King Charles delivered his first Christmas speech as monarch on Sunday, three months after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
The king spoke of the late queen in his speech, who died in September.
“I’m standing here in this exquisite chapel of St George, at Windsor Castle, so close to where my beloved mother, the late queen, is laid to rest with my dear father,” the sovereign said. “I am reminded of the deeply touching letters, cards, and messages which so many of you have sent my wife and myself and I cannot thank you enough for the love and sympathy you have shown our whole family.”
“Christmas is a particularly poignant time for all of us who have lost loved ones,” he added. “We feel their absence at every familiar turn of the season and remember them in each cherished tradition.”
Earlier in the day, the king and Queen Camilla joined Prince William and Kate Middleton and their three children ― Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis ― and other members of the royal family for the Christmas Day morning service at Sandringham Church.
Princess Charlotte, the Princess of Wales, Camilla, Queen Consort, Prince Louis, Prince George, King Charles III and Prince William attend the Christmas Day service at Sandringham Church on Dec. 25.
Samir Hussein via Getty Images
It was the first time that little Louis has made an appearance with his parents for the occasion.
The king’s speech was recorded at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle on Dec. 13 ― just after the first three episodes of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix docuseries, “Harry & Meghan,” were released.
Neither Buckingham nor Kensington Palace responded to the claims made in the series.
Queen Elizabeth II pictured at her final Christmas broadcast in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle on Dec. 23, 2021, in Windsor, England.
The palaces are preparing for another round of allegations, as the Duke of Sussex’s memoir, “Spare,” will arrive on Jan. 10, 2023 ― nearly three years after Harry and Meghan announced they were stepping back as senior working members of the royal family.
The duke said in a statement about the memoir in July 2021 that he is writing his book “not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become.”
“I’ve worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story—the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned—I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think,” Harry said.
He added that he’s “excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life that’s accurate and wholly truthful.”
A meeting between the late Queen Elizabeth’s lady in waiting and a Black charity boss was “filled with warmth and understanding”, Buckingham Palace has said after the royal household became embroiled in a race row.
Lady Susan Hussey, 83, who asked Ngozi Fulani repeatedly where she “really came from” during a palace reception last month, has apologised in person to the executive, Buckingham Palace has said.
Fulani, who is British and founder of the charity Sistah Space, expressed shock at her treatment by Lady Susan and said she had suffered “horrific abuse” on social media in the aftermath.
Buckingham Palace said in a statement the two women had met on Friday morning at the palace.
It said: “At this meeting, filled with warmth and understanding, Lady Susan offered her sincere apologies for the comments that were made and the distress they caused to Ms Fulani.
“Lady Susan has pledged to deepen her awareness of the sensitivities involved and is grateful for the opportunity to learn more about the issues in this area.
“Ms Fulani, who has unfairly received the most appalling torrent of abuse on social media and elsewhere, has accepted this apology and appreciates that no malice was intended.”
Lady Susan, who is also the Prince of Wales’s godmother, resigned from the household and apologized after she repeatedly challenged Fulani when she said she was British at the Queen Consort’s reception highlighting violence against women and girls.
Describing how Lady Susan also touched her hair during the incident, Fulani told ITV’s “Good Morning Britain:” “I was stood next to two other women – Black women – and she (Lady Susan) just made a beeline for me, and she took my locks and moved it out of the way so that she could see my name badge.
“That’s a no-no. I wouldn’t put my hands in someone’s hair, and culturally it’s not appropriate.”
Over the last five years, Meghan Markle has become a weirdly divisive figure in media, especially in the UK. But few things prove exactly how deep these divisions go like the reaction to the first three episodes of Harry & Meghan, her Netflix documentary series with Prince Harry. In these early episodes, the couple has avoided causing drama so completely that one common line of attack is aimed at Netflix for paying millions for something so boring.
Still, controversies have arisen; notably, one moment that has come under scrutiny in the British press is when Meghan and Harry discuss her first meeting with the late queen. ITV’s Chris Shiptweeted out the scene along with a fairly neutral description of what happens in it. “Meghan describes meeting the late Queen Elizabeth for the first time and how she did not understand why she needed to curtsy to Harry’s grandmother,” he wrote. “He looks a little uncomfortable about the whole thing.”
To me, an American in my early 30s, Ship’s description of the scene, while not incorrect, doesn’t sum up the nuances of the joke, which is clearly that Meghan is theatrically exaggerating her own unfamiliarity with the realities of being around the royals. She is the butt of the joke here, not the queen or even royal protocol. The scene is presented about 36 minutes into the second episode of the series, serving as an illustration of Meghan’s excitement and early discomfort while integrating into Harry’s family.
The story begins with Harry’s recollection. “My grandmother was the first senior member of the family that Meghan met,” he says. “She had no idea what it all consisted of. It was a bit of a shock to the system for her.”
Meghan continues: “I mean, it’s surreal. There wasn’t, like, some big moment of, ‘Now you’re gonna meet my grandmother.’ I didn’t know I was going to meet her until moments before. We were in the car and we were going to Royal Lodge for lunch. And he was like, ‘Oh, my grandmother is here. She’s going to be there after church.’ I remember, we were in the car, driving, and he’s like, ‘You know how to curtsy, right?’ And I just thought it was a joke.”
