After Princess Diana died in 1997, Queen Elizabeth II faced harsh criticism over her lack of response. The British press ran articles with headlines that read “Show you care.” After almost a week, the Queen finally spoke out and said that her family is offended that people think she is “indifferent” to Diana’s death.
British queens can be pretty casual, while you may think of the royal family as prim and proper.
1- Through mutual friends, Edward VIII met American socialite Wallis Simpson in 1931. By then, Wallis married Ernest Simpson, and Edward was next in line to the throne. People close to the royal family in 1934 began gossiping that Wallis and Edward’s friendship had developed into an affair. King George died on January 20, 1936, and Edward ascended the throne. Not a year later, Wallis filed for divorce from her husband.
After news of Wallis’s divorce became public, rumors began to circulate that Edward was the cause of the breakup. Palace officials allegedly persuaded Edward to prevent the divorce because they did not want people to think that Edward was to blame. Just weeks later, Edward invited Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to the palace, where he informed him that he was preparing to surrender to marry Wallis. In May 1937, however, Wallis’s divorce was finalized, and the couple married on June 3, 1937. They lived together until Edward died in 1972. No royal family member attended the wedding, although Edward retained the royal title for the rest of his life.
2. Princess Diana agreed to an exclusive interview with BBC correspondent Martin Bashir in 1995. During the interview, Diana talked about her marriage to Charles and her experiences with the royal family and admitted that she also had an affair. In her opinion, Charles’ long affair with Camilla Parker Bowles made her feel worthless. Speaking about the royal family, Diana also recounted her struggles with bulimia, postpartum depression, and self-harm.
After the interview was published, Queen Elizabeth II wrote to the couple, who have been separated since 1992, advising them to divorce. Several years after the interview was published, the BBC showed Diana’s brother Charles fake bank statements that they believed were proof that the media had paid the royal family for information about Diana to convince her to tell her side of the story. Story. Interview.
3. With the death of Princess Diana in 1997, the royal family faced a harsh reaction to the tragedy. According to Tina Brown’s book The Diana Chronicles, Charles was at Balmoral Castle with his sons, William Harry and the Queen, when the news of the incident became known.
Following the announcement, the Queen remained in Scotland while the world awaited the official word from Buckingham Palace. Prime Minister Tony Blair gave an emotional speech about the princess on the morning of her death, while the royal family remained silent.
However, on September 4, the Queen issued a statement saying that the family was “offended” by claims that she was “indifferent” to Diana’s death when, in fact, she was trying to protect Diana’s sons.
4. Prince Harry made headlines in 2005 when The Sun published a photograph of him wearing a Nazi costume at a party for “colonists and natives.” His costume featured a swastika armband, and his uniform resembled the German Afrika Korps.
The headline was ” Prince Harry, Royal Nazi, shocked by a swastika,” with a photo of Harry holding a drink while wearing the suit.
After the scandal broke, Harry apologized. ” Very sorry if I offended you in any way. The costume was chosen unsuccessfully, and I apologize”. Recall that Prince Charles sent Harry to rehab a few years earlier after he was caught smoking pot. He also got into a fight with paparazzi outside one of the nightclubs.
5. Five months after Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson announced their separation, paparazzi photographed Sarah while vacationing in St. Tropez with John Bryan, her financial advisor, kissing her feet and toes. This marked the first time such candid photos of a member of the royal family had been published, and to make matters worse, Sarah was with the royal family at Balmoral Castle on the day the newspaper went on sale. It is alleged that Princess Diana knew about the photos before they were published and sent a message to the royal writer saying, “The redhead is in trouble.” Andrew and Sarah officially divorced in 1996, although they remained close.
6. In January 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced that they were stepping down as senior members of the royal family and planned to become financially independent of the royal family.
Before making the decision, Harry and Meghan talked about the hardships of royal life. During her time in the royal family, Meghan faced harsh criticism from the British press, mostly on racial grounds. Following the announcement that the couple were dating in 2016, Harry issued a statement condemning the “wave of abuse and harassment” against Meghan. Buckingham Palace officially announced on February 19, 2021, that Meghan and Harry would no longer be royal family members.
7. During his seven decades of service, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, Prince Philip, made inappropriate and tactless remarks. During a visit to China 1986, he told a British student, ” In case you stay here for a long time, you will come home with narrow eyes.” He also said that British women could not cook and told the young student that he was “too fat to be an astronaut.” Upon meeting the Nigerian president, dressed in a traditional robe, Philip allegedly said: ” You seem ready to go to bed.”