‘Dysfunctional’: Royals hit by new claim from family friend
A friend of the royal family has revealed the brutal truth about what it’s really like inside the world’s most gripping soapie.
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Famed novelist Douglas Coupland wrote a book called All Families Are Psychotic, a title I think of regularly when I sit down at my keyboard.
When it comes to the House of Windsor and the particular family which gathers on the Buckingham Palace balcony a few times a year to diplomatically wave and not fall off, well, they might not be “psychotic” – but totally and utterly stuffed up? God, yes.
Now, a guest at Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2018 wedding has popped up to offer a stinging assessment of King Charles and his cadre of relations, labelling them, in a case of stunning understatement, “dysfunctional” and reopening a can of worms.
Former professional footballer James Haskell co-hosts The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast alongside the King’s nephew Mike Tindall and, overall, Haskell is no stranger to royal circles.
He made the invite list for not only the Sussexes and the Tindalls’ weddings (Mike is married to Zara Tindall, the daughter of Princess Anne), and last year recorded an episode of their hit show at Windsor Castle with guests Princess Anne and Prince William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales. (Revelations included the Waleses have played beer pong and the princess loves wild swimming, “the colder the better”).
HRHs? Haskell has known and chatted and mingled and hung out with a few. The man has first-hand knowledge here that can’t be gleaned by close reading of Heat.
Speaking to the Times this week, Haskell said: “I’ve spent time with the royals. Some aren’t as great as others. They do amazing work – but they’re also a modern family that’s very dysfunctional”.
Which is to say, “dysfunctional”? Gee, you think?
In only a few short weeks, we will hit the five-year anniversary of Megxit, a rupture in the royal space/time continuum that remains egregiously tattered and flapping and that “dysfunction” is never about to become more obvious.
With the Sussexes facing down career crunch time in 2025 and the King closing in on a year of cancer treatment, how much longer can this miserable state of relationship affairs hold?
How much longer can both Harry and Meghan and Crown Inc hobble along?
For the duke and duchess, their drooping American fortunes raise the issue of whether they might be left with no choice but to attempt to repair things.
Earlier this year, The Sun reported that Netflix is “unlikely” to renew their five year deal, hardly a shocker given their only bang-up hit has so far been their six part royal gut-spilling talk-a-thon.
They might be done with those sort of “vital ‘look back’ projects”, as their spokesperson said in early 2023, but the sticking point in this logic is, what exactly do they have to offer deep-pocketed entertainment powerhouses other than their royal status?
Having been long exiled from the royal orbit – in fact, they are so far in outer space they are nearly in Pluto’s orbit – their saleable value has taken a stonking great hit.
There is a strong argument that the Sussexes might need to find a way to be in some very minor way welcomed, even marginally, back into the royal family so they maintain some scotch of relevancy.
The irony is, the case can also be made that the Palace also finds itself in increasing need of the Sussexes.
The State visit next week of the Emir of Qatar will serve as a handy reminder of how thin on the ground working members of the royal family are with only the King, Queen and William guaranteed title attendees. Padding things out with dependable sorts like Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester (the late Queen’s cousin) will hardly move the dial.
The royal lustre might never look more lacking. Talk about pale, male and frail.
Former Vanity Fair editor and royal biographer Tina Brown (who also happened to be friends with Diana, Princess of Wales) recently declared, “there is still a gaping Harry-shaped hole in the depleted royal line-up”.
Writing in her Fresh Hell Substack, Brown mused: “The British nation needs [Harry’s] human touch and so does his ailing father”.
“William, whatever his abiding resentments toward Harry for his intemperate broadsides in Spare, should now suck it up and let his father give Harry something to do,” she said.
Brown also very interestingly revealed that a path back into the royal good (or at least, not horrendously bad) books for the duke could be emerging.
She writes that, according to “an intimate royal source”, the duke’s noirest of bêtes and “an avowed Harry enemy”, Sir Clive Alderton, the highly powerful and longtime private secretary and “gatekeeper” to the King, is “considering retirement”.
Per The Diana Chronicles author: “The royals are run, to a degree the public doesn’t often realise, by their private secretaries, able to block and tackle the access of people on their personal s**t lists”.
“If Alderton goes, it could create a new, friendlier path for negotiations with Harry to be given the security protection he seeks and to resume some curtailed version of his royal duties. It could also represent a great face-saver for Meghan who must realise by now that the dull demands of second-division royalty are less onerous than grinding out serial rebranding flops.”
Even with Alderton gone, that does not solve the trust part of the equation or make up for the Sussexes’ wholesale traducing of the royal family’s privacy for years and accepting wodges of cash in return for airing out their trauma on TV screens.
Or as Haskell put it, they are all a “very dysfunctional” lot.
To which I would add, very, very and very. Can they refunction themselves? Stitch together the breach? Do some mending of emotions?
If there is one thing that 2024 has taught us it’s never say never.
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 ‘Dysfunctional’: Royals hit by new claim from family friend
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