Harry explains that there is something sensitive about introducing someone to this part of his life. “How do you explain that to people, that you bow to your grandmother and that you would need to curtsy, especially to an American? That’s weird,” he says.
But Meghan eventually embraces the challenge. “Now I’m starting to realize this is a big deal. I mean, Americans would understand this. We have Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament,” Meghan says, emphasizing the name of the restaurant in a theatrical bellow. “It was like that. Like, I curtsied as though I was like…” She pauses to curtsy dramatically, but she’s sitting, so she is almost falling off of the couch.
She comes back up and says, “Pleasure to meet you, Your Majesty,” with the awkward smile of a people pleaser, adding, “Like, was that okay?” At first, Harry does look pretty confused—I think he might not get the joke she’s making—but he cracks a smile as she comes back up with her huge grin.
I think it’s important to point out that she is not saying that the practice is “medieval,” as in outdated or cruel, as various reports have implied. She’s referring to the Texas-based chain of dinner theater restaurants with 11 locations across North America, where actors and circus performers dressed in garb that hearkens back to the Middle Ages perform for patrons as they eat a four-course meal of garlic bread, soup, roasted chicken, and dessert. Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament is not at all historically accurate, and I have never been, so I can’t testify to its quality. But it looms large in the American psyche, perhaps because it is such a perfect encapsulation of what American commerce can do with even the strangest source material. (It was also in headlines recently because groups of performers from the Lyndhurst, New Jersey, and California outposts have unionized.)
In this scene, Meghan is describing how she learned, in real time, that most of her knowledge of the way things work with royalty was secondhand, and in her eagerness to please Harry and the late queen, she overdid her first real curtsy. She’s doing a slapstick bit to say she had a deep understanding of the importance of meeting the queen, but a shallow understanding of how to properly do the thing that demonstrates it. To me, it’s hilarious, and it’s made even funnier by the fact that, as Meghan expects with the “Americans would get this” preface, her British husband has no idea what she is trying to say, until he sees the grin on her face and gets the gist.
A new biography on Queen Elizabeth II will provide an unprecedented look into the late monarch’s final months.
Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, written by former Member of Parliament Gyles Brandreth — described as a “friend and biographer of the royal family” — is being serialized in the Daily Mail ahead of its publication next month.
As the Mail reports, Brandeth addresses rumours that the Queen was suffering from a rare type of bone marrow cancer; while he neither proves nor disproves the rumours, if it were true, it “would explain her tiredness and weight loss and those ‘mobility issues’ we were often told about during the last year or so of her life,” he writes.
“The truth is that Her Majesty always knew that her remaining time was limited. She accepted this with all the grace you’d expect,” he added, referencing a visit the Queen had from Rt. Rev. Dr. Iain Greenshields, who spend a weekend with her at Balmoral shortly before her death.
“‘Her faith was everything to her. She told me she had no regrets,” Greenshields told Brandeth for the book.
According to Brandeth, the death of Prince Philip after 73 years of marriage was devastating, yet also spurred her to keep busy with personal appearances. “Life goes on,” Brandeth recalls her telling him. “It has to.”
However, in the fall of 2021 she began to experience a “sudden ‘energy low’” and “felt exhausted,” with doctors ordering her to “‘rest a bit, not to push herself so much, to take it easy.’”
Dr. Douglas James Allan Glass, who was with the Queen at the time of her death, revealed that her death “was expected and we were quite aware of what was going to happen.”
As the Mail notes, the book also offers insight into the Queen’s feelings about Prince Harry’s decision to step down from being a working royal and move to California, as well as a window into how she handled Prince Andrew’s Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Regarding the latter, Brandeth writes that even though Andrew was her “favourite child,” the Queen didn’t hesitate when it came to stripping him of his titles and removing him from his role as a working royal.
“The Queen took a firm grip of things,” a “senior courtier” told Brandeth for the book. “To use the military jargon, there were only few days between flash and bang. Action was called for it and she took it.”
However, the Queen also showed her personal support by deliberately allowing himself to be photographed riding with Andrew in Windsor Great Park on the day after she relieved him of his royal duties.
Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait will be published on Dec. 8.
Most people know by now that King Charles III really cares about the environment. It’s been repeated often in the months since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, especially by the people who admire him. What may be less known among the general public is exactly how respected among environmental advocates he really is.
This year, Charles reportedly canceled plans to attend COP27 in Egypt last week due to advice from Liz Truss’s short-lived administration, which was upheld by the new prime minister, but he did host a Buckingham Palace reception for over 200 politicians and activists who were on their way to Egypt. For Charles, trips to the United Nations Climate Change Conferences are about more than keeping up appearances—he actually participates. At 2015’s COP21 in Paris, where a landmark treaty was set to be negotiated, Charles used his opening remarks to remind the attendees to think of the world they were leaving their grandchildren. On his last trip to COP26 in Glasgow, Charles gave four separate speeches and introduced a video message from his mother.
