Seven scandals that marked the British royal family during the reign of Elizabeth II

The British family has been the protagonists of several scandals in the more than 70 years of the reign of Elizabeth II, who died this Thursday (8): from the refusal to marry Princess Margaret to a divorced man in the 1950s to the accusations against Prince Andrew. per. CNN recalled some of the episodes.

Princess Margaret and an impossible love

Princess Margaret, sister of Elizabeth II, and Peter Townsend met when she was just 14 years old, when he was still being considered by the then King, George VI, for a position at Court as a knight. Romance flourished but remained a secret within the Royal Family. When it became clear in 1953 that the couple wanted to marry, the queen asked them to wait a year, possibly counting on the passion to die.

Townsend was divorced. When information about a possible marriage emerged, the Queen’s private secretary warned her to send him away, and she reluctantly agreed. He was appointed air attaché in Brussels for two years, but exile did not stop the romance.

The council of ministers strongly opposed the marriage and decided that if the princess insisted on going ahead, a bill would be introduced depriving her of all her rights, privileges and income.

On October 31, 1955, after conversations with Townsend and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Margaret issued a statement that will go down in history: “I would like you to know that I have decided not to marry Captain Peter Townsend. Knowing that Christian marriage is indissoluble and my duty to the Commonwealth, I have decided to put these considerations first.”

“We had reached the end of the road,” Townsend wrote at the time. “Our feelings for each other haven’t changed, but they have been a burden to us that we’ve decided, together, to leave her.”

Ironically, within a generation, divorce was accepted in the royal family: Margaret herself was divorced in 1978.

Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew’s Controversial Ex-Wife

Sarah Ferguson met Prince Andrew at a party at Windsor Castle in 1985 and a year later, after a very public courtship, they were married. At the time, Andrew, a dashing Royal Navy pilot, was something of a bon vivant and a regular on the party circuit at the time, earning nicknames like “The Playboy Prince” in the tabloid press.

Their lavish wedding at Westminster Abbey was followed two years later by the birth of their first child, Beatrice. Their second daughter, Eugenie, was born in 1990.

Ferguson was initially very popular in the British media for his open and exuberant style. As time went on, and with a husband often absent in the Navy, she began to feel increasingly unhappy and struggled with constant media attention.

She devoted herself to charity work and began working on a series of children’s books, but newspaper headlines began to turn negative, with reports that she was having financial problems and accusations about her relationships with male friends, especially her husband. counselor.

In 1992, British media published pictures of Bryan allegedly sucking the Duchess’s fingers. The scandal practically ended their marriage.

In 1995, the BBC reported that “Fergie”, as she was known in the press, had incurred more than £4 million ($5.76 million) in debt. This prompted the Queen to take the unusual step of publicly closing her portfolio to her daughter-in-law.

The following year, the Duchess lost her title when the divorce from Prince Andrew became official.
“There were three of us at this wedding, it was a little crowded”: Diana, Charles and Camilla
In 1995, Buckingham entered a deep crisis after the beloved Princess Diana made an explosive statement in a BBC interview about her marriage to Prince Charles and her relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, whom she would later marry.

“There were three of us at this wedding, it was a crowd,” Diana told journalist Martin Bashir when asked if she thought Parker Bowles had been a factor in the breakdown of her marriage, setting off an earthquake in British public life.

By then, Diana and Charles had been separated for three years, but the interview would lead to divorce. In that conversation, Diana also spoke candidly for 50 minutes about her relationship with James Hewitt, her battle with bulimia, her role in the royal family, and her mental health.

The interview took the royal family by surprise, according to Charles Anson, the Queen’s press secretary at the time. “There wasn’t much we could say,” he told CNN.

In that interview, she said that while she realized she would not become queen, she hoped that she could be the “queen of hearts” of the British people.

(The interview, incidentally, returned to the center of debate recently after it was confirmed that the BBC journalist used deceptive methods to get Lady Di to agree to give the interview and that the broadcaster covered it up)

Buckingham under scrutiny after Diana’s death

A year after the interview, when her divorce from Prince Charles was already consummated, Diana died in a car accident while on vacation in France with then-boyfriend Dodi Fayed.

