Towards the end of 2014, there was a major kerfuffle in Prince Charles’ press office. Various former press officers, who used to work for Charles, had told their stories to the BBC and Radio Times. There was a documentary called Reinventing the Royals, all about how Charles had remade his image following Princess Diana’s death, and how he had gotten the British public to accept Camilla as his wife (and eventual Queen). The documentary was supposed to air months ago, but it was pulled after Charles’ people raised a stink. But the documentary ended up airing last night on the BBC. So what did we learn? The Daily Beast has a lengthy article about it – go here to read. Some highlights:
*Charles’ office always painted Diana in a negative light, before and after her death: Charles’ consigliere Mark Bolland is accused of helping to write a book that described Princess Diana as a serial adulterer with mental health issues, as well as sanctioning a story that would run in the News of the World claiming Prince Harry had taken drugs, in exchange for an editorial praising Charles’ fabricated reaction to the revelation.
*Charles sold out William: Charles and his press office gave vivid details about William’s first meeting (he was 16) with Camilla to The Sun. The reporter who wrote the story told the BBC: “We got all the details, her [Camilla] drinking the gin and tonic, her having a sneaky [cigarette] beforehand because she was nervous and everything else… So all the detail came to us and was, if you like, absolutely kosher. Apart from Camilla and William telling us, you couldn’t have got it from a better source…It was Mark Bolland.”
*Prince William hated his dad’s press officers: “He [William] didn’t like being used by anybody and he felt, from what I remember, that he was being used by his father’s staff,” said Richard Kay, royal correspondent for the Daily Mail, from 1986 to 2007. “I’m sure he was. I think it explained a lot about what happened in subsequent years when he decided to break away from his father’s people.”
*Charles’ press officer sold out Harry: Bolland had “done a deal” with the News of the World over the drug revelations despite Harry’s outright rejection of a raft of claims made by Rupert Murdoch’s former newspaper. The one thing he couldn’t deny was that he had ever smoked marijuana… Harry had felt trapped by Bolland’s alleged arrangement in which the palace agreed not to contest the drug allegations if the editorial flagged up the way Prince Charles had supposedly responded by taking his youngest son to a drug treatment center as a warning. In fact, the coincidental royal rehab visit had taken place months earlier. “Harry knew he’d done the wrong thing, he felt very bad about it, he felt he’d let people down, but I think he was quite angry that stuff had not happened in the way it had been said.”
*Mark Bolland must go: Whatever the truth about Charles’ direct involvement in the apparently nefarious briefings going on in his name, the rest of the royal family knew perfectly well that it was his staff planting all these stories in the press. And yet Bolland retained his lofty position. By 2002, the growing sense of frustration had come to the boil, the rest of the family was sick of being collateral damage in Prince Charles’ black ops…. it was the Queen’s intervention that heralded the end of Charles’ right-hand man. “The Queen is quite marvelous in all kinds of ways, but she’s quite ruthless when she needs to be. It seems to me she decided ‘Enough’s enough.’”
I think this goes a ways towards explaining why William is so squirrelly with the press, and perhaps why he prefers the Middletons to his own family… although I would argue that the Middletons leak as much information about William as Charles’ office. Charles sounds ruthless, and like he hires ruthless people. But I also think that at the heart of all of this is one simple fact. William and Charles are a lot alike in general, and in one particular way: they are terrible at public relations and media management on their own. Their instincts are always terrible. They surround themselves with smarter media-savvy people to do their dirty work, to mixed results. And both William and Charles will throw anyone under the bus to make themselves look good. Like father, like son.
These are pics of Charles and Camilla celebrating the Chinese New Year in London yesterday.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
For some reason I believe this.
Well the way I read all this is Bolland sold the princes out, not Prince Charles. And Bolland was eventually fired. End of story.
I’d probably have a gin and tonic if I had to meet William, too – but not because I’d be nervous about him, more to TOLERATE the lazy so-and-so. It would be fun to tell him to get his $hit together.
Let’s not forget: Diana was much more of a pro regarding her pr moves. She is painted as a Saint and you should generally Not speak ill of the dead BUT she was a very cunning Lady Who devoted her time to bring down her husband. She used her boys for her own ends and the picture of Charles being a bad father is largely her doing.
Yes, very true.
I always thought William may even sell out Harry occasionally to bury his own dirty deeds… or his father does it to protect the future King.
He definitely does. Many times when there is a lot of press for Harry and his charities (Invictus Games, etc) there will be some old photos or story dragged up which show Harry in a bad light and/or there will be a blitz of articles about Willy doing something great…and/or Willy will just show up and hijack Harry’s spotlight (as happened with the Games).
Like father, like son…
Charles sounds like a disgusting piece of work if the article is true.
I really don’t understand how twisted this circle is, why do they tell stories about one another to the press, I mean they are family. And what would be the benefit of the Middleton’s selling stories about Will, aren’t they suppose to worship him?