One obvious reason for his passion for the environment is that he was simply in the right place at the right time. Historians have named 1970 as the year when threats to the environment broke through to the mainstream, and as a 22-year-old finishing up his university degree in anthropology and archeology and planning his career, the concern came naturally. For a handful of baby boomers, caring for the environment became a countercultural lifestyle, and though Charles was never a committed member of the Back-to-the-Land Movement, some of his beliefs and practices—from his organic farm at Highgrove to his concerns about GMOs—weren’t too far off.
Still, Charles remained unusually committed to environmental concerns even after the ’70s drew to a close, perhaps because it spoke to something deeper in him. Through speeches about the environment spanning five decades, he has described his interest in the environment in elemental terms, speaking of beauty, awareness, synthesis, and imagination. He has also been remarkably astute when it comes to incorporating new information and following the movement’s buzzwords. But engaging with his history in the movement also helps illustrate some of the pitfalls that have made action regarding the climate much harder to achieve.
The future king made his initial forays into environmental concerns long before global warming was even on the agenda. On a drab day in February 1970, Charles followed his father, Prince Philip, into a room at Strasbourg’s city hall for a conference about wildlife conservation. In a dark suit, looking younger than his 22 years, Charles sat in the audience as his father delivered a speech about resource depletion, endangered wildlife, and the need for more land to be set aside for conservation. These were the issues that Philip spent most of his life committed to, and they were fairly normal concerns for European royalty at the time. Charles and Philip were joined by four other European princes at the conference, which brought together government representatives and activists to launch the European Conservation Year.
By 1970, Charles had already been involved with the European Conservation Year planning for nearly two years. Many of Charles’s decisions about education and employment were planned by Queen Elizabeth II and her advisers, and his initial forays into the world of environmental activism were motivated by their desire for him to form closer connections in Wales. In 1968, Charles started preparing for his responsibilities as heir apparent by spending more time in the nation. First, he chaired a committee tasked with planning the nation’s participation in the upcoming European Conservation Year, his first time serving as the head of a meeting. The next year, he returned to take a summer course in the Welsh language before his lavish investiture in Caernarfon Castle in July 1969.
Charles’s 1970 trip to France was part of a larger plan to launch him into his career in public life. His university studies would come to an end that spring, so for the year following his investiture, he committed to a hectic travel schedule to serve as a royal apprentice before beginning his military training at the Royal Navy College, Dartmouth. After leaving the conference in Strasbourg, Charles traveled to Paris to attend the state funeral of French leader Charles de Gaulle.
Elizabeth Debicki has mesmerized audiences with her eerie summoning of Princess Diana on The Crown’s fifth season, which charts the late royal’s messy breakup with Prince Charles and the royal family. “She precisely calibrates the elegant ennui of the public Diana—her familiar crooked-neck pose, her downward gaze so knowing and haunted while she talks in that mournful dove’s coo,” wrote Vanity Fair’s chief critic, Richard Lawson, in his review. “It was like watching a ghost, really,” said Diana biographer Andrew Morton, who secretly collaborated with the late princess on her bombshell tell-all 30 years ago, in an interview with Vanity Fair. The author added that he was “genuinely shaken” and “blown away by how she got every nuance of her character.”
Debicki herself is reluctant to reveal the source of her magic, at least while filming The Crown’s final season—which will chronicle Diana’s final days and tragic 1997 death. An avid researcher at heart, the Australian actor tells Vanity Fair that she happily dug into the many hours’ worth of available footage of the royal, studying the princess’s every movement and intonation. “There were a lot of light bulbs going off, but it’s funny talking about it because I’m still doing it,” she demurs during a rare break from filming. To articulate the process could unravel it. She will allow, however, that the Diana journey began with a somewhat awkward meeting with series creator Peter Morgan.
During an initial conversation with Morgan at his home, Debicki says, she instinctively grabbed a Diana book from the pile of tomes on his coffee table and held on to it so tightly that the creator told her at the end of the meeting, “You can keep that.” Even without the offer, laughs Debicki, “I was such a nervous wreck I probably would have walked out from his house with it.” When Debicki left the house, she opened the book—which she believes was Diana: Her True Story—and saw that the pages were covered with Morgan’s fastidious notes. “I turned back around, rang the door, and said, ‘Oh, no. You can have it. It’s fine.’ He said, ‘No, no. You take it.’” The interaction was so mortifying to her, she says, that “I thought I’d blown it.”
The Crown’s fourth season depicted Diana’s trajectory from innocent schoolteacher’s aide to fairy-tale bride to embittered young wife of a cheating husband, with Emma Corrin playing the part. When season five finds Debicki’s Diana, though, she is a woman coming into her own while navigating a nasty marital split, single motherhood, and the loneliness of her life as a one-in-a-billion public figure. If Debicki had a blueprint for her character’s arc this season, she says, it was “surviving something the best that she could manage it.” An early conversation with Morgan covered “the effect of public life…in relation to politicians. We had an interesting conversation about the tolls on mental health, how you can survive, and the effects it takes.”
Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana.Courtesy of Netflix.
Both Diana and Charles weaponize the media in the fifth season—with episodes depicting the royals sparring via bombshell interviews. Diana’s secret partnership with Morton and barn-burning Panorama interview, both of which were conducted inside Kensington Palace, were viewed by the royal family as absolute betrayals. Diana has been accused of being manipulative with the press, but Debicki saw the late princess’s tricky relationship with media as being a normal human impulse immensely magnified.
“Playing her in the show, I understood very much the desire to try to control what people think about you,” explains the actor. “It’s that thing that we all do in such a tiny way when you think, Oh, gosh, maybe [so-and-so] thinks this about me. You want to control the narrative that people have of you. When you have the entire world watching you, you want to have the reins on that narrative. It made a lot of sense to me.”
Debicki felt the complexity of Diana’s relationship with the press while wading through endless news segments featuring Diana and ping-ponging points of view. The actor calls it an “ebb and flow of with-her and against-her journalism that was very much happening in the ’90s. It was so vulgar. You feel so distinctly how poisonous it can be, in both directions. Something she said in the Panoramainterview was, ‘The higher the media puts you, the bigger the drop.’ She says, ‘I was always aware of that.’ So she was incredibly savvy about how to use them.”
It was the first state banquet of King Charles III’s reign, but on Tuesday night Kate Middleton and Queen Consort Camilla proved that royal watchers will still get to see a few of Queen Elizabeth II’s most beloved pieces. At a Buckingham Palace banquet for the state visit of South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Kate wore the Lover’s Knot tiara, which Princess Diana frequently wore, and a bracelet that used to belong to the late queen. She looked every bit the princess in a white Jenny Packham gown with a cape and metallic details on the shoulders. Camilla rewore the blue Bruce Oldfield gown she debuted in Rwanda earlier this year, amping up the glamour with the late queen’s sapphire tiara and a matching necklace.
Both women also wore the yellow Royal Family Order with the image of the late queen. Kate wore the star and blue sash of the Royal Victorian Order, fastening it with a diamond brooch. According to Lauren Kiehna, who writes The Court Jeweller, she first debuted the Art Deco brooch at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony earlier this month. Sophie, Countess of Wessex, wore the aquamarine tiara that she has worn occasionally since 2005, which also converts into a necklace.
Kate’s neo-classical pearl and diamond tiara is an homage to a long line of royal women. According to jewelry historian Leslie Field, Queen Mary first commissioned it from the jewelry company Garrard in 1914, and it became a part of Queen Elizabeth II’s collection upon her death in 1953. In 1981, she began loaning to Princess Diana, who wore it to various banquets and state dinners throughout her lifetime. On Tuesday, Kate paired it with a bracelet that once belonged to the queen and pearl-drop earrings that were once Diana’s. Camilla’s sapphire necklace was a wedding gift from George VI to the late queen, who later commissioned the tiara to match.
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Earlier in the day, the Royal Family social media accounts shared images and footage of preparations for the event, the first state dinner to take place since before the coronavirus pandemic. They noted that foliage for the decorations had been sourced from the gardens at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. The last time the family opened up the jewelry vault for a state visit was in June 2019, when Donald Trump made a controversial trip to the country.
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Queen Consort Camilla was previously fond of giving short speeches at various charity events, but in the two months since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, she refrained from stepping to the lectern. But on Thursday, Camilla gave her first speech as queen consort while presenting the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Prize, and in the speech, she honored the late queen—and another iconic monarch.
“I cannot begin without paying tribute to my dear mother-in-law, Her late Majesty, who is much in our thoughts today and who is so greatly missed by us all,” she said, according to the BBC. “Over the past few months, my husband and I have drawn immense comfort from the messages of condolence that we have received, and continue to receive, from the four corners of the world.”
She also mentioned a famous quotation from Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 to 1603 and was beloved by her people, drawing a comparison between the two Elizabeths. “It was on this date, 17th November, that Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne, in 1558,” Camilla said. “She once said of herself that, while she was aware of the merits of the monarchs who had preceded her, ‘You never had any that will love you better.’ A description that might just as well apply to Queen Elizabeth II and her enduring love for the Commonwealth.”
Camilla gave her speech in a palace stateroom, where she was joined by the essay winners along with representatives from the Royal Commonwealth Society, including singers Alexandra Burke and Geri Horner, formerly of the Spice Girls. In 2022, the essay competition saw 26,000 entries from across the 56 Commonwealth countries. From those entries, two winners and two runners-up were chosen. Senior winner Sawooly Li, junior winner Madeleine Wood, runner-ups Amaal Fawzi and Maulika Pandey all posed with Camilla during the ceremony.
In her speech, Camilla also praised Nelson Mandela, the former president of Commonwealth nation South Africa. “Mandela was a great writer. He was also described as ‘a man of the Commonwealth,’ famously saying, on entering Marlborough House, ‘the Commonwealth makes the world safe for diversity.’ The Commonwealth, like writing, touches the whole world,” she said. “I think, therefore, it is now time to hear how these connections have been celebrated by our outstanding winners. To end with another quote from Nelson Mandela: ‘A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.’”