When television broadcasts began reporting the deadly accident, the royal family issued a brief statement saying they were “deeply shocked and distressed” by the news. But “to the grieving population, this seemed like nothing,” recalls historian Kate Williams in “The Windsors.”

As the hours wore on and the ever-reserved Brits went into open mourning, all eyes were on Buckingham Palace for a larger gesture or declaration.

Finally, before the funeral, the Queen said Diana was an “exceptional and talented human being”.

Harry in a Nazi uniform at a party

In his adolescence and youth, Prince Harry was at the center of several public scandals. The most notorious, perhaps, was in 2015, when The Sun newspaper published a photo of the prince in beige pants and short-sleeved shirt with a red Nazi badge on his left arm. He had chosen the outfit to attend a party.

Criticism has rapidly mounted from lawmakers and Jewish groups, in the UK and abroad. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles said it was “inexcusable for a member of the royal family to do this” and called Harry’s action “a disgrace for England”. “I think you should join the British delegation going to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz,” he told CNN.

The prince then admitted that he had made a bad decision and apologized: “I’m sorry if I offended anyone.”

Three years ago, when he was 17, his father sent him to a rehab facility to warn him about the dangers of drugs after discovering he had smoked marijuana and allegedly drank alcohol.

Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein

One of the worst scandals that the Queen faced in her last stage was the accusations against Prince Andrew in connection with her relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

At the center of the charges was Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that Epstein trafficked her and forced her to perform sexual acts with her friends, including Prince Andrew, when she was 17. According to her, Andrew knew she was a minor in the United States. in season.

In 2019, Andrew gave a widely criticized BBC interview in which, while he denied having had sexual contact with Giuffre, he said he did not regret his relationship with Epstein and expressed no sympathy for the banker’s disgraced victims. Days later, he had to recant.

He then announced that he was retiring from public service, but that was far from the end of the controversy. Over the course of three years, and with a civil lawsuit brought by Giuffre, he was finally stripped of his military titles and his charities. The queen also stripped him of his status as “her royal highness”: he went into permanent exile. He had, in the words of CNN correspondents Max Foster and Lauren Said-Moorhouse, to “let it go.”

Harry and Meghan’s ‘exit’, the beginning of a cycle of painful revelations

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, decided to step away from their royal duties in early 2020. It was just a year later that they finalized the family deal: they would not be active and serving members and would have their appointments. revoked honorary military and royal sponsorships.

That decision was made public in February, but the real bombshell that would explode before the eyes of the royal family came a month later, when Harry Meghan, now released from his royal ties, gave an explosive interview to Oprah Winfrey.

“In the interview, the Duchess of Sussex said that at one point her life as British royalty was so isolated and lonely that she ‘didn’t want to be alive anymore’.

Meghan claimed she was forced to suppress her outspoken nature and give up her personal freedom. He said he didn’t have access to his passport, driver’s license or keys after joining the royal family, and they were only returned to him when the couple moved out.

The Duchess of Sussex, who currently lives in the United States with Prince Harry, said the situation was made worse by the “old-fashioned colonial overtones” that were often racist that appeared repeatedly in the couple’s notoriously scathing British press coverage.

And he said that within the royal family, there were a lot of “concerns and conversations about how dark your son Archie’s skin might have been when he was born.”

The prince, who is sixth in line to the throne, said for his part that there is a culture of silent suffering in the royal family. However, Meghan’s race (she’s half black) and the abuse she endured made the situation even more difficult for the couple than other royals.

Harry stated that this prompted him to discuss the matter with the royal family. He told Winfrey that he believed there were many opportunities for the palace to “show some public support” in the face of continued racial abuse in the press. “However, none of my family said anything. That hurts.”

After the interview that set off another storm in Buckingham, the royal family said they were “saddened” to learn how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan, calling the allegations of racism “worrying”.