The excerpts from Hugo Vickers’ latest royal book are frying me. Part of it is because of Vickers’ writing style of presenting complete lies in simplistic, declarative statements, like he’s writing royal propaganda for children. To be fair, that probably is how he sees his role as royal commentator and biographer. Anyway, in one of the latest book-excerpt tranches, Vickers has reached back to the 1980s and 1990s to blame every royal problem on Princess Diana. There’s a symmetry there, because for Vickers, every royal problem from 2016 through the present day can be and should be blamed on the Duchess of Sussex. Who is to blame for everything from 1997 through 2016? I can’t wait for those excerpts! Anyway, here are some of Vickers’ claims about the last years of Diana and Charles’s marriage, with an interesting comment from Princess Margaret.
How Charles suffered!! While [Diana] garnered good publicity, the inner royal circle, who had witnessed the marriage unfold, were aware of all that Prince Charles had suffered – uncontrollable tantrums and using the children against him, not to mention Diana’s infidelities.
Tampon Charles: More trouble came with the airing of the Camillagate tapes – a particularly damaging late-night conversation between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. The Tampax reference was especially unfortunate. As with the Squidgygate tapes, there was a far-fetched theory that a random radio surfer in a shed had stumbled across the conversation. But it is as good as certain that the prince’s telephones were bugged by security services until finally someone realised: ‘We’ve got him.’
Diana’s KP apartment: In December 1993, Diana made the dramatic announcement that she was stepping down from public life. She needed ‘time and space’, she said in a public speech that greatly irritated the Prince of Wales. Her so-called retirement did not last long. Sir Michael Peat, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, let it be known that Kensington Palace was for working members of the Royal Family. In fear of losing her home, Diana returned to work. She also joined the Royal Family at Sandringham that year.
Princess Margaret’s take on the Wales marriage: At the end of 1993, Princess Margaret gave me her take on the Waleses’ ill-fated marriage. ‘The trouble was that he undermined her [Diana] consistently from the start, and gave her no support … Then he began to get difficult over the children, which was the cause of all the trouble last year …I don’t know why she wanted to come back [to Sandringham]. I longed to tell her to go away. It was the same with me and Tony [Lord Snowdon]. He undermined me.’
Diana’s BBC Panorama interview. It has since been revealed that Diana was tricked into it by devious misinformation – but even so, she was not averse to letting her views be known. Her words were mean-spirited. She had aimed to damage her husband and succeeded, but she also damaged herself.
“But it is as good as certain that the prince’s telephones were bugged by security services…” Just a few paragraphs earlier, Vickers had called Diana “paranoid” for sweeping her KP apartment for bugs, then he admits a popular and obvious conspiracy that Charles’s phone was bugged. Gee, how weird! It’s almost like Diana was absolutely correct to be “paranoid” after all. As for Margaret’s assessment of Charles and Diana’s marriage… that’s correct but incomplete. And it often goes undiscussed, but Charles was all about undermining Diana, publicly and privately. They go on and on about Diana’s mental health issues, blaming her for not being strong enough to handle their abuse, while refusing to acknowledge that Charles and Camilla were openly waging a huge campaign against her and yes, endlessly undermining her. Of course, Diana learned how to play that game too and she did it better than Charles and Camilla. Which infuriated them.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