In October, a source close to Camilla told the Telegraph that the new queen consort would reduce the number of engagements where she delivered speeches, focusing instead on the events where her remarks can make the most impact, a shift inspired by the late queen.
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On Monday, King Charles III is celebrating his 74th birthday, his first since he ascended to the throne back in September. To mark the day, Westminster Abbey rang bells, the king was honored with a 21-gun-salute, and the Household Cavalry Band played “Happy Birthday” at Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard. The palace has also released a new photograph of Charles posing by an ancient oak near Windsor Castle and announced that Charles is taking on a role held by his father, Prince Philip, for most of his life.
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From 1952 until his death in 2021, Philip served as the park ranger of Windsor Great Park, the estate where the castle is located alongside a handful of other royal family residences. Now, 70 years later, Charles is taking on the role overseeing conservation and management of the five-thousand acres belonging to the Crown Estate.
In a statement, Paul Sedgwick, the Crown Estate managing director and deputy ranger of Windsor Great Park, said he was “honored” that Charles would be taking on the traditional role at the estate where the family has a nearly 1000-year history. “Windsor has a wonderful heritage with many precious natural habitats,” he said. “His Majesty’s passion and commitment to the natural world will be invaluable as we seek to become a center of excellence for environmental best practice, preserving and enhancing the Great Park for generations to come.”
While Philip was the park ranger, he helped oversee a program that preserved a population of red deers and also helped install a new visitor center. For decades, Charles oversaw an organic farming operation operated by the Duchy of Cornwall. Now that Prince William is taking on his father’s former estate, the new role at Windsor will be an opportunity for Charles to continue the type of environmental management he took interest in at his country home, Highgrove.
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William and Kate Middleton took to their own social media accounts to wish the king a happy birthday, sharing a photograph of Charles taken last week during a tour of Yorkshire. The Royal Collections Trust account also wished him a happy birthday on their accounts, alongside a photo of a young Charles in a stroller, kissing the hand of his sister, Princess Anne, in 1951.
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When I sat down with the queen’s late cousin Lady Elizabeth Anson several years ago as The Crown was enjoying the peak of its popularity, I asked her whether the queen had watched the Netflix series.
Surrounded by her prized collection of ornamental eggs in the sitting room of her West London home (which the queen often visited), Lady Elizabeth confided that she had asked the queen the very same question. “I was told no. The queen’s view was, Why on earth would I watch a fictitious drama about my own life?” according to Anson.
Today the current burning question is: Will the royals be watching this season of The Crown, by far the most controversial and potentially inflammatory to date, as it covers the turbulent ’90s?
Sources close to the king and queen consort have told Vanity Fairthat Charles has no plans to watch, having considered season four too close for comfort. “They have watched some of The Crown, but I doubt they’ll be in a hurry to see this one,” says a family friend.
Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, believes not even the thickest-skinned family member will be able to stomach Peter Morgan’s latest offering.
“None of the royal family will watch it—it would be torturous,” she tells VF.
The new season focuses on the breakdown of the Waleses’ marriage, Diana’s controversial Panorama interview, and a power struggle between the queen and her son.
As VF has reported, Camilla has enjoyed watching previous seasons of The Crown and found them “entertaining,” according to a friend. Charles stopped viewing the last season before the end because it was “too close to the bone,” per the same source.
Prince Harry is the only royal to go on the record and express his comfort with the show.
It has always been Buckingham Palace’s policy not to comment, but it is no secret that Charles’s most senior aides believe the series—and not just the trailer—should carry a disclaimer making it clear to the millions watching that this is a fictional drama loosely based on historical facts. (Netflix has always described the series, including in the show’s summary on the platform, as a “fictionalized drama inspired by true events.”) And I am told that there are concerns at the highest level that this season could have a real impact on Charles and Camilla’s popularity. Just months into his reign, Charles is said to be privately frustrated that there are so many headlines about The Crown.
A former courtier once told me that one of Charles’s greatest concerns about becoming king was that he would always be haunted by his past, and the latest season of The Crown, with Dominic West as Charles and Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, focuses on the period that is the largest source of that insecurity.
“The main problem is that Netflix has such a huge subscription that The Crown has a global following, and Charles cares about that,” says Seward. “While most British people of a generation are very familiar with this period of royal history, many more don’t know the ins and outs of the monarchy or how it works, and if they base their knowledge on what they see in The Crown, that is problematic for the royal family. Charles, as a person, is very self-deprecating. He’s always saying, ‘I’m an old man, no one takes any notice of me,’ and he doesn’t mind people having a pop at him, but this is too close up and personal.”
The Crown’s long-awaited fifth season opens with a surprise flashback to Queen Elizabeth, played by Claire Foy, christening the Royal Yacht Britannia to cheers of jubilation in 1954, the year after she was coronated at the age of 27. The season premiere, “Queen Victoria Syndrome,” then jumps forward almost four decades to introduce the franchise’s latest iteration of the aging monarch, played by Imelda Staunton, shortly after she was called “irrelevant, old, expensive, and out-of-touch” by her once-adoring constituents in 1991. How far the crown has fallen in favorability.
