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Joe Biden’s royal appointment
Joe Biden will meet the queen and other royals this summer, and we’re betting they’re looking forward to it way, way more than when the bombastic House of Trump descended on Buckingham Palace in June 2019.
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The queen will host Biden and other world leaders at the Palace before the G7 summit in June, the U.K. Sunday Times reports. She already called Biden to congratulate him prior to the inauguration.
Prince Charles and Camilla will be there too, alongside Prince William and Kate Middleton. Prince Harry is due to be in Britain at some point that month (with or without Meghan, see story below), but their attendance is as yet unknown. We very much hope that Princess Anne is there too, having mischievously stolen the scene during Trump’s visit.
The idea, the Sunday Times says, is that perennial cementing of the “special relationship” between the U.K. and America, which remains close if not as close as when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan disappeared off into the sunset on their golf buggy.
The real relationship to watch is between Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Business Insider reports that the Biden administration is wary of Johnson’s ties to Trump.
The one-on-one meeting between the queen and Biden “is set to be her first significant diplomatic engagement after she returns to London,” following her and Prince Philip’s lockdown isolation at Windsor Castle, the Sunday Times says.
The G7 will be held in Carbis Bay, on the north coast of the beautiful county of Cornwall, in the south west tip of England. (A recommendation from this former local: Biden and Jill should make sure to gaze upon Godrevy Lighthouse, off Godrevy Beach across the bay, and take a careful peak over the dramatic “Hell’s Mouth” about a mile east of Godrevy.)
“The atmosphere is expected to contrast with Donald Trump’s first visit to the U.K. in July 2018, when Charles and William snubbed him, leaving the Queen to meet him alone,” the Sunday Times reports. Biden has also been invited the House of Commons—which Trump wasn’t.
The Sunday Times said Prince Charles had sent congratulations to Biden, particularly happy that some of his early executive orders focused on climate change and the environment, like rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement.
When Trump visited the U.K. there were huge protests—including the inflatable, diaper-clad, mouth-open Trump baby. He also created a mess close to home for the queen. “The presidential helicopter was said to have left damaging scorch marks on the queen’s prized lawns, much to her dismay,” the Sunday Times reported.
Charles and William united because of Andrew and “Megxit”
Buckingham Palace has finally had enough of Harry and Meghan’s dramas hogging the front pages. It’s their turn. The old school strikes back.
The Mail on Sunday reports that Prince Charles and Prince William have become besties, which—whether true or just a piece of well-placed PR flannel—sets up the storyline that the new palace power base is as conservative as tradition dictates, focused on the heir to the throne and his direct heir... with the magic of Kate Middleton thrown in.
Among the non-earth-shattering tidbits: when he was a kid William the rad would ask “Pa” to urge the Royal Collection to get rid of its 1,200 items of ivory, setting “a great public example in the fight against elephant poaching.”
Charles made the argument that the collection was “an indelible part of history”—a clash of young and old, radical and conservative, and perhaps a royal variant of current debates around the destruction versus retention of statues.
Since then, the paper says, Charles and William have become closer because of the fallout of Prince Andrew’s far-from-over, still-unexplained-to-the-FBI relationship with Jeffrey Epstein (and disastrous BBC interview where he made everything worse), and because of Harry and Meghan quitting the royal family.
They both contracted coronavirus, too.
Charles is even thinking ahead, having realized he’s waited soooo long to get to the throne himself. “He’s giving William much more input,” one aide told the Mail on Sunday. “He realizes that his own reign will be a shorter one than his son’s, and therefore it is crucial that William is involved in all long-term planning. They have been spending more time together and are much more aligned. Both are more comfortable in their own skin—and with each other.”
The new closeness comes after an adolescence where William reportedly held his father responsible for his unhappiness. Later, William thought Charles was trying to use his son’s good public image to improve his own. Charles was reportedly proud of William and Harry’s commitment to environmental activism.
Charles has been inevitably “miffed” to find out the public find him a yawn, and would rather William become king, and also that William and Kate spent more time with her family than his—and when William talked about wanting to bring his kids up without the “stiff upper lip” that Charles was. Crown fans will recall the graphic misery of his time at Gordonstoun boarding school.)
But Charles has been very touched to hear William talk about his commitment to the vast Duchy of Cornwall, which he’ll inherit from Charles.
And they all like the outdoors and nature, and, umm, birds. Great!
Kate has also been “instrumental” in mending father-son relations, the paper reports, organizing Charles’ 70th birthday snap in 2018, which united the brothers, their dad, William and Kate’s kids, and Camilla in one picture. Kate’s also encouraged Charles to visit them at home in Anmer Hall, Norfolk, and took a sweetly informal picture of father and son out in the wilds last winter.
“Much more aligned and now much more at ease, Charles and William are acutely aware that the future of the monarchy rests on their shoulders,” the Mail on Sunday concludes in an article which tellingly barely mentions Harry and Meghan at all.
Report: Meghan won’t join Harry on UK trip
Meghan Markle and son Archie are “unlikely” join Prince Harry when he returns to the U.K. on a trip scheduled for the early summer, multiple sources have told the Daily Mail.
