One thing royals don’t want Prince Harry to talk about
With the Duke of Sussex set to release his memoir this year, there are already fears that he could be forced to open up about Prince Andrew’s fall from grace.
Take a wander through the history books and there is one abundantly clear fact: It’s always the spares. It is always the spares who have been the troublemakers, rabblerousers, headaches and black sheep of the British royal family.
The reign of poor old Queen Elizabeth II has sadly been no different. First she had to contend with younger sister Princess Margaret who notched up a scandalous relationship with a divorced, older man, the first royal divorce in 400 years and then a lengthy affair with a gardener 17 years her junior.
Then came her second son Prince Andrew, who took the gig as British trade ambassador, forced his valet to travel the world lugging HRH’s approved ironing board, showed disturbing willingness to cosy up to a who’s who of autocrats and kleptocrats and later spent days staying at the house of a convicted sex offender.
Last, and clearly not least, we get to Her Majesty’s grandson Prince Harry who in barely two years has done more to undermine, purposefully or not, the British crown than Oliver Cromwell could ever have dreamt of, and all without a single beheading.
But if you thought things had been bad of late for Her Majesty, having been forced to deal with one deeply embarrassing spare-induced crisis after another, then the news could be about to get even worse.
A new report this week has raised the possibility that Harry could face a grilling about his disgraced uncle when he hits the publicity trail to spruik his autobiography later this year.
Harry’s thoughts about the Duke of York are one of the very few subjects which he and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, have sagely steered clear of in the last year.
In a relatively scant 12 months, the Sussexes have taken aim at Buckingham Palace over everything from institutional racism, to cruelty, money, titles, and the calibre of royal parenting, along the way managing to get off a series of legal jabs against the British media and take on the UK’s Home Office in court.
Still, despite all this and the Zoom calls, conference appearances, TV interviews, podcast outings, and awards shows they have taken part in, they have managed to not once comment on Andrew. Truly remarkable stuff.
They managed to maintain this omerta during the same period of time that Virginia Giuffre sued Andrew in a civil court in New York, accusing him of having sexually assaulted her on three occasions when she was a teenager. (Andrew has always strenuously denied the allegations.)
Last month, the two sides settled with the royal agreeing to pay the now Perth-based mother-of-three a settlement, which the Telegraph reports is around $21.5 million, including a donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity.
Breaking with their voluble MO, the Duke and Duchess have somehow demonstrated a very sensible level of self-censorship throughout this sordid Andrew chapter.
That’s the smartest move the couple, who are generally publicity heat-seeking missiles, could make here. None of the family has commented on the case, aside from Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York who will seemingly go on any Polish regional TV station or Italian chat show to protest his innocence. Nor has Andrew ever been charged with a crime or has there ever been any suggestion he might be.
But will the Sussexes’ lips remain zipped even when a certain Duke has a memoir to complete and vigorously plug?
Later this year, the 36-year-old will publish his as-yet-untitled work, for which he was paid a reported $27 million. Given the money involved, it’s hardly a leap to assume that Penguin Random House will want some serious bang for their truckload of bucks.
First, there is the question of just what Harry might have been busy scribbling in his ‘My First Memoir’ notebook. Having already spilt the beans about royal racism and cruelty, might he be forced to delve into the Andrew situation to guarantee a few bombshell revelations and to generate enough publicity juice?
Secondly, there is the fact that Harry will have to do the media rounds to dutifully flog his tell-all.
This week, the Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey, who broke the news that Harry was dating Meghan way back in 2016, has reported that there are already concerns about how this might all play out. She wrote that there are “fears Harry may face media questions about ‘uncle Andrew’ when he promotes his autobiography”.
She says that an insider from the New York PR firm Sunshine Sachs, which has advised Meghan for years, has told her that there is “concern” that Andrew’s recent settlement could “interfere with media promotion” for Harry’s page-turner.
It’s a completely legitimate concern given that one defrocked HRH is being paid a fortune to write a tell-all in the same year that another defrocked HRH has been mired in the grubbiest scandal in royal history.
Even if Harry chooses to skip over getting into the Andrew/Jeffrey Epstein/Virginia Giuffre situation, the journalists who will be interviewing him when he promotes the book won’t have any such reticence – and any credible outlet worth their dusty Pulitzers will ask him about Andrew.
Speaking to the Mirror last month, a friend of Harry’s warned: “Just wait for the book to come out because that will shake the monarchy to the core.”
It is not only his uncle who could be undone by Harry’s autobiography.
The Sun has previously reported that Charles had told aides he was fretting that the book would be an “excoriating take-down” of his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.
“There are concerns about Harry’s recollections of Camilla’s entry into the royal family, and how her long-running romance with Charles damaged him from a young age,” a source has said.
“Harry is fiercely loyal and protective of his late mother and her legacy, and didn’t approve of Camilla sweeping in as the great love of his father’s life.
“Understandably he found those early years incredibly difficult, and he might publicly blame Camilla for much of what he believes went wrong in his childhood, and the trauma the whole situation caused.”
Royal biographer Angela Levin, who spent a year accompanying Harry on royal duties for her 2018 book all about him, has said during a radio interview: “Anyone who is anyone is saying [the book is] going to attack Camilla and make her responsible for [his] mental health and how she stole his father from his mother.”
Is it any surprise then that photos from audiences at Windsor Castle from February and also this month show that the Queen keeps an enormous box of $395 Fortnum & Mason milk and dark chocolates in her sitting room?
Having last year given up her nightly martini in the name of health, maybe she just needs a delicious, sugary treat to cheer herself up?
Sadly, the way things are going, she is only going to need more pricey boxes of sweets this year. Many, many more boxes.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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