The Daily Mail’s Richard Eden is practically foaming at the mouth this week because he gets to talk about the Beckham family, the Waleses and the Sussexes all at once. To recap, the Princess of Wales stepped out this week in a Victoria Beckham suit, a rare moment when Kate actually wore something new-to-us. Simultaneously, Victoria and David Beckham have been waging a pretty public campaign against their daughter-in-law, Nicola Peltz, who is married to Brooklyn Beckham. This week, we also learned that Nicola and Brooklyn were recently in Montecito and they had dinner with Prince Harry and Meghan. What do we get when we throw all of these gossip items together? The latest Eden Confidential column:
The Duke of Sussex cruelly suggested in his memoir, Spare, that his brother, Prince William, had married Kate Middleton because she fitted the ‘mould’ of the Royal Family, rather than solely for love. ‘For so many people in the family, especially obviously the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mould as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with,’ Prince Harry wrote.
This depiction of The Princess of Wales as a weak character whom the Windsors and their courtiers can shape in every which way they choose has always been far from the truth. Just how wide of the mark this notion really is was vividly illustrated this week when she made a powerful statement, not with words but by her actions. In this case, through her choice of clothes for a royal engagement. She appeared at a fashion industry event to present the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design in an olive-green, £1,340 trouser suit by Victoria Beckham.
Kensington Palace sources said her decision to wear the sharply tailored two-piece suit was to demonstrate her support for British designers in general. A friend of the Princess’s suggested that there was, however, more to it than that. And what they told me was fascinating.
‘Kate wanted to show her support for Victoria Beckham,’ the friend claimed. ‘She’s aware of what Victoria and David have been going through.’ A Kensington Palace spokesman declined to comment. What the Beckhams have been ‘going through’ is a family saga that has temporarily managed to knock the Windsors’ own difficulties off front pages.
While William has become estranged from his brother, the Beckhams have become distant from their eldest son, Brooklyn. In both Harry and Brooklyn’s cases, the problems started after they married older American women. Brooklyn, 26, married Nicola Peltz, 30, daughter of billionaire businessman Nelson Peltz, in 2022, while Harry, 40, had exchanged vows with actress Meghan Markle, 43, four years earlier.
Today, it is reported that the Sussexes are ‘secretly’ supporting the Peltzes. According to The Sun newspaper, Meghan and Harry invited Brooklyn and his wife to their mansion in Montecito, California, for dinner last week. It was a highly significant invitation as relations between the Beckhams and Brooklyn and his wife are said to be at rock bottom after the couple’s no-show at David’s various recent 50th birthday celebrations. The rift is said to come down to a struggle for Brooklyn’s affections between his doting wife – who is, according to those in the know, the ‘boss’ in the relationship – and his equally doting mother.
One long-standing friend of the Beckhams told my colleague Alison Boshoff: ‘Victoria is fairly open among her close friends about what a viper Nicola is and how she feels betrayed by Brooklyn, so the mask has fully dropped. This is a takeover situation and it is all about the relationship between Victoria Beckham and Nicola. In some ways, Brooklyn has married his mother in Nicola.’
Kate’s very public gesture to Victoria this week may be seen as a further blow to the Sussexes, who once considered the former England football captain and his wife to be part of their ‘court’ across the Atlantic.
“Who once considered the former England football captain and his wife to be part of their ‘court’ across the Atlantic…” Except the British tabloids have been screaming for YEARS that the Beckhams hate the Sussexes and want nothing to do with them. Similarly, there are claims that David was basically given an ultimatum: give up his friendship with Harry or else Beckham will never get a knighthood. As for drawing connections between the Peltz-Beckhams and the Sussexes… my god. Both British guys married American women and their British families turned extremely toxic about it! That’s it. That’s the whole connection. I’ve read Nicola’s interviews over the years, and I feel like she was probably really thrilled to meet Meghan especially. They have friends in common – Serena Williams is tight with the Peltz family (they’re neighbors). Anyway, it’s funny that this is a five-alarm emergency in the British press, to the point where Kate is trying to send bitchy messages to American women by wearing a terrible baby-poop-colored suit.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.