While a lot depends on the pandemic and travel guidelines at the time, Harry is set to return to the homeland on his own, to see the queen, Prince Charles, and Prince William, and to attend three significant events—Prince Philip’s 100th birthday on June 10, the pageantry of the Trooping the Color (and the queen’s official, not actual, birthday, June 12), and the unveiling of the statue of Princess Diana at Kensington Palace (July 1), which has been overseen by William and Harry together.
Already, sources are going into conciliatory overdrive, saying if Meghan doesn’t go it would be for “personal and practical” reasons rather than being a “snub.” (Harry and Meghan didn’t return a request for comment from the Mail.)
A source told the paper: “It should be strongly stressed that there is still an element of uncertainty about this because of the unpredictable Covid situation, but the understanding is the duke is more than likely to come back on his own. This is a personal and practical decision by the couple, but it would certainly help officials navigate what is likely to be a fairly tricky situation.”
“Harry wants to come back for the queen and Prince Philip's big birthdays. But it looks likely it will be just him,” another source told the Mail. “If Meghan comes back, the feeling is that it would overshadow the occasion. People would only be looking at the ‘drama’ of it all. Of course she would be welcome, but a decision not to come would postpone that headache for a while at least.”
Another said: “Her Majesty made very clear when they left the UK that Harry and Meghan were still much loved members of her own family and would be very welcome to attend family events. That still holds true. Practically, however, it comes with the need for a certain amount of diplomacy. There is still a great deal of distance between Harry and many family members, particularly his brother. No one wants a repeat of the Commonwealth Service.” (Or: that all-round-embarrassing event in March 2020, when William and Kate and Harry and Meghan sat rows apart, no words exchanged.)
Harry’s expected to stay at Frogmore Cottage in Windsor, the couple’s British base.
Meghan’s first names removed from Archie’s birth certificate
Meghan and Harry removed her name, Rachel Meghan, from son Archie’s birth certificate, the Sun reports, about a month after he was born. Her entry on the document now reads “Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex.” They also added “Prince” to the document to complete Harry’s title of “His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David Duke of Sussex.”
The Sun posits this as a snub against William and Kate, because Kate has her name on her kids’ birth certificates. The possibility the decision was made for personal, totally non-snub-related reasons is not raised.
Kate’s “secret” coronavirus plan
Kate Middleton wants to help the “silent victims” of Britain’s coronavirus crisis, the U.K. Mirror reports. “Royal sources have confirmed the Duchess has begun shifting her focus to help charities operate in a post pandemic environment, while continuing to raise the issues homelessness, addiction and poor mental health of children and their families,” the Mirror says.
The paper reckons whatever initiatives Kate oversees will take their cue from her “5 Big Questions on the Under Fives,” the largest ever survey of its kind, which was aimed at helping kids most at risk.
A palace source told the Mirror: "These themes are so often grounded in a difficult childhood and have undoubtedly been exacerbated for thousands of vulnerable children during the pandemic. The Duchess’s primary work will be to build on the results of the survey and bring together more partners to focus on those who are most at risk of falling through the cracks of society.
“In her own words, she believes the early years should be on par with the other great social challenges and opportunities of our time. The early years can play such a crucial role in shaping our future which is why this is so important, not just in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, but also to have a chance of achieving real change for generations.”
Kristen Stewart has got the tilt
First came the news that Kristen Stewart had got the role as Princess Diana in the new movie Spencer, announced with a picture of the actress as Diana, posed with iconic, doe-eyed head tilt. One hopes Stewart has a good chiropractor to maintain this physical manifestation of historical accuracy.
Saturday saw another picture of in the Mail, in character in cream shirt and hair apparently in that early-mid 80s phase of Diana hair—where flat-pudding-bowl was segueing to adventuring-with-flicks-bob. So, more bonus points for that.
The movie is being shot in Frankfurt, and is set in 1991 over three days during one of Diana’s final Christmases at Sandringham in Norfolk, where the royal family traditionally holes up over the festive season. The significance of the date is that it was the last Christmas that Charles and Diana were officially “together.” In 1992, then-U.K. prime minister John Major announced their separation—no surprise at that point, given the tabloids’ graphic charting of the marriage’s decline—with the couple’s divorce finalized in 1996.
“We decided to get into a story about identity, and around how a woman decides somehow not to be the queen,” director Pablo Larraín. “She’s a woman who, in the journey of the movie, decides and realizes that she wants to be the woman she was before she met Charles.”
Larraín directed the intense, weird, and brilliant Jackie (2016), focusing on Jackie Kennedy; so maybe we can expect something distinctive and full-on that takes the viewer visually and psychologically far beyond the more literal territory of The Crown.
“Spencer is a dive inside an emotional imagining of who Diana was at a pivotal turning point in her life,” Stewart told Deadline. “It is a physical assertion of the sum of her parts, which starts with her given name; Spencer. It is a harrowing effort for her to return to herself, as Diana strives to hold onto what the name Spencer means to her.”
This week in royal history
Royal hunk Arthur Chatto turns 22 on February 5th. His muscular body and love of outdoor, charitable pursuits are regularly on display on the dedicated athlete’s Instagram page. He is Princess Margaret’s grandson, so he may know how to have a lot of fun too.
Unanswered questions
Will Harry (and Meghan) be at Buckingham Palace for Joe Biden’s visit before the G7? Will Meghan and Archie accompany Harry on his U.K. trip, or stay home?
