Tina Brown was in rare form in the weeks before we learned that the Princess of Wales is being treated for cancer. Brown appeared on CBS just after the Mother’s Day photo fiasco, where she declared that “the wheels have come off” Kensington Palace and that the whole operation was “flailing.” Then Brown went to England last week to do some media and she was pretty brutal on Prince William and Kate’s whole operation and the lack of dignity. While she was in the UK, it looks like Brown caught up with her royal sources, because she’s been especially chatty post-cancer-video. Brown wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about all of the sh-t that’s gone down and how Will and Kate are dealing with “intense anxiety” behind the scenes because they are not prepared to be king and queen. I get that… but I still believe there’s a tremendous amount of clownery happening. Some highlights:
The Mother’s Day frankenphoto fiasco: After The Associated Press issued a kill notification on the botched photoshopped image of a suspiciously glossy Princess of Wales surrounded by her beaming progeny, there was a typical outburst of tabloid pomposity questioning whether Kensington Palace could ever be considered a trusted source of news. Huh? When was the last time any tabloid considered the palace a trusted source of news? As the editor of Vanity Fair in 1985, I wrote a piece revealing that Prince Charles and Princess Diana were having awful marital fights. The palace roundly denied it, and the royal couple denied it in a television interview, confirming in my mind — correctly, as it turned out — that it was all true.
Turmoil behind the scenes: I am told the turmoil behind the scenes has been intense, resulting in what has felt like a series of baffling press screw-ups. We hear often of Prince Harry’s hatred of the press. If possible, Prince William — while concealing it better — hates the press even more. His bloody-minded determination to stick to his grandmother Queen Elizabeth’s script of “never complain, never explain” is magical thinking in the era of the social media maelstrom, creating a vacuum filled by rumor and deranged conspiracy theories.
Anxiety: The almost simultaneous news of Charles’s cancer has put William and Catherine in frightening proximity to ascending the throne just when they had hoped for a span of years to parent their children out of the public eye. The prospect of it, I am told, is causing them intense anxiety. Help from other family members is scant, aside from the redoubtable Princess Anne, Charles’s sister, and the good-egg Gaiety Girl Queen Camilla. The slimmed-down monarchy that Charles always promoted is suddenly looking very lean indeed. The combination of the Harry and Meghan clown show in Montecito, Calif.; the fusillades from Harry’s memoir, “Spare”; and the disgrace of Prince Andrew — who has little social contact with anyone except his horse — have put William and Catherine under unmanageable pressure.
The weakness of today’s monarchy: It may not be a popular thought, but in many ways I blame the predicament and weakness of the monarchy today on Queen Elizabeth. It’s possible that future generations will see her as the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the British monarchy. She stayed too long, and by doing so, left behind a legacy that may be the opposite of what she wanted. The time for Elizabeth II to step down was not long after her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the year I have come to think of as peak London, when Britain dazzlingly hosted the Olympics.
Elizabeth loved being queen: No, Elizabeth II loved the world of politics and power as much as she did breeding horses and tramping the heather of her Balmoral estate. But her 70-year reign has left a pileup of heirs infantilized by too little to do and trapped by a dusty structure that should have been reformed decades ago.
William would have had more to do if he became Prince of Wales in 2012: And William, instead of taking over the Duchy of Cornwall estates in his early 30s and creating a space for the popular Harry to develop a strong portfolio of his own, ended up in a rivalrous relationship with his younger brother that exploded irretrievably when Meghan Markle entered the scene. A less hidebound palace might have come up with a more creative way to solve the Sussex imbroglio.
Frozen: Catherine is battling more — much more — than cancer. A tidal wave of premature responsibility is crashing in her and William’s direction. Frozen, unready and with Catherine now seriously unwell, the Prince and Princess of Wales await the awesome burden of the crown.
Even though she couches a lot of this in “poor Catherine,” she’s actually spilling some interesting tea – William and Kate are frozen and don’t know what to do, there were huge disagreements about how to handle everything behind the scenes and William and Kate have been infantilized to the point where they’re in their 40s and completely unprepared to take over or do anything but scream about their privacy. I think that’s probably close to what’s been happening. Or some of what’s been happening.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.