Facing her advancing years, her nation’s yearning for modernity, and a global recession—not to mention a slew of forthcoming scandals involving her family members—this new chapter will not be a cheery one for our queen, the season premiere portends. And her first heartbreak abruptly arrives in the form of the Royal Yacht Britannia, which—with its operational price tag of about $18 million a year, and its need for expensive improvements—seems simply too lavish and impractical an expense for the public to keep footing.
Nevertheless, the queen makes a plea in an audience with Prime Minister John Major (Jonny Lee Miller) for additional financing. “All of my palaces were inherited,” the queen explains, in one of the least relatable sentences the character has ever uttered. “They all bear the stamp of my predecessors. Only Britannia I’ve truly been able to make my own….From the design of the hull to the smallest piece of china, she is a floating, seagoing expression of me.”
The Royal Yacht Britannia leaving Portsmouth, England, with the royal family on board for its traditional cruise around the western isles of Scotland on August 7, 1997.
By Tim Graham Photo Library/Getty Images.
The actual 412-foot royal yacht—built to replace its predecessor, the Victoria and Albert—was a real-life delight for Queen Elizabeth and the backdrop for many happy family memories. The construction of the vessel came at a tricky time for the royals, shortly after Elizabeth became queen at an unexpectedly young age and Philip was forced to give up his naval career, surname, and identity. Britannia became something of a release valve for Philip, who had served as a commander in the royal navy, and was able to oversee the design of the yacht’s technical features. The queen, meanwhile, handpicked the chintz fabrics and details down to the doorknobs and lampshades. It was the one home that Elizabeth and Philip had a true hand in designing, and was outfitted with a bolted-down piano for evening singalongs, framed family photos, travel mementos from around the globe, and a sundeck outfitted with wicker furniture.
Given that the queen and Philip used the yacht during their far-reaching commonwealth tours, the floating palace also featured formal accommodations fit to entertain 13 U.S. presidents, including the Eisenhowers, the Fords, the Reagans, and the Clintons. In addition to a grand staircase, silver and crystal tableware, and a wine cellar, Britannia featured a state dining room large enough to accommodate 100 that could be converted into a private cinema.
The complete privacy that the ship afforded is one reason why the queen famously described it as “the one place where I can truly relax.” According to Sally Bedell Smith’sbiographyElizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, the queen even tucked away her trademark skirts and dresses while aboard. “It was one of the few times when the Queen wore trousers other than on horseback or while participating in field sports, mainly so that she could easily (and modestly) go up and down the ladders and onto launches when they went ashore on deserted beaches for picnics,” wrote Smith. The Britannia offered the queen other opportunities to play at informality, too. For instance, the seaman aboard did “not wear their caps at sea, which means the seamen are technically out of uniform and not required to salute, enabling the Queen to walk around the vessel without formal recognition,” reported The New York Times in 1983, adding that the seamen did their best to act invisible around the monarch. “They have been trained to execute orders on the upper deck, where the Queen’s private quarters are situated, without spoken words or commands.”
The yacht was also a physical reminder of some cherished moments for the family. In 1954, the ship’s maiden voyage reunited the queen and Philip with their young children, Charles and Anne, after nearly 18 months apart from them. (“The ice broke very quickly and we have been subjected to a very energetic routine and innumerable questions which have left us gasping!” the queen told her mother.) Beginning in the 1960s, the royal family began an annual tradition of cruising through the western Isles of Scotland en route to Balmoral for the holidays—stopping off for picnics and a visit to the Queen Mother at the Castle of Mey. There was a water slide that family members would happily hurl themselves down, and humorous performances put on by the yacht’s staff. (The former yacht chef recently recalled the queen and Philip “absolutely laughing their heads off at the stupid antics we got up to” during his 16 years aboard.) When Anne turned 21, she reportedly celebrated with a party in the State Dining Room, which had been converted into a dance hall complete with a dance floor.
If nothing else, Gordonstoun, Philip’s alma mater on the remote, windswept north coast of Scotland, taught the Prince of Wales to endure freezing temperatures. Each day began with a regimen designed to “shake the sleep out of them”: a predawn shirtless run through the countryside—even when it snowed—followed by an icy shower. Classrooms were unheated, and, in keeping with the school’s antediluvian philosophy that “fresh night air” was good for you, dormitory windows were left wide open while the boys slept, regardless of the season. Charles was assigned to Windmill Lodge, a long, narrow, stone-and-timber building with a green asbestos roof and bare wooden floors. There were fourteen beds to a room and bare lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling. Throughout the winter, Charles, whose wooden bed was located beneath a window, often woke to find his bedcovers encrusted with frost or even snow. On those occasions when it rained, he was forced to gather up his blankets and sleep on the floor in the center of the room.
