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The never-ending saga over the tiara
Whatever else, Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family confirms that no one does camp like the royal family. We are entering the second week of the saga of Meghan Markle’s wedding day tiara.
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The Mail on Sunday reports that the queen reportedly reprimanded Prince Harry for his “offensive language” after he “flew into a rage when the queen’s dressmaker and confidante Angela Kelly was unable to meet Meghan Markle’s sudden demand to visit Buckingham Palace with her hairdresser to try on the Queen Mary bandeau that the couple had chosen for their wedding.”
The saga of Meghan’s wedding tiara—a diamond center-stone adorned filigree tiara, borrowed from the queen and originally made for Queen Mary, the Princess of Teck—was raised initially in Finding Freedom to underline that Meghan and the queen didn’t have a beef with each other over the headpiece.
It was, the book claims, Kelly who “dragged her feet” over getting things ready in advance of a pre-wedding “hair trial.”
Then the Mail reported the queen had denied Meghan her choice of tiara.
Now, the palace has struck back, saying the storm blew up when Harry demanded access to the tiara. He was reportedly told that an appointment needed to be made to see the queen’s jewels—which seems extremely plausible, she has a lot, and they’re jolly expensive—upon which Harry was rude about Kelly, while demanding she be asked to come to London LIKE NOW and “unlock the cupboard” where the tiara was kept.
Remember all this when any member of the royal family tries to make out they’re just like the rest of us. This is still an institution where demands and confrontations around tiaras are a completely normal thing. (Also, the tiara is kept in a cupboard? Excellent!)
Kelly reportedly heard about Harry’s blow-up, told the queen, who summoned Harry. “He was put firmly in his place,” a Royal source told the Mail on Sunday. “He had been downright rude.”
A friend of the couple said: “Meg had flown her hairdresser over from Paris for a hair practice and they needed the tiara. Angela Kelly said she couldn’t come to London and Harry went ballistic. He was furious at the treatment of his then fiancée. Such a snub.”
One palace source said that was B.S. “Meghan demanded access to the tiara. She didn’t make an appointment with Angela, but said, ‘We’re at Buckingham Palace, we want the tiara. Can we have it now please?’
“Angela essentially said, ‘I’m very sorry, that’s not how it works.’ There’s protocol in place over these jewels. They’re kept under very tight lock and key. You can’t turn up and demand to have the tiara just because your hairdresser happens to be in town.”
Please let this not be an end to the saga over the tiara.
Meghan’s dad has “given up on Meghan and Harry completely”
In an exclusive interview with Britain’s Daily Mirror, Meghan’s half-brother Tom Markle Jr., who speaks to their father every day, told the paper: “As far as a reunion goes, he’s given up on Meghan and Harry completely. He doesn’t trust her and doesn’t want to know that person because of the lies, manipulation, and deceit. He just had his 76th birthday—needless to say, he didn’t hear from Meghan.”
Markle Sr. is set to give evidence against his daughter in her case against Associated Newspapers. Meghan is suing the paper for breach of copyright, invasion of privacy, and contravention of her data rights after it published extracts of a letter she had written to her dad.
Some of the most dramatic material in Finding Freedom focuses on Meghan desperately trying to get Thomas Markle to the U.K. for her wedding, even after it was revealed he had colluded with paparazzi photographers after his heart attack. Alleged text messages and phone calls are reported word for word by authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.
The Mirror reports that Markle Sr. denied the book’s claims he ignored the texts and emails.
Tom Jr. said: “It says Harry spoke to our dad to say if he’d listened to him, Harry, there wouldn’t have been any problems. That just did not happen. All these hundreds of texts and calls Meghan sent my dad ahead of the wedding? Our father wasn’t even at his house. He was in hospital. His phone was switched off. That’s why he didn’t answer, there’s no way he could have.
“Our dad actually called her scores of times ahead of the wedding after he made the mistake of doing those pics, but he was ignored. The Palace told Meghan and Harry to send help for my father so he could deal with the Press but they refused. Meghan herself said no.”
Markle Sr. plans to spend his retirement traveling, and also seems to threaten legal action against Harry and Meghan, according to his son. “He will fight and pursue the avenues needed to see Archie. They’re not the only ones who can launch a court case. He’d love to hold that little boy one time.”
Harry and Meghan can subpoena photo agencies
The swirling scandals around the extracts from Finding Freedom may have diverted attention from developments in two of Harry and Meghan’s ongoing legal battles against the media.
Meghan agreed to pay costs resulting from losing the first round of her legal battle with Associated Newspapers, but then—at the end of the week—a California judge granted Harry and Meghan’s request to serve subpoenas on three Los Angeles photo agencies that could be handling photos of baby Archie, the Daily Mail reports.
The couple recently filed an invasion of privacy complaint in L.A. County Superior Court against unnamed paparazzi photographers who have allegedly been flying drones and helicopters over Hollywood producer Tyler Perry’s $18 million Beverly Hills mansion where Prince Harry and Meghan have been living since March. The subpoenas are intended to uncover the pictures, whoever took them, and to stop them from being sold and published.
