Secret King Charles and Prince William conflict laid bare
The King and his eldest son seem to be taking different positions on three vital issues - and trouble really is brewing.
COMMENT
King Charles has problems right now. For example, what does the spoon do?
Over the weekend, Buckingham Palace took a break from rounds of hot cross buns with serious lashings of Duchy of Cornwall butter to reveal a slew of details about His Majesty’s upcoming coronation including what priceless baubles and regal tchotchkes will feature. On the list: A medieval spoon. Problem is, historians have no idea what part this bit of gold cutlery, which dates back to at least 1349, is meant to play.
However what should be causing the King even more angst than the great spoon mystery is his son, with signs suggesting the pair might be increasingly at loggerheads.
No, I don’t mean Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, aka the world’s oldest recorded tantrum-thrower, but the other one.
Up until now, Charles and his eldest boy Prince William have largely been reported to be very much simpatico when it came to the handling of the various PR crises and publicity squalls that have hit the Palace in recent years. They were, by all accounts, two peas in a bespoke Savile Row pod, men intent on doing their darnedest to preserve the monarchy and then still make it home in time for afternoon tea.
In fact, there have even been reports that the pair joining forces to try, and not exactly succeeding, at getting a handle on the Great Sussex Tempest has even brought father and son closer together. Aww. Silver linings and all that.
Except, have things now taken a turn for the far less chummy between Charles and William?
Let’s look at the evidence.
Exhibit A) came on Sunday, UK time, when the royal family descended on Windsor to do what they do best: Go To Things. This time, it was the Easter service at St George’s Chapel, Charles’ first such outing as King and as the head of the Church of England.
It would have been a stock standard, bread-and-butter Windsor engagements, big smiles, hats that cost the same as a second hand Kia and Prince Louis looking like he was plotting some form of mutiny, if not for the fact that right smack dab in the middle of the group was Prince Andrew.
Let it be known that one of recurring challenges of what I do is finding new and varied ways to describe the repellent Duke of York. I’m hardly alone in my vehemence here: 84 per cent of Brits, as of the most recent polling, have an unfavourable view of the world’s most famous pal of a paedophile. (That’s close to a record high for him!)
And yet despite the strength of public feeling towards him, there was Andrew chatting to Princess Anne (‘And that’s why you want to have your money in the Cayman Islands sis … What do you mean you just bury it all in a hayloft?!’), the duo very conspicuously behind Charles and Camilla.
While the King had clearly acquiesced to the Duke of Yorking being a part of things, it was painfully clear that William wanted nothing to do with his uncle.
Instead of William, his wife Kate, the Princess of Wales and their trio of nearly starched and ironed children taking their place towards the front of the pack of HRHs and Windsor cousins, they stayed at the very back of the group, as far away from Andrew as possible without being in another postcode.
As shots of Charles, with Andrew prominently right behind him, flashed about the internet, the Waleses did not end up in a single frame with the disgraced, dud of a duke.
Clearly, father and son have differing views about handling the ongoing mess that is the unemployed former trade ambassador, which bodes badly for the future. You hardly need a crystal ball to know that the Duke of York attempts to stage comebacks with recurring, grating regularity, proof that there is no more durable substance in the world than the man’s ego.
So, could Charles and William end up on a collision course over Andrew?
Then, exhibit B) which came via the Daily Mail which ran a series of extracts from veteran royal correspondent Robert Jobson’s new book about Charles. One of the corkers: “The idea of stripping Harry of his Duke of Sussex title has been discussed at the highest level.
“The King is said not to be in favour, but other senior Royals are less indulgent.”
Sure, Jobson gives no clues about who these mystery “senior Royals” might be but given the small pool of possible candidates here, it’s hardly a stretch to contemplate that one may very well be William.
Again, we have an ongoing pickle that the King and the Prince of Wales may disagree on.
Ever since Harry released his tell-all Spare in January, friends of the elder prince have been regularly popping up to express the 40-year-old father-of-three’s simmering anger at his sibling.
In early January, a friend of William’s told the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes: “It’s impossible to exaggerate the extent of [William’s] contempt for Harry and Meghan now. He absolutely hates them, and can’t believe that Harry would do this to him and to Kate. He feels utterly betrayed.”
The same month, a friend of the former rescue pilot told the Sunday Times’ Roya Nikkhah, that Spare had left his only sibling, “burning.”
And, only last week, a William mate told the Beast’s Sykes of the brothers: “Relations have never been this bad.”
Again, if Charles remains in dad-mode, with reports repeatedly stressing that no matter what, His Majesty will always love Harry, while William seems nothing but red, are some London fireworks inevitable?
Last but certainly not least is exhibit C), the vexing issue of Camilla’s rod. (Minds out of the gutter please.)
When Palace aides were getting the hot cross buns off their press releases about the various glitzy coronation paraphernalia set to come out of storage, they revealed that Her Majesty has chosen to use a 17th century sceptre with a pretty dove stuck on the top.
Except, uh, the thing is … it’s made of ivory.
For years now, one of William’s biggest causes has been the end of the wildlife trade and in 2014, it was reported that he had told Dr Jane Goodall that he would “like to see all the ivory owned by Buckingham Palace destroyed.” (The comment was never officially confirmed.)
Such is his strength of feeling on the issue, in 2015 William raised the issue directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping and recorded a speech for Chinese state television about the ivory trade, which was quite the impressive bit of diplomatic tightrope-walking.
In 2018, Jobson revealed that Charles and William had “clashed” over his views on what to do with 1200 ivory items in the Royal Collection, and which includes items such as Henry VIII’s quill.
Thus, Camilla’s choice to bring the ivory out for the coronation seems unlikely to go down well with William, giving us another potential fracture point between father and son.
Another factor in all of this: Their tempers. Both Charles and William, especially the latter, have been reported to have quite the short fuses on them, making this situation even more combustible.
Also, all of this is happening against the backdrop of their changed roles. For more than 50 years, Charles was the outspoken, lobbying Prince of Wales who was free to scrawl his famous Black Spider Memos and to harangue the great and good about everything from his intense hatred of modern architecture (famously calling a proposed National Gallery extension a “monstrous carbuncle”) to the fate of the Patagonian toothfish.
As King, that freedom is totally and utterly gone.
In fact, His Majesty has given assurances that he will now toe the line and not spend his mornings trying to impress upon government ministers his pet views about, I’m guessing, sound baths for troubled teens or why new tube stations should incorporate feng shui.
However that latitude to be something of a campaigning, activist HRH is a privilege that William can and will continue to enjoy, with the added boost of the prominence of his Wales title and the global platform of his Earthshot Prize.
Here’s hoping that Charles will only look on with doting pride on William’s well-received climate push and not feel a harrumphing sort of resentment that, by contrast, his decades of environmentalism meant that for ages he was viewed as a rhododendron-murmuring loon.
The underlying problem with all of this is that, leaving Camilla’s ornamental ivory stick out of things, the Andrew and Harry messes are going nowhere, meaning that two of the biggest problems the royal family will have to try and solve going forward are issues that Charles and William seem to disagree on.
This is dicey stuff at a time when the royal family simply cannot afford any more family feuds or new rift headlines which would be a massive distraction; at a point in time when they are very busily trying to drive home a message of unity and togetherness with absolutely no subtlety.
The only way that the institution of the monarchy can get through what are likely to be the bumpy years to come is if William and Charles can put on a genuine united front and don’t end up throwing Limoges teacups at each other’s heads in infuriation.
Abraham Lincoln said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” But a Palace divided? That is liable to end up toppling over.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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