If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday.
Queen’s first cousin reportedly boasts about closeness with Putin—and a sweet deal
Prince Michael of Kent reportedly has been trading on both his royal status and his access to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In an investigation published today by the U.K. Sunday Times, Prince Michael and his adviser boasted to undercover reporters of his connections to Putin and the “Putinistas” around him at the Kremlin.
ADVERTISEMENT
The report not only invites damning questions about how Prince Michael, the queen’s first cousin, is trading off his royal connections, but also around his intimacy with the leader of a nation who, as the Sunday Times puts it, is “regarded as the No 1 threat to Britain’s national security.”
Prince Michael’s close friend and business associate, the Marquess of Reading, told the reporters that Prince Michael was “Her Majesty’s unofficial ambassador to Russia,” and was able to meet with Putin.
The undercover reporters—working with British TV station Channel 4 for a documentary to be shown on Monday about how royals sell access to the monarchy—said they were representing a South Korean firm which was seeking contacts at the Kremlin.
As the plans advanced, the marquess told the undercover reporters that the prince’s four or five-day trip to Russia would cost around $70,000, adding: “If he’s with Putin and five or six other Putin ministers, Putin will be able to say, ‘Right, well, that’s the guy who you need to work with’. And that’s the key, really . . . as long as you get authority from the top, you can get virtually anything done in Russia.”
“This is kind of slightly discreet,” he told the reporters. “We’re talking relatively discreetly here, because we wouldn’t want the world to know that he is seeing Putin purely for business reasons, if you follow me.”
The prince told the reporters his connection “could bring some benefit,” and noted how Putin had “bestowed on him the Order of Friendship, one of the Kremlin’s most prestigious awards.”
Prince Michael’s private secretary told the undercover reporters that the royal could “certainly help” in introducing them to top Russian officials. “Even if he doesn’t have direct contact to the person that you want, there is a way in. There is always a way in.”
“The prince’s ‘confidential’ access to the Kremlin, the marquess said, “had remained intact despite the numerous outrages committed by Putin’s regime,” the Sunday Times reported. The newspaper’s report includes video of the meetings between the prince, marquess, and the reporters.
Prince Michael is also a first cousin twice removed of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, to whom—as the Sunday Times notes—he bears a startling resemblance.
The prince—whose wife Princess Michael has long been dubbed “Princess Pushy” by the British tabloids—agreed to mention being a royal in a speech to launch the reporters’ fake company, and even film the speech at Kensington Palace.
In a statement to the Sunday Times, Prince Michael’s office wrote: “Prince Michael has no special relationship with President Putin. They last met in 2003 and he has had no contact with him or his office since then. Lord Reading is a good friend, who made suggestions which Prince Michael would not have wanted, or been able, to fulfill. As is standard practice, Prince Michael’s private secretary made it clear to the company’s representatives during their conversations that nothing could proceed without the agreement of the British embassy and the help of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce.”
The marquess said: “I made a mistake and overpromised and for that, I am truly regretful.”
Princess Michael was forced to apologize after wearing a racist blackamoor brooch in 2017, a spokesperson later saying the princess was “very sorry and distressed that it has caused offense.” The princess wore the brooch at a Christmas banquet at Buckingham Palace where Meghan Markle was a guest.
Prince Michael is not the first royal to be caught in a scandal around the leveraging of royal position for profit. In 2010, Sarah Ferguson was exposed, again by an undercover reporter, trying to sell access to ex-husband Prince Andrew for half a million pounds (then around $720,000).
In 2001, long before she became one of the queen’s favorite royals, Sophie, Duchess of Wessex, Prince Edward’s wife, was caught up in another taped tabloid scandal—she was heard bitching about figures like then-prime minister Tony Blair, and her then-business partner intimated that he could get Sophie and Edward to endorse commercial deals.
Harry will attend Diana statue unveiling—and make separate speech: report
Prince Harry will attend the unveiling of a statue dedicated to Princess Diana, but he and Prince William will give separate speeches at the event. For the Sun on Sunday, this illustrates the “rift” between the brothers, rather than, say, two adult men having two different things to say on what is likely to be a personally momentous and emotional occasion.
The statue is set to be unveiled at Kensington Palace on what would have been Diana’s 60th birthday on July 1. There had been some doubt, given the state of fractured royal relations, over whether Harry would return to the U.K. for the unveiling.
