Royals at War

by Dylan Howard

  ANOTHER PAIR OF HEIRS

  The world saw more of the Royals than ever before in 2012. Not only did they see the “Queen” billowing down from a helicopter, but for good measure, Harry’s genitals and Kate’s breasts were exposed, too. Even Prince Philip got in on the act. While sporting a kilt during the Highland Games, he accidentally managed to flash his own one-eyed Loch Ness Monster to cameras. The “wardrobe malfunction” answered the question of whether ninety-one-year-old Royals go commando under their kilts.

  Harry was snapped naked as he cavorted in Las Vegas, playing some sort of nude billiards with a gaggle of girls. Kate’s topless sunbathing, meanwhile, was immortalized when an enterprising photographer with a very long lens infiltrated the couple’s private holiday at a hunting lodge deep in the French countryside.

  St James’s Palace growled a response of rage over the “grotesque and totally unjustifiable” violation of Harry’s privacy, calling the incident “reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales.” In a show of patriotic pride, and to spare both Harry and Kate’s blushes, the British media refused to buy and print pictures of either of them. Such restraint was a rare moment of unity in the notoriously febrile UK media and an indication of the fondness with which they—then—held the brothers.

  St James’s Palace went on to issue legal proceedings against Closer, the French magazine that had printed the photographs, for breach of privacy; its editor stood by the decision to publish, saying, “These are pictures that are full of joy. The pictures are not degrading.” In May 2017, the magazine lost the case and was forced to pay $119,000 in damages, with the magazine’s editor and owner each having to come up with an additional $53,000.

  For the most part, Kate and William’s home life progressed peacefully in the year after their wedding. Based in Anglesey, where William was flying his RAF Search and Rescue missions as a copilot in the Falkland Islands, the couple generally kept a low profile outside of royal engagements.

  As one historian had famously put it, the first “duty and ambition” of someone in the Duchess’s position was to produce an heir. December brought the news everyone had been waiting for. Shortly before her twelfth week, when an announcement usually would have been made, Kate’s morning sickness reached worrying levels, and the decision was made to go public. The news was received with elation. Harry, on tour in Afghanistan, was notified by email, while the courtiers at St James’s Palace high-fived and issued a statement of congratulations from the Queen, Philip, Charles, and fam.

  The pregnancy was especially important, because the Queen had tweaked the laws of primogeniture. Now, regardless of the tot’s gender, it would be third in line to the throne.

  On July 22, 2013, a hot, muggy summer’s day in London, George Alexander Louis—Prince George of Cambridge—was born. The world celebrated the arrival of the future King with gun salutes in Bermuda, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Canada, church bells pealing in celebration across Britain. Kate had suffered in her first pregnancy, and her extreme morning sickness elicited sympathy and admiration for her stoic continuation of her Royal duties until the last possible moment.

  After a day of global rejoicing and congratulations, Kate was on the steps of the Lindo Wing at Paddington’s St Mary’s Hospital, clutching the eight-pound, six-ounce tot for his first photo call, in front of a phalanx of global media, as was traditional for new royal births. Looking thrilled, Kate was immaculate. Her hair was blow-dried and styled, and she wore a polka-dot dress by British designer Jenny Packham. Above the yells of photographers, the flashing of cameras, and distant cheers of crowds who had been keeping vigil outside the hospital, Kate grinned widely and was overheard saying she “couldn’t be happier. It’s a moment that any parent having just given birth will know what this feeling feels like.”

  William radiated pride for his son and wife and was eager to begin cracking dad jokes straightaway. “He’s got a good pair of lungs on him, that’s for sure,” he bantered. “He’s a big boy but he has got her looks, thankfully.” The couple, mindful of newspaper deadlines, bypassed tradition to announce the birth initially by Twitter, much to the gratitude of newsrooms around the nation, who had been on standby for over a week now. But William also placated traditionalists by ensuring the news was also delivered in the old-fashioned manner of a placard, set on an easel by the gates of Buckingham Palace.

