‘Absolute hell’: Horror details of Princess of Wales’ ‘worst nightmare’
An insider has revealed the “shock” and “pain” the Prince and Princess of Wales endured when they were put through the “unthinkable”.
Kate. Formerly Middleton. For a while there, the Duchess of Cambridge (though she technically still is too). Now the Princess of Wales. Trooper. Grinner. Charmer. Rehabilitated cork wedge enthusiast.
We all think we know Kate’s story, or at least the big brushstrokes, the meaty main plot lines in the generally upbeat, plucky, everyday-gal-saves-monarchy plot line we’ve all come to know so well. Or do we?
This month, a new biography of the 42-year-old has come out, Robert Jobson’s Catherine, The Princess of Wales and it takes readers inside one of the much lesser known – and one of the most devastating – moments of her royal career and life and which saw her face her “worst nightmare”.
However, it’s an incident that most people only have the most glancing knowledge of, let alone an understanding of the serious and lasting emotional toll it took on not only her but her husband Prince William.
It’s Prince Harry who, these days, is best known for waging legal wars, but this crisis saw the now Prince and Princess of Wales launch an unprecedented six year, multi-country legal battle that only made the occasional headline.
The year was 2012. Kate and the other half of her letterhead Prince William had decided they badly needed what every Brit needs – a serious injection of sunshine and the chance to buy a decent crate of Chablis at a very good price. Handily, the prince’s second cousin, Princess Margaret’s son Viscount Linley (now Earl of Snowdon), had just the spot, his 640 acre Château d’Autet estate in Provence. Tres bien indeed.
So, off they went, William with the collected works of John Grisham and Kate with every back issue of the Peter Jones catalogue since the devaluation of the pound. And once there, the couple did what every British couple likes to do – they baked. They soaked up the Côté Sud sunshine like they were emerging from a Siberian winter and, let’s just assume for creative purposes, quaffed local rosé with appreciable gusto.
However, unbeknown to them and clearly their massive security retinue, was that local photographer Valerie Suau, who regularly worked for the local La Provence newspaper, was about one kilometre away with what I’m assuming was the sort of lens that was probably about two feet long and cannon-barrel width.
The Waleses holidayed on, unaware of the storm that was about to hit them. On September 11, they landed in Singapore to begin a nine-day Asian tour to mark the late Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Pip pip and all that.
Within days, all hell would break loose. Over breakfast on September 14 at the British High Commission where they were staying, their tans fading and all that lovely free time a thing of the past, they found out the news – photos of a nearly-nude Kate were about to be published in French tabloid magazine Closer.
The title’s website was running three images showing her taking off her bikini top with the words “Oh my God!” in English, followed by “The photos that will go around the world” in French.
There was the future Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland like the world had never, ever seen her before – topless. Wearing only bikini bottoms, the shots showed her and William sunbathing and one particularly intimate one in which he rubbed sunscreen on her back. (Maybe they did get the sun safe-ish message after all?)
In print, page after page of shots ran with the headline, “Seulement dans Closer: Kate et William, Leurs Vacances Très Hot en Provence” (“Only in Closer: Kate and William, Their Very Hot Holidays in Provence”).
While the princess “remained composed”, “once they were alone, a maelstrom of emotions must have swirled within them,” Jobson recounts in Catherine.
In private, they were “livid” and felt “violated”, a royal spokesman would later reveal and William in a later court statement would talk about how “shocking” the moment was.
To make the situation that much more painful for William was that the images had been taken within days of what was the 15th anniversary of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales’ death. Now he was having to watch his wife be tormented by the same paparazzi forces that had made his mother’s last days such a misery. William was “overcome with anger and frustration”, Jobson writes.
The prince himself, in what the Telegraph called “a damning account of the impact of the photographs on his family” would later recount that this situation was “all the more painful” for him given the resemblance of the situation to what Diana had endured, saying it had “reminded us of the harassment that led to the death of my mother”.
William and Kate were in an “unthinkable” situation, according to the palace.
As they absorbed the news from Kuala Lumpur, the couple and the press pack travelled to a rainforest in Sabah, Borneo. While the prince and princess ogled canopies and admired trees, their-then official spokesman, Miguel Head, “spoke candidly about how the couple were feeling. He did not hold back”.
“William, the aide said, felt so strongly about privacy and harassment that, if necessary, the prince would pursue a criminal prosecution against the photographers who had snooped on his wife.”
Meanwhile, “back in the UK, the royal lawyers were working tirelessly to prevent further publication of the photos”.
However, the Waleses were in a massive bind. There was no easy way to douse the flames without making it even worse.
“The couple’s worst nightmare was unfolding,” Jobson writes.
“The more they kicked back against the intrusion, the more the fascination with the photos grew.”
The prince immediately got on the horn to his father, then Prince Charles, and Her late Majesty, telling them he was about to call in the legal hounds to go after Closer.
Meanwhile, in an unedifying example of people at their very worst, Closer then had one of its best sales runs of all times, moving more copies than its usual 500,000 issue print runs.
William and Kate came down hard, launching a then unparalleled legal action in a French court, even though they knew that doing so ran the risk of taking attention away from their otherwise successful bit of Queen-and-country flag-waving.
“Their sadness has turned to anger and disbelief as we learn more about the photographs,” a royal source told the Press Association.
“This is a clear and unjustifiable, grotesque breach of privacy. If we don’t take a stand against this, then when would we make a stand?
“They feel very strongly about what’s happened in France today,” the source said.
Very strong stuff indeed for two people all but barred from expressing emotion in public. It was nearly Continent of them.
“She’s a young woman, not an object,” their French criminal barrister Aurélien Hamelle would later say of her.
While the French court banned further publication of the shots, despite the best work of what you would have to imagine would have been the best forces money can buy, the ruling had no wider application, and the pictures would go on to be splashed all over a series of European titles including in the Irish edition of the British tabloid the Daily Star and titles in Denmark and Sweden while Italian Chi which put out – get this – a 26-page supplement. (Fleet Street decided to do the right thing and restrained themselves and just did lots of high-and-mighty moralising with the Daily Mail running a piece pointing out that the photographer’s surname was pronounced “sewer”).
The next year, French authorities would launch formal investigations into the magazine’s publisher and others involved. It would be six long years before the final appeal was concluded, with Kate ultimately awarded $193,000 in damages.
The appalling thing here is that Kate was not the first frontline female member of the royal family to have to endure this. In 1999, immediately before her wedding to Prince Edward, topless photos of Sophie Rhys-Jones (now the Duchess of Edinburgh) were slapped on the front page of The Sun.
“I remember Sophie ringing me in the early hours of the morning, in floods of tears, when she discovered that The Sun had bought the picture and was planning to publish it,” her former business partner Murray Harkin would later say.
“She was so upset.”
Imagine how Kate must have felt in that moment nearly 12 years ago this weekend, her eggs congealing on her plate, having just started her royal life, as the couple began to appreciate the enormity of what was happening to them. Of the absolute hell that was about to break loose.
But let’s end on a nicer note. It’s, to plagiarise that palace spokesperson from 2012, “unthinkable” that something like this would happen again. If similar shots ever surfaced, the outcry would be so unbelievably deafening and cacophonous and united that the government would have to start handing out earmuffs.
It was, in hindsight, a baptism of fire for the princess who is obviously currently battling cancer. And the Earl of Snowdon? He still owns that Château.
Somehow I don’t think that William and Kate have ever gone back and now just get their Chablis delivered.
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
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