After Charles emerged from five dismal years at Cheam, the exclusive lower school Philip had also attended, the Duke of Edinburgh was still worried that his son was “too soft” for the job he was born to do. The Queen, bowing to her husband’s authority in all matters related to Charles’s upbringing, agreed that four years at Gordonstoun would undoubtedly do the trick. “Charles was a very polite, sweet boy— always incredibly thoughtful and kind, interested in art and music,” Elizabeth’s cousin and confidant Margaret Rhodes said. “But his father interpreted this as weakness, and the Queen believed he knew what was best.” Gordonstoun was supposed to “‘make a man out of him,’ although I never really understood what that meant.”
From what Charles had heard, life at Gordonstoun was, as he put it, “pretty gruesome.” He was leaning toward another school, Charterhouse, where some of the more palatable students from Cheam were going. But he had little to say in the matter. According to royal heraldry and genealogy expert Dermot Morrah, a close friend of the Queen Mother who had chronicled Charles’s early life with the royal family’s blessing, Philip believed his son was “of a shy and reticent disposition” and that “something that would draw him out and develop a little more self-assertiveness in him seemed to be required.” Moreover, “Philip himself had been very happy there.”
Unfortunately for Charles, he had to overcome one major obstacle not faced by Philip. Anyone who attempted to befriend the future sovereign was immediately branded a bootlicking sycophant, a “suck-up.” Whenever Charles walked down a hall on the way to class, he invariably did it to a chorus of boys making a loud sucking noise. At times, according to classmate Ross Benson, they “followed him in packs making that dreadful slurping sound.”
If he wasn’t being piled on by his rugby teammates or hung up in the shower, the Prince of the realm had to contend with being battered in bed. “The people in my dormitory are foul,” he wrote in a letter home. “Goodness, they are horrid. I don’t see how anybody could be so foul.” It didn’t help that Charles snored. According to the Prince, most nights he was pummeled with shoes, pillows, and fists. “I simply dread going to bed,” he complained, “because I get hit all night long.”
There were other indignities to be suffered. On a school trip to the village of Stornoway Harbour on the Isle of Lewis, Charles was suddenly swept up in a crowd of onlookers. Seeking refuge in a bar, he was asked what he wanted to drink. “My God! What do I do?” Charles thought. “Everybody is looking at me.” The fourteen-year-old hesitated a moment before answering. “Cherry brandy,” replied Charles, who explained later that he’d had it before while shooting at Sandringham, and it was “the first drink that came into my head.” A reporter (“That dreadful woman,” Charles would call her) happened to be standing nearby, and the next day, the press had a field day with the tale of the Prince’s underage drinking. “The impression grew,” recalled Dermot Morrah on behalf of the Queen, “that the heir to the British throne must have been discovered in a drunken orgy.” Charles was mortified. “I thought,” he said, “that it was the end of the world.” Deeply upset over having embarrassed his family, he called his mother and tearfully apologized.
The Prince of Wales needn’t have worried about his mother. The incident, she told Morrah at the time, “will do him good. He learnt the hard way” that, given his position, even “the smallest thing” would be blown out of proportion in the press.
But the unfortunate episode did have other, even more hurtful ramifications for Charles. During his first two terms at Gordonstoun, his six-foot-five-inch-tall royal protection officer, Don Green, had become a confidant and father figure to the beleaguered boy. When Green was discharged after the cherry brandy incident, the young Prince was crushed. “I have never been able to forgive them for doing that,” Charles said decades later, “because he defended me in the most marvelous way, and he was the most wonderful, loyal, splendid man. . . . It was atrocious what they did.”
Charles called home to apologize again after someone pilfered his book of essays and sold it to the German magazine Der Stern. “I suppose,” he told Mabel Anderson, searching for a reason to blame himself, “I could have been more careful and locked them up.”
Prince Charles pictured on his arrival at London airport from Glasgow, on July 30, 1963, at the end of the Gordonstoun school summer term. He is pictured wearing a charcoal coloured suit and school tie.By Victor Boynton/AP Photo.
Once a royal always a royal. In an outspoken letter to the Times,Judi Dench has accused The Crown of “crude sensationalism” in its depiction of the royal family, calling Netflix’s Emmy-winning drama series “cruelly unjust.”
Dench’s letter comes ahead of the fifth-season premiere of The Crown, which follows the disintegration of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage in the late ’80s and the ’90s. Though Netflix has said the series will not depict the fatal accident that ended Diana’s life, season five has already garnered controversial headlines. John Major, former prime minister of Britain, called the series a “barrel-load of nonsense” after it was reported that season five contains a fictionalized scene in which the Prince of Wales propositions Major with a plan to get Charles’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, to abdicate.
“Sir John Major is not alone in his concerns that the latest series of The Crown will present an inaccurate and hurtful account of history,” wrote Dench, lending her voice in support of Major. “Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series—that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence—this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.”
Dench is no stranger to the royal family, onscreen or off. She’s played two queens onscreen—Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which she won an Oscar for best supporting actress, and Victoria in both Mrs. Brown (1997) and Victoria & Abdul (2017). Offscreen, Dench has ascended the ranks of nobility as well over the course of her six-decade-plus career. Hailing from Heworth, York, Dench was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1970, made a dame in 1988, and appointed a Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005. She’s also known to be a friend to Queen Consort Camila, visiting the Isle of Wight with Camilla in 2018.