  The Queen was the first visitor to meet her new great grandchild and someday successor, the following morning, back home at Kensington Palace. Harry gave an interview later on, saying it was “fantastic to have an addition to the family,” even though he had been knocked down the line of succession. “I only hope my brother knows how expensive my babysitting charges are,” he deadpanned.

  In August that year, the Cambridges released a series of amateur snaps, taken by Kate’s dad, of the proud new parents, George, and dog Lupo enjoying the summer sunshine. The sharing of the relaxed, informal shots sent a clear message: George was the first close heir to the throne of the modern digital era, but his childhood was going to be loving, secure, and as normal as possible, something Diana always prioritized with her own boys.

  As William’s commission with the RAF drew to a close at the end of August, so did the best part of a decade spent in service across nearly every part of the military. It was time for him to assume his full-time royal duties. That September, he and Kate moved back to London, to apartment 1A at Kensington Palace. They settled into the comfortable, calm rhythm of royal life, with Kate engaging with a variety of causes and charities.

  The couple’s first full year of marriage concluded with a heartbreaking moment when, on December 5, they attended the red-carpet premiere of Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, the long-awaited biopic of Nelson Mandela. During the gala screening in central London, the royal couple was seated next to the film’s star, Idris Elba. As the film screened, he noticed Kate suddenly seemed distracted and upset.

  “The Duchess, Kate, sort of turned to me and looked at me as she had her phone,” he recalled in an interview. “I wondered what was wrong with her because she looked quite emotional. And my girlfriend looked at me and handed me the phone and I looked down and there it was, Mandela had passed. I looked back at Prince William and Kate and they were just in tears with me.”

  Exiting the cinema to gathered masses of reporters, William looked shocked by the news that Mandela had died in Johannesburg, bizarrely during the London premiere of the film of his life.

  “I just wanted to say it’s incredibly sad and tragic news,” he addressed the media. “We were just reminded what an extraordinary and inspiring man Nelson Mandela was. My thoughts and prayers are with him and his family. It’s very sad.”

  The sad news aside, the couple and George rounded off the year with a traditional Christmas at Granny’s, in Sandringham. It had been a magnificent year, full of accomplishment and achievement, the new Royal slipping easily into her role as wife, Duchess, Queen consort-in-waiting, and charity campaigner. The British press, soothed by her pragmatic approach to their role in her life, yet suitably impressed by the no-nonsense way she had faced down the French editors who had printed the topless pictures, was united in approval.

  Barely a year after George’s arrival, Kate was pregnant again. In September 2014, it was announced that George would soon be joined by another wee Cambridge. And so it was, on May 2, 2015, Charlotte Elizabeth Diana was introduced to the world with the traditional photo call outside the Lindo wing, barely ten hours after she was born. “It’s very special having a new little girl … I feel very, very lucky that George has got a little sister,” Kate said in an interview.

  Later, in 2020, Kate admitted that these photo calls outside the Lindo wing were nerve-racking, implicitly sympathizing with her sister-in-law’s much-criticized reticence following baby Archie’s birth.

  “Yeah, slightly terrifying, slightly terrifying, I’m not going to lie,” she told the Happy Mum, Ha
ppy Baby podcast. But pointedly, in contrast to Meghan, Kate was careful to acknowledge the expectations of the public when it came to royal babies: “Everyone had been so supportive and both William and I were really conscious that this was something that everyone was excited about and, you know, we’re hugely grateful for the support that the public had shown us, and actually for us to be able to share that joy and appreciation with the public, I felt was really important.”

