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| Image via Facebook / The Royal Family |
Friends of the royals have warned that competition between King Charles and his son and heir, Prince William, could trigger Charles' well-documented jealous streak. William criticised his family's habit of taking on "loads of causes that you sort of turn up and keep an eye on." While some insiders sought to play down any sense of a rift or jealousy between the courts of William and the king, one royal friend said that William needs "to be careful not to wake the green-eyed monster," referring to the king's well-documented jealous streak.
Princess Diana cited Charles' jealousy as a source of conflict between her and Charles in her Panorama interview with Martin Bashir and was also dramatised in The Crown. She said: “We'd be going round Australia, for instance, and all you could hear was, ‘Oh, she’s on the other side.’ Now, if you’re a man, like my husband, a proud man, you mind about that if you hear it every day for four weeks. With the media attention came a lot of jealousy, and many complicated situations arose.”
Harry also gave an insight into Charles’ jealousy in his memoir Spare, writing: “Pa and Camilla didn’t like Willy and Kate drawing attention away from them or their causes. They’d openly scolded Willy about it many times.”
A friend of William’s denied the comments would spark conflict with the king and said William was making it clear that he didn’t intend to take on “500 patronages.” He said, “William is in no hurry to be king. This is not him parking his tanks on his dad’s lawn. This is not something that I think is fair enough. Any idea that he is attacking his dad is just rubbish.”
This week, by an unhappy accident, Prince William’s long-standing engagement to present the Earthshot Prize on Tuesday became the subject of a diary clash after a decision made in October by the government to kick off a new legislative session of Parliament on Tuesday as well. New legislative sessions are always begun before the monarch reads out a speech written for them by the government, which used to be known, under Queen Elizabeth, as the queen’s speech.
On Wednesday, William made his off-the-cuff comments to the travelling media, catching many by surprise with his unusually frank repudiation of the royal habit of attaching their names to hundreds of causes (Prince Philip had over 800 charities, Queen Elizabeth II was a patron of over 500, and Charles had 420 when he ascended the throne). He then added what sounded like an explicit rejection of the existing royal way of doing business, saying: “You have to remain focused; if you spread yourself too thin, you just can’t manage it, and you won’t deliver the impact or the change that you want to happen… it’s going deeper and longer than it is the case of just having loads of causes that you turn up and keep an eye on.”
Place sources sought to play down the incident. At the same time, the week’s busy schedule of royal events has pointed to the inevitable tensions attending the existence of two powerful, independent courts in the heart of the royal establishment, each with their schedules and priorities.
