The late Princess Diana had “her favorite royal reporters,” who she would call up and gossip with often. She actually cycled through “favorites” at a steady clip and she pitted her favorite reporters against each other, which was very on-brand for Diana. Anyway, Richard Kay was one of her favorites for a time and he still milks that association to this day. He’s often billed as “Diana’s close friend,” the one she “confessed” to frequently in the years before her death. Well, Richard Kay appeared on the Mail’s Palace Confidential YouTube show this week and he massaged some old stories around to make it sound like Princess Diana was “preparing” her younger son for the throne. Good King Harry, his incandescent brother’s worst nightmare.
Princess Diana was allegedly preparing her youngest son, Prince Harry, to be the king over her “shy” eldest son, Prince William.
“I think William has been a bit of a surprise. He was a shy young man,” royal expert Richard Kay recalled on the “Palace Confidential” podcast Tuesday.
“Certainly, when his mother was still alive, she would tell me that she never really thought that William wanted the ‘top job,’ as she called it,” Kay added. Kay claimed his friend Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997, “in her mind, was sort of preparing the way for the possibility that it would be Harry who succeeded his father. And she used to, she had a nickname for Harry: She used to call him ‘Good King Harry’ — a throwback to medieval days.”
“Things haven’t worked out like that, and I think we are all rather grateful that they haven’t. The consensus was ‘we got the right one.’ And, I think we got the right one in William as Prince of Wales.”
Kay noted how the dad of three, 43, has “grown into” his role as future king alongside his wife, Kate Middleton.
“What I quite like about him is that he is coming up with some quite different ways to approach royalty,” Kay revealed. “[William] recognizes that some of the aspects of monarchy is sort of antediluvian — doesn’t resonate well with the modern public. I think he is aware that he’s going to have to make some big changes to ensure its survival.”
[From Page Six & transcribed from video]
I’m including the video below, cued to the relevant section. My guess is that Kay was called in to bloviate about this story for two reasons. One, to keep William on the backfoot, paranoid as always that Harry might one day come back and assume the throne by popular demand. Two, to say all of that “Good King Harry” stuff and then back down and say, in essence, “but of course we’re stuck with William, so let’s make the most of it.” What Kay leaves unsaid is the fact that William only started feeling keen about his kingship when Harry married Meghan. Before that moment, William couldn’t have cared less about the crown. Now he’s salivating for the crown… but it’s only because he wants to use his “power” to punish his brother.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