  THE PRINCE’S PARTNERS IN CRIME

  Harry’s years at Eton were packed with incident and action. Unlike his comparatively stable brother, Harry was cheerfully unacademic, but they shared a love of sport and enthusiastically participated in the school’s Combined Cadet Force. But while William had learned to be dignified and dutiful during his time at Eton, Harry found himself increasingly in the news, crashing in and out of parties, pubs, nightclubs, and trouble. The recently bereaved adolescent entered Eton in September 1998, barely a year after his mother’s death and still traumatized. Throw in his increasing royal profile, and Harry would find himself caught between the staid tradition of his family and the hedonistic lifestyle of a boisterous young Etonian.

  By the time Harry settled into the school, he’d bonded with a tight circle of privileged friends. In addition to his and William’s long-trusted circle from home, the “Glosse Posse,” the Princes had kept close to a number of youngsters who had journeyed with them from primary school to secondary school. By the time Harry was in his midteens, the Glosse Posse were notorious around the pubs and clubs of rural Gloucester with the teenage Prince often seen staggering around with a beer bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other. Trouble brewed in 2001 when British tabloid newspapers exposed after-hours sessions at the gang’s favorite bar, the Rattlesnake, where Harry partied with girls, booze, and dope. Further details revealed that Harry and William had even created their own private nightclub in the basement of Highgrove, dubbed “Club H,” where all manner of frolic and fun apparently took place on a regular basis during the Princes’ school holidays. To the media, and the wider country, which generally tended to regard the Royals with a very British mixture of affection, respect, and contempt, Harry was clearly a troubled youth, running wild.

  But back at school, chastened by the media coverage and away from the distractions of life at Highgrove, Harry soon got back on track. The young Prince discovered that he thrived on structure, routine, discipline, and activity, whereas when left to his own devices, he floundered. His friends from school supported him, understanding the impossibility of Harry and William’s life. Adolescence is hard enough, going away to an elite boarding school even harder. Having your family’s intimate secrets splashed all over the world’s media as you try to navigate both is unbearable. The necessity of security at the school and communications with the Clarence House’s Press Secretary Colleen Harris to contain the perpetual media intrusion, with door-stepping journalists attempting to bribe fellow pupils and friends into divulging juicy tidbits, stalking the boys and their friends with zoom lenses in the bushes or covert surveillance in search of a headline—one could see why the Princes kept a tight lock on their faithful core of friends.

  There were two in particular—Tom “Skippy” Inskip and the boisterous Guy Pelly—who were Harry’s perennial partners in crime, when it came to partying, boozing, and bad behavior. Other members of the inner sanctum were Thomas and Henry van Straubenzee, sons of Diana’s close friends and old accomplices of William and Harry, respectively. The pair had holidayed with the van Straubenzees on idyllic, boisterous vacations in the Cornish town of Rock, where lengthy evenings touring the local bars were balanced with days surfing and chilling with other kids from wealthy backgrounds.

  It was eighteen-year-old Henry van Straubenzee who unexpectedly shook Harry’s world to its core toward the end of his time at Eton. In December 2002, Henry and a friend were at a party to celebrate the end of the school year at Ludgrove Prep, where he had been teaching to fill in time, before heading to university and then military training at Sandhurst. A bright, spirited scamp of a boy, Henry was drunk when he and an equally intoxicated friend volunteered to drive to a nearby pal’s house to fetch a CD player. The short journey ended in tragedy when, after skidding off the dark road, Henry was killed outright, his friend at the wheel severely injured. That year had also seen the death of Harry’s great-aunt Margaret and great-grandmother, the Queen Mother. Now he was ending 2002 in shock and grief at the death of one of his closest friends. The emotional toll of that year hit sensitive Harry in the gut. Between the press scandals about his alleged drug taking and heavy drinking, the deaths of family members and now his closest friend, and the pressures of entering adulthood with all the expectations his position required of him, the Prince was shaken, fragile, and in need of some time to reflect on the turbulence of the past few years.

  In 2003, Harry left Eton with two A-levels, in Art (B) and Geography (D). Making the best of the situation, Prince Charles issued a statement claiming he was proud of his son’s academic achievements, but it was clear to everyone that the Prince was never going to linger in academia, once he had the choice. In the tradition of royal men, he eagerly signed up to join Sandhurst Military Academy.

