Society snapper and master of the badinage Cecil Beaton once famously described the Queen Mother as a “a marshmallow made on a welding machine.” It’s a cracking bit of imagery and one it’s time to dust off and haul out for the 21ts century.
While the Queen Mother, Gordon’s number one customer and reason the company’s stock price took a dive after her passing (I’m guessing) might never have met her great-granddaughter-in-law Kate, the Princess of Wales, but I reckon the 41-year-old is her natural heir. The princess, as far as we know and to my eternal disappointment, might not be one for calling for “drinky poos” at 1130am daily but she is unequivocally a thoroughly modern “marshmallow.”
Proof: The fact that it has now emerged that Kate played a leading role in delivering one of the biggest blows to Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex in years. (Well, at least the second biggest blow after he lost his favourite XBox controller in the move to Los Angeles.)
The scene: A Kensington Palace sitting room of sorts. (If it’s the one seen in a handful of photos of Kate’s home then it looks like it was designed by a 63-year-old named Majorie with an enduring yen for mahogany and priceless knick-knackery.)
It was March 2021, in the immediate, stunned aftermath of Harry and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s coup de grace of an Oprah interview in 2021, and the world was reeling.
The duchess had just come out and point blank suggested that the royal family had a very serious issue with race, implying that decisions regarding titles and security might have had a racial dimension and that there had been “concerns and conversations” about her unborn baby’s skin colour.
Of all the claims lobbed by the Sussexes during the two hour spectacle of feelings- of the palace’s shocking disregard for Meghan’s mental health; of a reptilian family business that put self-interest before ducal distress – it was the question of race that posed the greatest danger to the Palace.
After all, Her late Majesty was the head of the Commonwealth – an association of a third of the world’s population, the vast majority of whom are people of colour. Britain, so the narrative went, was meant to be a proudly multicultural society, built on the unifying belief that everyone likes decent vindaloo.
Which was why, out of the myriad grenades lobbed by the Sussexes, this was the one that the royal family could not try to imperiously ignore while inwardly praying it all went away. (Sorry chaps, never going to happen.)
Which brings us to the recently updated edition of Courtiers, Valentine Low, the Times’ royal writer of 15 years’, superlative book about the inner machinations and manoeuvring of those who sit at the right hand of the monarchy.
Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex with Oprah Winfrey. Picture: Joe Pugliese / Harpo Productions / AFP
Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex with Oprah Winfrey. Picture: Joe Pugliese / Harpo Productions / AFP
Over the weekend the Times ran an extract from Courtiers, a cracking read for anyone who understands that The Crown is a confection of creative licence and an unthinkably large wig budget, and it revealed what happened next in that Kensington Palace sitting room.
Low writes that Kate and husband Prince William, “sat together on a sofa as they discussed with their officials how to deal with the Sussexes’ incendiary allegations.”
A statement had been roughly drafted in response to the Oprah interview, you see but it was as an insider told Low, “a much milder version. The debate was, do you rise entirely above it and offer the olive branch of [Harry and Meghan being] ‘much loved members of the family’? Or is there some moment when you have to intervene and offer a view?”
William and Kate were reportedly on exactly the same page.
“They wanted it toughened up a bit,” the insider has said “They were both of one mind that we needed something that said that the institution did not accept a lot of what had been said.
“He said, ‘It is really important that you guys come up with the right way of making sure that we are saying that this does not stand.’ She was certainly right behind him on it.”
All of which sounds like it was a perfect exemplar of them being a married couple on the same page about everything from bedtimes to batting back across the net history-making – and shaking – allegations about race.