King, Queen unveil separate portraits after brutal rumours circulate
Stunning new royal photos have been released after a shocking series of sex and money scandals embroiled one of Europe’s oldest monarchies.
Royals
Don't miss out on the headlines from Royals. Followed categories will be added to My News.
It’s one of those clips that permanently seems to be bubbling around on X: The late Queen delivering a Bracknell-worthy set down to photographer Annie Leibovitz during a shoot at Buckingham Palace in 2007.
So oh, to have been a fly on the wall when Leibovitz shot Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia this year.
The portrait diptyque was recently unveiled amid much fanfare and reliably forelock-tugging gasping: The couple look powerful, formidable, regal – just the sort of strong emotions you want to engender if you’re hoping to beef-up paternalistic feeling around monarchy.
But the shots hide the truth – that the House of Bourbon has had a devastating few years that have involved former King Juan Carlos fleeing his country, $153 million in alleged bribes, a dead elephant, police investigations in two countries, a Queen and a princess’ spat caught on camera, the alleged involvement of the Spanish secret service in spying on a royal mistress and the allegation that when Letizia wed her prince in 2004, she was also entangled in a long term affair – with the man who would become her sister’s husband.
Telenovelas don’t have a patch on this.
At the heart of this story is the former King, Juan Carlos, who was largely adored by his countrymen and women for having helped wrest Spain out of the grip of decades of fascism back in the 70s.
A smoothie and man who owns many a double-breasted 80s power suit, Juan Carlos’ alleged inability to keep his zipper zipped and his questionable business wheeling and dealing long lent him a certain louche air. (Diana, Princess of Wales who regularly holidayed with King Charles and their sons with the Spanish royal family, described him as “charming but a little too attentive”).
Then came the events of 2012 and the beginning of the end.
That year, he broke his hip while on a hunting trip in Botswana, which saw him having to be flown home for surgery, at which point all hell broke loose.
That the King had gone off on an expensive holiday to hunt animals while his home country was still suffering greatly through the hardships of the GFC went down like a cold plate of congealed tapas, forcing him to make a rare public apology.
However, this was only the beginning, because Juan Carlos’ infamous trip also outed something else – that also on the trip was much younger Danish businesswoman Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a woman who was very clearly not his longtime – and long suffering – wife, Queen Sofia.
The King’s reputation was so tarnished that by 2014, things were close to breaking point.
Juan Carlos did the only sensible thing he could do – he handed the baton over to his son and got the heck out of Madrid to sun his leathery hindquarters in Mallorca.
The coronation of King Felipe and Queen Letizia was meant to draw a line under all of the disastrous PR and mucky claims and signal the advent of a new regal broom.
That plan failed, spectacularly.
In 2018, a voice recording was published in the Spanish press featuring a female talking about Juan Carlos, saying: “How does he get money? He takes a plane, goes to Arab countries … And he returns with the cash in suitcases – sometimes with five million. He has a machine to count it – I’ve seen it with my own eyes”.
In 2019, Juan Carlos was stripped of his official stipend and lost his remaining institutional roles before, shockingly, disappearing from Spain in 2020, his location unknown, after the country’s supreme court announced it had launched an investigation. No action has been taken.
Several weeks later, he was located in Abu Dhabi, where he has lived ever since.
Swiss prosecutors were also circling over claims of an alleged $US100 million ($153 million) payment made to King Juan Carlos over a high-speed train project in Saudi Arabia. However, the criminal prosecution, according to the Times, “failed to prove a link between the rail contract and the sum paid to Juan Carlos”.
Ultimately, he would not be charged, but his legal woes didn’t end there.
Remember Juan Carlos’ alleged former squeeze, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein? She has claimed that after the Botswana trip, Juan Carlos transferred her about $105 million left over from that Saudi payment, after which she says her Monte Carlo home was ransacked and that she was visited by Spain’s secret service.
She later tried and failed to mount a legal case against Juan Carlos, who has “emphatically” denied the claims of a campaign of harassment against her.
However, all the while, a bigger story was brewing concerning Felipe and Letizia’s supposedly fairytale romance – the glam newsreader who had met her prince while covering an oil spill only for him to whisk her off to his palace – allegedly coming unstuck.
Last December, a tell-all book by journalist Jaime Peñafiel alleged that Queen Letizia had had a secret affair with Jaime del Burgo – who went on to marry Letizia’s sister Telma Ortiz in 2012, although they later divorced.
The Spanish royal house largely remained silent, with a spokesperson telling the Daily Mail earlier this year: “We have no comment to make about this”.
Meanwhile, we barely have time for the other scandals, like Felipe’s former brother-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin (the former husband of his sister Princess Cristina) serving years of prison time for embezzlement.
Or that time in 2018 when the media caught Queen Sofia and Queen Letizia sharing very tense words outside the cathedral in Palma, Mallorca, after an Easter service.
However, there has been a slight turning of the tide in public feeling towards Felipe and Letizia after they visited the disaster-hit Valencia region where catastrophic flooding claimed more than 200 lives.
While the couple, and politicians, were booed and pelted with eggs, their decision to stay, unlike the prime minister who fled, and face the angry crowds was largely hailed. Several weeks later, Felipe and Letizia returned to the area, embracing locals and pledging to “suffer with and support” the community.
The glowing reception the new Leibovitz portraits have gotten is another glimmer of good PR for the House of Bourbon.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the newly unveiled shots of the King and Queen is that seen together, they make for a powerful duo – but the pictures can also always be shown separately too.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
Originally published as King, Queen unveil separate portraits after brutal rumours circulate
How Meghan’s shocker of a year played out
She is the ultimate survivor, able to bounce back from most reputational disasters. But 2024 could well go down as the year Meghan Markle will want to forget.
Radiant royals attend Christmas Day celebrations
More than 40 royal family members attended traditional Christmas Day celebrations after a challenging 12 months, with one notable absence. See the photos.