  Ever since childhood, Harry had been obsessed with the military. He had watched the film Zulu so many times that his father took him to Africa for the first time in November 1997, in the immediate aftermath of Diana’s death, to visit Botswana and South Africa and see the infamous site of Rorke’s Drift, immortalized in the classic war film. Now, as he graduated from Eton with a stellar career in the school’s military wing, the Combined Cadet Force his greatest success of the past five years, he knew there was only one future for him. First, though, there was the little matter of a round-the-world gap year adventure. The boy who left London in September 2003 would never return. He came back the next year a Prince, a man, a troubled soul, a conflicted individual, but a youngster who had discovered the world, met countless people from all manner of backgrounds—and had met his first, great love.

  OUT BACK OF THE PUBLIC EYE

  There are few tougher, or emptier, environments than the Australian outback at the height of summer. Tooloombilla was smack-dab in the heart of nowhere, and between September and November 2003, the Tooloombilla Station cattle ranch was home to the third in line to the throne.

  The forty-thousand-acre property, owned by friends of Diana, Annie, and Noel Hill, gladly welcomed Harry to experience life as a “jackaroo,” an Australian cowboy. Being so far from home, there were some concerns at Clarence House about how the eighteen-year-old Prince would cope with conditions on the ranch. The intense heat, the grueling routine, working from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., herding cattle, mending fences, and generally getting stuck in—would Harry be able to handle it?

  Predictably, the biggest challenge Harry faced in his early weeks at the ranch turned out to be none of the above. For locals, many of whom had voted for retaining the monarchy in the Australian referendum in 1999, news of Harry’s presence raised barely a sunburned brow. But, despite a formidable security operation (costing the Australian taxpayer £240,000), the British media were soon gathered at the gates of Tooloombilla Station, clamoring for a glimpse of the Prince on horseback. Already nursing a deep loathing for the press following his mother’s death, Harry was torn between fury, frustration, and resignation at the chaos, threatening to leave unless the media did. Rather than herding bulls between the parched gum trees on wide dusty paddocks, the Prince found himself stuck sitting indoors, watching videos.

  “I’ve got a young man in there in pieces,” said Mark Dyer, the senior aide who arranged Harry’s visit. “He can’t do his job as a jackaroo, he can’t go out, he can’t even muster cattle in the yards near the road without having his photo taken.”

  Back in London, Prince Charles’s press secretary and long-term confidante of William and Harry’s, Colleen Harris, warned that Harry might walk unless the papers retreated. She explained, “He’s gone to
the outback to acquire new trades and have new experiences, but if he’s hindered by the media and it’s disruptive to his work on the farm, then we will have to look at the options.”

  Fortunately for all concerned, the issue was resolved by a compromise, allowing the press a couple of photo opportunities with the Prince, in return for leaving him alone for the rest of his stay. Once this small hiccup had been resolved, Prince Harry was free to enjoy his first solo trip abroad. He attended rodeos, herded cattle on his favorite horse, Guardsman, and took regular trips across the country to follow the English rugby team. Earning one hundred dollars a week and roughing it with fellow jackaroos and jillaroos was heaven for Harry, despite the scorching heat wave that gripped the region that summer, with temperatures soaring past a hundred degrees.

  DIRTY HARRY

  The Prince had first traveled to Africa in September 1997, with Charles and his nanny, Tiggy. There, in the immediate bleak aftermath of Diana’s death, the young Prince found something new and immediately fascinating—a continent alive with people, stories, cultures, and experiences unlike anything he had previously encountered. The Royals have long cherished their connection to the African continent, and Harry is no exception. To this day, he is regularly seen in countries across the continent, and speaking up on social, environmental, and ecological issues pertinent to the region. In 2019, he told Reuters how the continent had soothed, inspired, and fascinated him over the years since Diana’s death.