It’s said that the one thing won’t tolerate or forgive is someone selling him out to the press. But, except for maybe P Charles, the people who has sold him out the most have been Kate and Carole! And he married Kate and vacations with Carole. He must have know about their relationship with Tanna. Maybe he thought it was useful (to him) and that he could control it? But then he starts suing Tanna. I don’t understand Williams media strategy. It seems to be working tho. He’s hidden for weeks and months at a time and news outlets only really write sugar pieces. Although that’s changing I think. The Royal press corps in particular are sick of his sh$t.
Yeah, William is either in deep, deep denial or an incredibly stupid person to not have put 2+2 together about Tanna. It kind of blows my mind.
I feel like Tanna has some real dirt on him and the Midds and I can’t wait for it all to come out.
I don’t believe that Kate and Carole have sold him out more than anyone other than Prince CHarles. If Charles did it (and I’m thinking he may have taken a page out of the Queen’s book and let somone else do it while feigning no knowledge) I don’t know how he sleeps at night. But I don’t think Kate and Carole have. I suspect they were tested. A lot.
Yikes. And I am sure Charles approved of all the leaks and moves beforehand. But you’re right, Charles and William have the same MO. Still, seems cruel to use your kids as pawns to make yourself look better.
I would hate the press too, especially after losing their mother, who could’ve protected them. How horrible. I can’t imagine throwing my kids under the bus for any reason. Ever.
Diana wasn’t above using her own children especially when it scored mega points for herself and against the royals.
What we have here is a set up of people more concerned with themselves than with their kids as far as image and PR.
Thank goodness for nannies and boarding school.
Say what you may about Diana but she never planted untrue or negative stories about her kids to make herself look better or to cover up her indiscretions with men. She might have played the best mother images but she never sabotaged her own sons and show them in a negative light to make herself look better like what Chuck has done. She might have not been the best mother but she she never publicly let then down to make herself look better which is very ruthless and cruel coming from your own father.
Charles was and remains a lousy father .
She died before all these negative stories, so we’ll never know. I can only judge her by the years she was here. And by that token, until she died, Charles wasn’t using his kids negatively. She, on the otherhand, was busy painting him as a bad father publicly.
I am not excusing what Charles went on to do nor am I accusing Diana of being in the same boat as far as painting her kids negatively, but as far as trying to paint themselves in a positive light, they both used their kids.
Eg Charles leaks the ‘meeting with Camilla’ story
Diana leaks ‘William pushed tissue under door whilst I was crying’ story.
Different results as far as the emotion they create, but still using William.
Oh please telling your son is using drugs to make yourself look good cant be compared to telling facts of how dependent she was on her son for emotional support. I can only judge both of them on their actions and she not once ever tried to throw her kids in front of the bus to make herself look better especially after theory lost a parent , like she also never attended Oprah while her son was in hospital or have her child delivered early to keep up her polo games schedule or leave the kid right after he was born and can go on for the great father he has been .
Actions speak louder then words and again she never threw her sons under the bus to make herself look better for however lon she lived. And as far as making Charles look bad, well he had her institutionalized if he had his way. They both made each other look bad and she was just better at this then him.
oh I’m sure she used them to bolster her image, but she was also a genuinely loving mother who spent a lot of time with her boys, especially when they were pre-Eton. And she didn’t exactly seem to like handing them off to nannies, wasn’t it quite well known that she was quite jealous of their longest-serving nanny?
I will say this again, she died before any of this, so we’ll never know.
During her lifetime, she used her kids to bolster her own image. And she used those same kids to publicly trash their father and wasn’t overly concerned about how that might affect them as long as she was winning.
You say golf incident, I say panorama interview (think about a weeping William after that interview aired especially after Diana had lied to him beforehand and said she wasn’t planning on airing dirty laundry). Shrugs.
There are as many incidents of Charles’s negative behaviour as there is of Diana in her lifetime that have resulted in a distrusting adult William.
My comment doesn’t tie her into the Camilla PR train, and I judge that separately because Charles didn’t use his kids for his own public image until after she died.
However, let’s not pretend that she protected them as the original poster said she did.
I agree LAK – trashing the father of your children in the press is definitely not protecting your children. Protecting your children is never speaking a poor word about their father, no matter how terrible you think he is. Kids should not be made to feel that they have to choose sides between their parents.
Yeah, trashing the father of your children is never going be advantageous. Diana was manipulative. Charles was a cad……
The bottom line is where are these two sons right now? I think Harry is in a better mindset than William is. William just seems like such an ass! An incredible ass. For someone with his wealth and privilege, he is just over-the-top OBNOXIOUS.
Charles and Diana were both very self-absorbed parents. I actually still feel sympathetic for William -from what I understand, he didn’t know what was going to be revealed in those interviews and from what was written in the biographies, Harry would be sent along to the nursery while William would be in Diana’s room eating dinner and watching tv with her while Charles ate by himself downstairs. William was singled out and treated differently than his brother.
Seeing your mother crying, knowing she hates your beloved nanny, Charles burning his wedding gifts after the divorce and getting rid of reminders of Diana in Highgrove, dealing with your parents lives being in the papers, on television, part of worldwide gossip -that’s traumatizing. Charles and Diana both behaved selfishly and shamelessly. I mean, no wonder the guy is a control-freak and untrusting. It doesn’t make his current behavior acceptable, though
Ugh, this lot.
