Prince Charles will fight any attempt by Prince Andrew and Queen Elizabeth II to use the upcoming Jubilee celebrations to “normalize” Andrew’s attendance at royal events, a leading British writer given extensive access to the queen’s advisers, papers and her circle of friends for a definitive new biography has told The Daily Beast.
Robert Hardman, author of the new book Queen of Our Times, an epic survey of Elizabeth’s 70-year reign, said that the queen’s widely criticized decision to ask her son Prince Andrew to escort her into Westminster Abbey last week had been accepted by the family given the unique nature of the event.
However he said there would be “a much stronger reaction” from Charles if further efforts were made to include Andrew in the royal party at this summer’s platinum jubilee celebrations.
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Hardman warned that Andrew has made a habit of exploiting his close relationship with his mother over the years to “rearrange the furniture”, trying to change the terms of agreements made with the royal establishment after supposedly comprehensive and definitive deals had been cut.
Hardman, a prolific royal broadcaster and respected writer whose previous tomes include Her Majesty and Queen of the World, told The Daily Beast: “Over the course of the reign there have been plenty of moments where a decision has been made that the Duke of York isn’t very keen on, and he has been known to pop round to see his mother for a cup of tea and rearrange the furniture.
“After the Newsnight interview [when Andrew notoriously told the BBC of his alleged sweating condition, and defended his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein], it was agreed between the queen and Prince Charles that Andrew would no longer perform public duties, and that was relayed to the Duke of York. He was allowed to issue a statement saying that he had asked the queen for permission to relinquish his public duties and that she had very kindly agreed, but there is no doubt that it was forced on him.
“And then within a day or two suddenly there was this rather strange messaging that actually he was still going to be attending an event in Bahrain. It was classic Andrew, where an apparently binding decision had been agreed, but he then would just ignore it and carry on as before.
“On that occasion Charles was in New Zealand, and, not coincidentally, at just about breakfast time in New Zealand, a statement came out saying he was not going to Bahrain after all.”
Hardman said that since then the agreement to exclude Andrew from public life had “pretty much held firm” until last week.
“At a family event like that, he was always going to be there. Of course, he was due to come in through the front door with his daughters. Then this new plan started taking shape with a few days to go. I’m quite sure that he’d have been keen to do this. I don’t know how many cups of tea were drunk, but there was clearly an element of him saying, ‘I really think the queen needs a member of her family at her side.’
“But there wouldn’t have been a big family argument about this. It seems she thought, ‘That’s all right, it’s the Duke’s memorial, there is a logic to it and I’m happy with it.’ If the queen says, ‘I’m happy with it,’ none of the others are going to suddenly start fighting over it.
“If it starts a process of normalization, then I think there will be a much stronger reaction. But Prince Philip’s memorial? That was very much her day, and her call.”
Asked if Andrew is the queen’s favorite child, Hardman, who spoke to many of the queen’s oldest friends for his book, said, “He’s not exactly in the doghouse. You might look at the scene at Westminster Abbey last week and say yes he is, and we’ve all seen The Crown and we might think we know these things, but the reality is much more nuanced.”
Alongside the humiliation of Prince Andrew, the other issue that has defined the last several years of Elizabeth’s reign has been the acrimonious departure of Harry and Meghan from the royal fold.
Queen Elizabeth II, Meghan Markle, and Prince Harry in July 2018.
Chris Jackson/GettyWas that something that made her angry?
Hardman said: “Anger isn’t her style. Of course she was terribly disappointed and saddened by it. But she is also very fond of Harry, she loves Harry, and there was a lot of dialogue. Her position throughout was that on an institutional level you cannot be half in and half out. It just doesn’t work. You just can’t have somebody who is royal for half a year and a half year is not.
“No matter how much she loved Harry, that was not going to happen. He still rings her and they chat and she is very proficient on Zoom, and she loves talking to him. There has not been a personal break there on a grandmother to grandson level.
“But when it came to the nuts and bolts of things like having a website called sussexroyal.com, which hadn’t been cleared with the official bodies there was nothing else she could do.
“These are just hard and fast rules. Harry and Meghan like to present it as the palace establishment versus poor Harry and Meghan, but you can look this stuff up, it’s not hard to find. So they did hit a fairly formidable institutional brick wall. The queen couldn’t just make an exception and allow them to set up a quasi-Royal website when they were not royal. If she did, then other people would start doing the same thing.
“Subsequently they put out a very peevish statement saying that while the British monarchy had no ‘jurisdiction’ over the word royal, they would go along with it. They were effectively dismissing the institution. That didn’t go down well, obviously. But she is very forgiving.”
Asked if the queen is likely to be aggrieved at not having met her grand daughter Lilibet, as has often been speculated, Hardman said: “There is a tendency to extrapolate and paint onto her what we assume she ‘must’ be feeling about, for example, not having seen her granddaughter. But she has seen so much, and been through so much that she won’t be lying there at night awake wishing she could see Lilibet.
“What I have tried to do is stand back, look not just at the entire reign but her entire life. That’s when you appreciate all the influences and forces that have shaped the queen we see today. Just reading her father’s war diaries—I was given access to all of them for the first time—you can see what the whole family were going through.
“Despite the stiff-upper-lip narrative we have absorbed, the family were enduring far more stresses and strains than we realized. The queen’s father was nearly killed at least twice in the war. When your parents have been divebombed in broad daylight [Buckingham Palace received multiple direct hits in the war]; when, as a teenager, you have grown up being told that a team of enemy paratroopers could be on their way to kidnap you, when you’ve woken up in middle age to find a suicidal man at the end of your bed [a Scotland Yard report said that Michael Fagan planned to slit his wrists in front of the queen]; or been shot at on parade [blank shots were fired at the queen in 1981]—then you tend to view the current challenges involving two difficult dukes in a certain perspective.
“I’m sure she would love to meet Lilibet—but she would be much more likely to take the view of, ‘I’m very lucky to see so much of my other grandchildren.’ She is an upbeat person.”
Hardman said that the influence of The Crown has led to a widespread impression that the queen finds her role “a bit of a nightmare” but said that his research suggested that is far from the truth. “She genuinely enjoys being queen. She likes this role.”
