If all goes to plan Prince William will one day take the big job. Just like his father, he’s spent a lifetime as the heir to the British throne and, with King Charles now battling cancer, there’s a chance he could be stepping up much sooner than anticipated.
But what does a lifetime of being told you’re the most special boy do a human brain? Well, Kate Middleton’s unexplained absence saw many lurid theories about William spread over the internet, with some even believing he’d killed his wife and was covering it up.
So let’s go over the worst things William can credibly be said to have done over his 41 years on Earth. Just as with his brother Harry and other Royals we’ll be assigning each wrongdoing a numerical score, allowing us to eventually reveal the worst member of the Royal family (which, let’s face it, will almost certainly be Andrew).
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Yup, William was once known as “Basher Wills” to the terrified children at a nursery school as he would attack anyone who crossed his path. To be clear, William was also a toddler at the time, but seems to have been an especially brutal little boy.
According to the book The Palace Papers he was considered a “brat” by Queen Elizabeth II and his habit of yelling “No one tells me what to do! When I am king I will have you punished!” to his nanny alarmed the palace, who thought they had a real-life Lord Farquaad on their hands. Even the Queen herself stepped in to discipline him:
“In the autumn of 1987, she yanked the five-year-old home from a birthday party following a tantrum when he had not been allowed to blow out the candles on the cake and had expressed his displeasure by throwing sandwiches and ice cream around the room.”
He later calmed down and we don’t want to judge a preschooler on morality, so we’ll go easy on him this time.
Wrongdoing rating: 1/10
In Spare Prince Harry details some rather cruel behavior from William at Eton College. When arriving Harry was a nervous first-year student he felt “way over my head” and looked to his big brother for some advice and reassurance. William’s response to his scared sibling was to tell him to pretend he didn’t know him.”
As Harry said, his very presence at Eton seemed to annoy William:
The whole Nazi costume thing is ultimately Prince Harry’s fault, nobody forced him to go out in public dressed like a genocidal fascist. However, William appears to have at minimum contributed to the 2005 controversy.
As detailed in Spare, Harry sought his brother’s opinion on whether he should go as an RAF pilot or a Nazi: “I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said.” He even modeled it for them: “They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous!”
It’s hard not to read this situation as William realizing that Harry was about to embarrass himself and sneakily prodding him on.
Wrongdoing rating: 4/10