“This is a race against the clock because there is a significant risk these illegally-taken photos could be published in the United States or United Kingdom any day,” Harry and Meghan’s attorney, Michael Kump, said in a written declaration to Judge Craig Karlan. Harry and Meghan also claim that the pictures are incorrectly captioned—saying they were not, as captioned, taken in public.
“In fact, Archie has not been in public since the family arrived here,” said Kump. “This is not an innocent mistake, but an intentional attempt to evade liability (under a local statute that restricts taking photos on private property).”
As The Daily Beast reported, the royal couple launched the lawsuit because of “serial intrusions on the privacy of a 14-month-old child in his own home, and the desire and responsibility of any parent to do what is necessary to protect their children from this manufactured feeding frenzy,” the complaint reads.
The Daily Beast was the first publication to report in May that Harry and Meghan had reported multiple drone incidents to the LAPD. A source told us that the couple had been coping with “unimaginable” levels of press intrusion at their temporary new home.
The lawsuit claims that “some media outlets have flown drones a mere 20 feet above the house as often as three times a day.” Helicopters have been spotted hovering above the property throughout the day, and damage has allegedly been done to the property’s fencing.
Kump writes in the complaint, “The Plaintiffs have done everything in their power to stay out of the limelight except in connection with their work, which they freely admit is newsworthy. But the photos at issue are not news. They are not public interest. They are harassment. The sole point to taking and/or selling such invasive photos is to profit from a child.”
The couple currently has ongoing legal cases against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Mail on Sunday, and in the past year have also launched high-profile actions against the Sun and Daily Mirror, in relation to historic accusations of phone hacking.
Balmoral COVID quarantine “like Colditz”
Always bear in mind that while the queen is extremely posh and extremely rich, like lots of posh older Brits, she reportedly lives in some determinedly modest ways. It’s how tiaras end up in cupboards.
A team of servants who have gone to Balmoral, the queen’s Scottish holiday home, to prepare it for Her Maj and Prince Philip say that the living conditions are like a “Colditz prison camp.” The servants, currently in a two-week quarantine, have been banned from socializing and from going to the shops. An insider told the Sun the royal aides were staying in the New Block, “a dull granite building with a dozen bedrooms outside near the castle.”
The insider added: “Without all the normal facilities which make a stay pleasant for staff, everyone’s saying it’s like being in Colditz, the prisoner of war camp. It’s the assignment from hell because there is absolutely nothing people can do. The social club remains shut and the staff bar closed. With so little to do they’re going stir-crazy.”
The queen and Philip are expected imminently, and will stay at the castle for 12 weeks.
Harry: “Build back better”
Prince Harry broke cover after all the revelations from Finding Freedom to tell the travel industry that it needs to “build back better” in the wake of coronavirus.
Harry was talking—virtually—to the Global Summit of his key environmental tourism initiative, Travalyst. Harry said, change “is needed now more than ever.” William, Kate, the queen and Charles can rest easy: He was talking about travel.
“None of us could have predicted the global shock and impact that COVID-19 is having on the world—especially on travel and the local communities that depend on tourism,” Harry said. “Many of you joining us today rely on visitors for your livelihoods—businesses are hurting significantly. I’ve heard from some of you that are struggling to put food on your family's tables and to make ends meet—because there are no tourists and therefore no income. We need to build back, but we need to build back better.”
Will and Kate’s break
Earlier in the week their “friends” struck back against allegations they’d been mean to Harry and Meghan, as per a significant chunk of Finding Freedom. This week, William and Kate returned to a favored holiday destination, Tresco, in the Isles of Scilly, which are just off the south west coast of England—a spot Charles and Diana took William and Harry in 1989 when they were boys.
Kate and William took their three kids on the break, and said hello to locals as they cycled around. One bystander told the Daily Mirror: “William and Kate were riding their bicycles, having a laugh. They looked so happy enjoying the weather. I did do a double take. They were really friendly and said hello.”
A source told the paper: “They decided on a quick getaway before the children return to school. They were keen to support our travel industry.”
William and Kate returned to Norfolk in time for William to host an outdoor screening of yesterday’s FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Chelsea in the grounds of Sandringham House, as reported by the Telegraph.
The event was held to raise the profile of his Heads Up mental health campaign. William spoke of his relief that his favorite team, Aston Villa, had escaped relegation from the English Premiership.
“The nerves were the worst I’ve ever known them,” he said of watching their recent critical match against West Ham. “My children looked at me in horror as I was jumping off the sofa, screaming my head off. It’s very good news that as president of the FA that I can hide away until these moments, and I’m not visibly seen because it was one of the most stressful moments of my life, as I imagine every Villa fan felt on that day.”
This week in royal history
Happy birthday Meghan Markle! She turns 39 on August 4, and while we don’t know what she is doing for her birthday, an extremely close friend or spookily intimate source will probably enlighten us pretty soon.
Unanswered questions
Will the saga over the tiara ever end? Will Harry and Meghan find the drone pictures of Archie? Princess Anne emerged yet again as a reticent royal superstar when she showed her mom, the queen, how to use Zoom. Can we have more Princess Anne, please?