A source told the Sun on Sunday: “They will both move heaven and earth to be there. They commissioned the statue together. It is very important for them. There is, of course, hope the memory of Diana can repair their relationship but that seems a long way off right now. The brothers will be physically together for the ceremony but want to make their own personal addresses. You might have thought they’d go for a joint statement and speech but that’s not the case. Each has insisted on preparing their own. It is a big concern that their body language will suggest all is not well and they won’t present a united front.”
Actually, on the body language front, the brothers have appeared relatively on message. After Prince Philip’s funeral, they were seen having an apparently friendly chat—only for the media to briefed afterwards that relations remained scratchy between the brothers, and between Harry and dad Prince Charles, after the allegations contained in Harry and Meghan’s bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview and apparent briefing the media of family conversations afterwards.
Meghan: Vaccine equity means world “can fully rebuild”
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry used son Archie’s birthday earlier this week as an opportunity to make a passionate call for vaccine equity, and ensuring the poorest in the world had access to the life-saving medications.
Now, in her first TV appearance since their headline-generating Oprah interview, to address the Vax Live concert, the Sun on Sunday reports Meghan saying: “My husband and I are thrilled to soon be welcoming a daughter. It’s a feeling of joy we share with millions of other families around the world. When we think of her, we think of all the young women and girls around the globe who must be given the ability and the support to lead us forward.
“Their future leadership depends on the decisions we make and the actions we take now to set them up, and set all of us up, for a successful, equitable, and compassionate tomorrow... We want to make sure that as we recover, we recover stronger. That as we rebuild, we rebuild together.”
The world, said Meghan, was at an “inflection point for gender equity” and “women, and especially women of color, have seen a generation of economic gain wiped out. But if we work together to bring vaccines to every country and continent, insist that vaccines are equitably distributed and fairly priced, and ensure that governments around the world are donating their additional vaccines to countries in need, then we can begin to fully rebuild. Not only to restore us to where we were before, but to go further, and rapidly advance the conditions, opportunity, and mobility for women everywhere.”
Harry and William have been arguing “for a year and a half”
Prince Harry and Prince William have been arguing for the past year and a half, according to Tom Bradby, the ITV news anchor and presenter who once asked Meghan Markle if she was OK. Her reply: “Thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I am OK.”
That 2019 interview, in which Harry also talked about his and William’s difficult relationship, was followed by the revelations of more discontent and upset in Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family, and then by the Oprah interview with its allegations of racism (by an unnamed member of the royal family) and Meghan claiming she was ignored when she talked about contemplating suicide.
Asked by The Times of London if his stress levels had peaked with the Harry and Meghan interview and interest in it, Bradby replied: “Well, it used to be quite a straightforward thing, right, because they weren’t arguing and life was simple. And then it just slowly descended into something that was difficult—personally and publicly—really over the past year and a half.”
He said he felt "a little bit caught in the middle" of the brothers with the 2019 film, which had followed Harry and Meghan to Africa. He also talked about suffering a nervous collapse himself—and how the experience of that had led him to ask Meghan how she was feeling. “I was jogging along in life and I fell off a cliff,” Bradby said, adding that he was “clearly influenced by my own experience and I didn’t think they were in great shape, and so I altered the way I was planning to do the documentary. I don’t regret doing that. There may be other times in the future in a whole range of subjects that I will alter my approach if I sense something similar.”
Bradby also told the Times he had not, as had been rumored, negotiated Harry and Meghan’s interview with Winfrey.
This week in royal history
Happy birthday Zara Tindall! Princess Anne’s daughter turns 40 on Saturday (May 15). Last Sunday, Zara was seen with her third child, Lucas Philip, in public for the first time at the Cirencester Park International Horse Trials. He was born on March 21, his dad Mike Tindall later revealing later that they had no time to get to the hospital, and that Zara had given birth on the bathroom floor of their home.
Unanswered questions
How will the royal family respond to the latest scandal involving one of its members reportedly trading off its prestige—and what is Prince Michael of Kent’s exact relationship with Putin?
What will happen when Peter Phillips, Princess Anne’s son, and his estranged wife Autumn, appear at the High Court this coming week to agree a financial settlement following the end of their marriage? The Daily Telegraph reports that Phillips has asked that reporting restrictions be applied in the case to prevent his personal and financial details from being made public.
