a brave new world and good luck to them,” Nikkhah writes, adding that sources said “far bigger issues” have put the acrimony around the separation into context.
“Harry and Meghan have more control over their lives, but they have taken some major hits to their reputation,” a royal source who is described as knowing the couple is quoted as saying. “There is a portrayal of Harry in some parts of the media as to some extent having abandoned Britishness for a more progressive Californian style. That probably quite accurately reflects what a lot of the British public are thinking.”
However another source added: “They are a big loss to the institution and the nation. The biggest loss is on the family side of things; there’s a lot of repair to be done.”
French police seek to question Prince Andrew, report says
A familiar tide of bad news for Prince Andrew in Britain’s Sunday newspapers. French investigators now reportedly want to question the prince after the arrest this week of modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, 74, who is alleged to have abused Jeffrey Epstein “sex slave” Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who also claims she was forced to have sex with Andrew.
Brunel, who denies any impropriety, is accused of supplying girls for an orgy on Epstein’s island in the Caribbean which Roberts Giuffre has previously alleged Andrew was at.
A French justice source told the Sun: “We have issued numerous appeals for witnesses and Prince Andrew is clearly a witness to Epstein’s conduct over many years. Beyond that Andrew is said to have visited Epstein’s home in Paris and had relations with the victims Brunel is accused of abusing. Andrew’s testament is crucial and he could of course be summoned.”
Investigators could legally apply to quiz the Duke, 60, in France but his royal status would create difficulties.
Lisa Bloom, lawyer for an alleged victim of Brunel, said yesterday: “At long last another accused Epstein enabler is being brought to justice. Prince Andrew—time to make good on your promise of co-operating with authorities, or you may be next.”
Charles’ Gordonstoun hell
This might be the cheekiest and most absurd request for a disclaimer at the start of The Crown. The current head-teacher at Gordonstoun boarding school has become the latest voice in the chorus demanding Netflix state at the start of every episode that it’s a work of fiction. Netflix has already said it won’t, so this is really just an attempt at a publicity grab on Gordonstoun’s part, and a pretty late and lame one at that.
Gordonstoun was the Scottish private school Prince Charles was sent to, and famously hated, because the other boys were allegedly total bastards to him.
Gordonstoun now wants to get down with the rest of the whining royals, and claim… well, the interesting thing is they object to the onscreen representation of the school’s facilities when Charles was there, and that Prince Philip didn’t build their gateposts.
Nowhere in their denial is countering the whole point of the episode—which was that Prince Charles was bullied horribly during his time there!
Principal Lisa Kerr told the Daily Mail: “As a school with its own thriving drama department we are very supportive of the Creative Arts, however we also teach our students the importance of separating fact from fiction. That is why we have repeatedly reassured them that the Gordonstoun represented in The Crown is a drama, not a documentary.
“Whilst we never comment on the experiences of individual students, by way of example we can clarify that The Prince of Wales was accommodated in Windmill Lodge, which was opened just three years before he arrived and had modern facilities at the time of his stay. Nor did Prince Philip build our gateposts. These storylines appear to be imagined for dramatic effect which makes compelling, but not factual, viewing. Many of our alumni, particularly contemporaries of HRH The Prince of Wales, have told us of their shock at the misleading impression of Gordonstoun which is given by The Crown.”
Principal Kerr does not mention that Charles once reportedly described Gordonstoun as “Colditz in kilts,” although in public said more diplomatically, “It was only tough in the sense that it demanded more of you as an individual than most other schools did—mentally or physically. I am lucky in that I believe it taught me a great deal about myself and my own abilities and disabilities.”
In Vanity Fair in 2017, in an article adapted from her book Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, Sally Bedell Smith added more detail on Charles’ time at the Scottish boarding school.
“Encumbered by his titles and his status as heir to the throne, he was singled out as a victim from his first day,” Bedell writes. “Bullying was virtually institutionalized and very rough,” John Stonborough, a classmate of Charles’, tells her. The school sounds delightful, with “ritualized psychological and physical abuse that included tying boys up in laundry baskets under a cold shower.” Bullies tormented Charles at night in his dormitory.
“He was taunted for his jug ears, which his great-uncle Earl Mountbatten unavailingly urged his parents to have surgically pinned back. During intra-house Rugby matches, teammates and opponents alike pummeled Charles in the scrum,” Bedell Smith writes.
“I never saw him react at all,” Stonborough told the author of the young Charles. “He was very stoic. He never fought back.”
If The Crown does end up including a disclaimer at the start of that particular episode, maybe it could be something along the lines of, “This is a work of fiction. Viewers should be advised that the grinding misery we show Charles going through at Gordonstoun could have been much worse in reality.”
The Crown’s Charles and Diana defend Netflix
Emma Corrin and Josh O’Connor, who play Princess Diana and Prince Charles respectively in The Crown, have said they agree with the streaming giant’s decision to push back on the demands they run a disclaimer led by Oliver Dowden, the British Culture Secretary who might be better served doing all he can to save British cultural life in the face of a pandemic rather than holding forth on a brilliantly addictive soap opera.
Corrin told Variety’s Marc Malkin: “It is very clearly a dramatized version of events. This is fictitious in the same way people don’t mistake ‘Succession’ for what actually happened with the Murdochs.” Even so, Corrin told Malkin, “I also understand [the request] comes from a place of sensitivity and protectiveness of the royal family and Diana.”
O’Connor told the Los Angeles Times’ “The Envelope: The Podcast,” “We were slightly let down by our culture secretary, whose job it is to encourage culture. In my opinion, it’s pretty outrageous that he came out and said what he said. Particularly in this time when he knows that the arts are struggling and they’re on their knees, I think it’s a bit of a low blow… My personal view is that audiences understand. You have to show them the respect and understand that they’re intelligent enough to see it for what it is, which is pure fiction.”
This week in royal history
Oh, happier times… December 25, 2018, and William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan head to church for the traditional royal Christmas Day service at St. Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham. The “fab four” have become considerably less fab and less close, with rumors of rivalry, jealousy, rudeness, and resentment. So, let’s just gaze upon this and hope it’s a happy Christmas for them all.