By Chris Jackson/Getty Images.
“No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged,” wrote Dench. “Despite this week stating publicly that The Crown has always been a ‘fictionalized drama,’ the program makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode.”
Dench closes the letter with a missive for Netflix, asking the streaming platform to “reconsider” The Crown, while invoking the memory of the late Queen Elizabeth II. “The time has come for Netflix to reconsider—for the sake of a family and a nation so recently bereaved, as a mark of respect to a sovereign who served her people so dutifully for 70 years, and to preserve its reputation in the eyes of its British subscribers,” she writes.
Last month, The Crown creator Peter Morgan called the series “a love letter” to Queen Elizabeth II, and paused filming in September out of respect for her death. A spokesperson for The Crownsaid earlier this week: “The Crown has always been presented as a drama based on historical events. Series five is a fictional dramatization, imagining what could have happened behind closed doors during a significant decade for the royal family—one that has already been scrutinized and well-documented by journalists, biographers, and historians.”
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Royal Mint has unveiled the first coins to feature the portrait of King Charles III.
Britons will begin to see Charles’ image in their change from around December, as 50-pence coins depicting him gradually enter circulation.
The new monarch’s effigy was created by British sculptor Martin Jennings, and has been personally approved by Charles, the Royal Mint said Friday. In keeping with tradition, the king’s portrait faces to the left — the opposite direction to his mother’s, Queen Elizabeth II.
“Charles has followed that general tradition that we have in British coinage, going all the way back to Charles II actually, that the monarch faces in the opposite direction to their predecessor,” said Chris Barker at the Royal Mint Museum.
Charles is depicted without a crown. A Latin inscription surrounding the portrait translates to “King Charles III, by the Grace of God, Defender of the Faith.”
Charles is depicted without a crown. A Latin inscription surrounding the portrait translates to “King Charles III, by the Grace of God, Defender of the Faith.”
A separate memorial 5-pound coin remembering the life and legacy of Elizabeth will be released Monday. One side of this coin features Charles, while the reverse side features two new portraits of Elizabeth side by side.
Based in south Wales, the Royal Mint has depicted Britain’s royal family on coins for over 1,100 years, documenting each monarch since Alfred the Great.
“When first we used to make coins, that was the only way that people could know what the monarch actually looked like, not in the days of social media like now,” said Anne Jessopp, chief executive of the Royal Mint. “So the portrait of King Charles will be on each and every coin as we move forward.”
Jennings, the sculptor, said the portrait was sculpted from a photo of Charles.
“It is the smallest work I have created, but it is humbling to know it will be seen and held by people around the world for centuries to come,” he said.
Charles acceded to the throne Sept. 8 upon the death of his mother, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, who died at age 96.
Around 27 billion coins bearing Elizabeth II’s image currently circulate in the United Kingdom All will remain legal tender and be in active circulation, to be replaced over time as they become damaged or worn.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. & WINDSOR, England, September 9, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– U.S. Polo Assn., the official brand of the United States Polo Association (USPA), in conjunction with the USPA and its licensing partner in the United Kingdom, Brand Machine Group (BMG), offer our deepest condolences to the entire Royal Family on the tremendous loss of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Her Majesty The Queen lived a life of extraordinary public service and has been an iconic and illuminating figure not just in the United Kingdom but around the world. She will be remembered globally with great affection and respect for her sense of duty and commitment to her role for more than 70 years.
“U.S. Polo Assn. has been extremely fortunate to have worked with The Palace in supporting the Royal Family with their philanthropic efforts over the years,” said J. Michael Prince, President and CEO of USPA Global Licensing. “Partnering with both The Duke of Cambridge, HRH Prince William and The Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry to carry on the Queen’s philanthropic legacy through the spirit of polo has been, and will continue to be an honor and a privilege.”
The sport of polo has been part of the Royal Family’s history dating back many generations.
“The USPA is saddened to learn of the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and we extend our most sincere condolences to The Royal Family,” notes Stewart Armstrong, Chairman of the United States Polo Association (USPA). “Her Majesty’s impact is both far reaching and immense. It has always been an honor to partner with The Palace on its philanthropic mission, through polo tournaments in the U.K. and the U.S., which benefit so many deserving charities.”
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was just 25 years old when she inherited the throne. She was 27 when she had her coronation ceremony, with 27 million people tuning in to the momentous occasion justin the U.K.
“Alongside the people of the U.K. and the Commonwealth, Brand Machine Group mourns the death of Her Majesty The Queen,” added Boo Jalil, CEO of U.K.-based Brand Machine Group (BMG). “Her leadership and sacrifice to duty has been unprecedented, and we thank her for her more than 70 years of service to our country.”
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For Further Information, Contact:
Stacey Kovalsky – Senior Director, Global Communications, USPA Global Licensing Phone +001.561.790.8036 – Email: skovalsky@uspagl.com
