How could a “private” Royal wedding between the Queen’s normally well-behaved grandson and a Canadian secretarial assistant end in a minor constitutional crisis?
Weddings and funerals are what Royalty does best, aren’t they?
Last night, Princes William and Harry let it be known they are furious about the extensive Hello! magazine coverage of the event and their own unwitting involvement.
A Royal source said, “Neither Peter nor the magazine sought their approval, and if they had, it certainly would not have been given. What has happened has not gone down well at all. They are very unhappy about it … as far as Harry, Kate and Chelsy are concerned, they were just letting their hair down at a private family event.”
Looking back over the titles of our wedding reports here at Royal Anecdotes, words like “fiasco”, “fandango”, “woes”, “pullout” and “sellout” predominate, some as far back as May the 5th.
I’m inclined to believe that naivety was the central cause of this slow motion train wreck of a wedding, mainly because very few of the participants knew the full extent of the sell-out to Hello! magazine, or even that the official photographs were to be handed to the notoriously voracious celebrity glossy.
From the Kelly family we were fed the sob story that they couldn’t afford the £50,000 ($100,000) for the reception in Frogmore House. That doesn’t begin to stack up because such a relatively small sum would easily have been found from the Royal Family, or their many supporters, had word gone around.
My guess is that Autumn Kelly didn’t want the state of the family finances to become known, so senior Royals were kept in the dark while she used her celebrity connections in Michael Parkinson’s office to broker the £500,000+ ($1m) deal. In that case, Peter Phillips is partly culpable. At some point his instincts as a member of the Royal Family must have kicked in to warn him of the dangers.
As for the Queen, who is now open season for criticism by some anti-Royal Members of Parliament, she must bitterly reflect that nothing much has gone right since the retirement of Sir Robin Janvrin, her Private Secretary, last year.
In November, there was the “double-booking” of a Commonwealth Conference in Africa with her Diamond Wedding Party at the Ritz — eventually cancelled.
Then came Gold Cup day at Cheltenham, when the Queen found she was to open the ill-fated Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport on the same day. Other confusions have occurred too, culminating in the appalling Palace handling of the Phillips wedding. Dare we suggest that the Queen needs a new Private Secretary?
As for Peter and Autumn, they will not easily be allowed to forget the damage they have inflicted on the Monarchy for personal gain.
Let’s hope future Royal weddings, now queueing in the pipeline, are better handled and managed. Some frankness from those concerned might be a very good start.
Although she didn’t raise a fist in anger all evening, Kate Middleton was the undoubted star of the Boodles Boxing Ball at the Royal Lancaster Hotel.
