William and Charles have teamed up to put the royal family in order, but the end result is a dangerous schism that arises among the Windsors.
The War of the Roses was very long and very complicated: decades of futile struggles involving many men with names like Percy and Peregrine with their limbs cut off from a battlefield.
The bloody dynastic conflict was all about power and money, and a certain Ricard, Duke of York, stirred the pot hard.
While no one is likely to lose an appendix in a muddy paddock soon, today we have another Duke of York ego and sense of law seems to be provoking a new royal civil war.
On Tuesday morning, Garter Day was celebrated at Windsor Castle for the first time since before the pandemic. The Order of the League is the oldest and most august of the chivalric orders, initiated by King Edward III in 1348 and inspired by the tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Those were the days when a king could really let his fantasy fly.
These days, League Day consists of a lunch at the castle followed by a stately procession to the church of St. George for a service, all the Knights and Ladies Companions dressed in heavy velvet tunics, chains of gold and feather feathers. Then the big ones and the good ones go back up the hill to the “big house” by old carriages.
Everything is very big, very public, and this year’s League Day was getting ready to star in the world’s most famous royal black sheep, Prince Andrew. For the disconnected royal, the departure was supposed to mean a near return to public life after being fired from his official posts and after resolving a civil lawsuit for sexual abuse earlier this year for 22 million of dollars. Andrew has long denied allegations by Virginia Giuffre that he sexually abused her as a teenager.
Over the weekend, Andrew’s Big Day Out seemed set in stone. The queen had given her approval and the programs had been printed, indicating it very clearly as part of the procession. Fergie had probably returned to her shared home, the Royal Lodge, skillfully handling the lint roller to fix the Duke’s velvet robe.
Then came a last-minute phone call that torpedoed Andrew’s best plans.
Several London newspapers have reported that Prince Charles and Prince William, united in their dismay and horror at the prospect of Andrew being photographed in the middle of a royal on Garter Day, staged an intervention at eleven o’clock.
In fact, Robert Jobson, from an impeccable source in the Evening Standard, has reported that William went to see his grandmother and placed an ultimatum. As one leading royal source told Jobson, “The Duke of Cambridge was adamant. If York insisted on participating publicly, he would retire.”
In the end, the queen found an ingenious solution: Andrew could attend all the private parts of League Day that were made away from long lenses, but he had to stay out of public view and the press .
Final result: we have about 887 new photos of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, with a useless hat and even more proof of how ridiculous the Order of the League is.
But if you think, after the events of the last 72 hours, that Andrew could safely return to the Royal Lodge, lift his feet in slippers and make his way wild through a family-sized Hobnobs package for cheer up, then I have some very bad news for you. The 62-year-old may be short of cash, official papers, dignity and friends these days, but ego? That is another story.
How else to explain a report to the Telegraph on Monday that he wanted his status as a blood prince to be restored, including his prestigious and honorary role as Colonel of the Grenadier Guard and his ability to use the your SAR? As a source told the Telegraph, the disgraced former commercial ambassador wants “his position to be recognized and respected.”
Please do not hesitate to pause here if you also get stuck in front of a self-enlarging sign.
I’m not sure if this latest mess from Andrew makes me want to laugh at the sheer idiocy of this pompous ass or cry that any human being could be so grotesquely deceived.
Either way, a powerful new fault line is making its way through the middle of the royal house.
The problem comes from two very clear factions that have emerged behind the palace gates, one led by two future kings with the intention of saving the monarchy and the other by the disgruntled Duke of York who, like his 15th-century ancestor, wants most of all.
On the first side we have Charles and William, who are united in their strong belief that Andrew has no place in public life, and it is his various prohibitions that have played a key role in his exile.
In November 2019, following the cataclysm of Andrew News Interviewed, the Welsh duo was intimately involved with him being forced to resign as a working member of the royal family. Same in January of this year, when a New York judge confirmed that Mrs. Giuffre’s civil sexual abuse would continue. Again, the father-son team was “instrumental” in the decision to strip Andrew of his remaining royal roles and ability to use his SAR.
As for William and Andrew, the Times revealed last year that the Duke of Cambridge considers his uncle a “threat to the family”. In 2019, the Times also reported that members of Andrew’s seed team, who had long since lost office, had “accused a high-ranking figure in Prince William’s office of leaking stories about [Andrew] in the press ”.
On a personal level, Charles and Andrew have never been related or well-behaved, as the old man was a 15th-century Tuscan pseudo-intellectual, a lover of Jung’s architecture, and the youngest. , reportedly, had spent 48 hours watching pornography while a guest. of a former ambassador.
God forbid you think this situation stops with these three men, because this situation involves their daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenia, and by extension, Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex as well.
This same Telegraph story also reports that Andrew wants his girls to become working members of the royal family, a distinction that would make them dedicate themselves full-time to the monarchy, in exchange for which they would be guaranteed financial support and grace for life. and favor the houses forever.
Note on the side here: neither Beatrice nor Eugenie have ever given any indication that they themselves are willing to change their comfortable lives with comfortable jobs, holidays in Capri and chasing the best Chelsea shops so they can spend the day cutting ribbons at regional leisure centers . .
The battle lines are drawn: William and Charles, worried about how much damage an inflated duke could do to the monarchy before he has a chance to direct the show against the various HRHs who seem to think they have been mistreated and want a bigger help than they (or at least Andrew) think is theirs.
This situation, unless handled carefully, could lead to a total royal war.
Another recent royal crisis was supported in part by the fact that one brother received very clearly a favorable treatment of the other, the end result being that Harry and Meghan now live in California and earn a living with compassion.
Despite the turmoil of the past two years, the Sussex have remained closely aligned with the Yorks. The only member of the royal family who has visited Harry and Meghan and seen the inside of their estate is Princess Eugenie, who, along with her husband and son, visited her in February.
Most recently, during the Thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s, which was part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the Sussex sat down next to Beatrice and Eugenie and their husbands, apparently to offer a few friendly faces to the self-exiled duo at sea on the other hand. glacial relatives.
Andrew and Harry now not only share the dubious honor of having been both official spares, but they have both faced the weight of what happens when Charles and William come together.
Beyond that, what has meant Charles’s hard commitment to streamlining the monarchy over the last decade is an increasingly obvious distinction between HRH has and does not have.
Now, all but one of the Queen’s grandchildren, William, occupy a very strange liminal space between being members of the royal family and being left with no choice but to lead a normal life. They have degrees but they need work. They attend Trooping the Color but are forced to arrive by bus. They’re spending the summer with the queen, but they share paid collaboration on their Instagram channels. School fees and all that.
This situation has the potential to be encouraged and suppurated, an alarming situation for an institution on the brink of the greatest commotion in almost a century, that is, when you already know what is happening to Her Majesty.
Andreu, Guillem and Carles have clearly acted as they saw fit for the crown, but to what extent have they acted as enemies of the duke? And what could he do next in his ongoing struggle to regain his place in the royal spotlight? The man has the time and arrogance to believe that he is fully justified in fighting for what he believes should be his.
Historians do not know whether Richard, Duke of York, died during the battle or whether he was captured by the Lancasters and executed. The moral of the story is that things don’t end well, greedy dukes, a lesson Andrew would do well to learn and the sticks fast.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with over 15 years of experience working with several of Australia’s leading media titles.