Harry can come live with me; but the rest? Blech.
+1
Rich people problems, amiright? Familial Dysfunction transferred to an industry of its own….
Lol right, where does the money from tourists visiting Buckingham palace and royal monuments go , to the Queen?
It maintains the palace/monument.
When power intersects with family no one is safe. History proves that again and again when it comes to royalty – at least no one are executed, maimed or assassinated in this day and age.
However, shame on Charles for not protecting his sons, and if the allegations are right, even allowing his press people to throw them under the bus. The Windsors really are horrible parents.
I agree wholeheartedly.
You’re dead right, the Royal family have always been lousy parents usually with the father’s famously hating their son’s and vice versa, a habit that goes way back to the 18th century and the Hanoverian George’s 1, 2 and 3. Queen Victoria and Albert famously despised Edward VII for his lack of ‘moral fibre’. None of this is anything new, they are just reverting to old habits. Charlie will do anything – literally – to be more popular than William, who in turn will do anything to become more popular than Harry. I saw the whole documentary about the Royals and it was fascinating the way it highlighted their PR machine is just as Machiavellian as anything emanating from Hollywood.
The press people should have been fired immediately. There is no excuse for that sort of thing.
Unrelated but sort of not: The Fug Girls recently released a preview (the first 7 chapters) of their forthcoming novel The Royal We, which is loosely based on the Kate and William situation, and the relationship between the Charles figure, Prince Richard, and the William figure, Prince Nicholas is similarly backstabby and ruthless. I was thinking when I read the preview yesterday how sad it would be if William and Charkes really had a relationship like that, and then today this story comes out. So weird.
Here’s hoping the Queen lives another 50 years.
How about 500 more years? LOVE her to bits…
Charles will be a great King. Not a King Charles though.
Scratch the surface and the Queen isn’t so great. She did great things in her life, but other not great things.
Shes not a cute old lady that wears adorable and colorful clothes while being so regal.
She’s my late grandmother. And that is someone to be feared, respected and loved.
I swear these ladies were seperated at birth.
Thanks for saying that. There are so many comments along the lines of “the Queen is so adorable” and a lot of treatment of her as this stalwart old grandmother. QE2 may be a grandmother, but that is not a lady I’d like to tussle with.
Well, and she raised Charles and Andrew, so that’s saying something.
It would be a looong list to note all the times she pinched pennies instead of helping those who had proven themselves loyal by rising their lives. Or hushed some who would damage her families image. Self preservation and protecting her family really is her driving force.
I think back to the tale of when BP caught fire. The help formed a line to save items from within and toss buckets of water on the flames. What did they get for risking their lives? A Bonus? A medal? Something tangible. Instead they got a handshake and nothing more. To my knowledge anyway.
Then you hear about how the royals need more money to heat their palaces.
I don’t get the Queen worship either. OK, she’s been on the throne forever, but as far as dealing with delicate family issues = total FAIL. If/when Charles assumes the throne, I hope he does revamp the situation! I’m sort of dreaming what I would do if I were in his situation!!! (Trim things down, make William AND Kate Work 5 days a week…..I would do that, yes, I would.) I’d also cut Kate off on her wardrobe spending. The more she wears repeatedly, the more the focus would go to the causes and away from the fashion stuff.
“Prince” Charles has disgusted me utterly since the time I learned of his extramarital affair with Camilla. I’m sure Diana did have issues, but Charles made it so much worse. He’s foul.
In fairness I don’t think Dianas affairs helped matter either.
Errr,
she wasn’t tupping people as fast as she could lay her hands on them through the Honeymoon and beyond – which he was. It drives me mad when people turn around and say something that someone does in RESPONSE to someone one elses bad behaviour is as bad, she was 19 for Gods sake.
Okay but Dianas “response” has lead to the lovely game of who is Harrys real daddy but yeah her actions are not as bad as Charles, cause she was only acting after he cheated. I am sure that was very comforting to the wives of the men she was cheating with.
She was practically single when she started seeing other men mind you at a time when divorce wasnt an option. So you suggest she should ave lived like a nun while married as a 23 year old woman wile er husband is sleeping wit whomever e wised to ?
an old prude, I love you but she was not practically single when she started seeing other men. She was still married. Quite married in fact.
I’m with Bluhare…………..yeah. Diana was not “practically single”.
She was married. She approached the Press to air her dirty laundry – not cool – and that had to have been devastating for her sons.
And she wasn’t even is only girlfriend/mistress. he cheated on wit so many other women as well. he wasn’t faithful to anyone, not even is own sons.
I’m not sure I believe this.
Still surprised when I read people believe the old tale of Charles cheated on Diana with Camilla and there were no other affairs on either side. Only Charles and Camilla.
I think they would all collectively looked better if they closed ranks and functioned as a single forward-facing unit. This whole story is petty and sad.
The royals have always fought against each other publicly.
I think the only set of royals that didn’t do this and were publicly united was HM and her own father. The only rebellious thing I can think of was marrying Philip.
Yep, in-fighting generally comes with royalty. Though it seems like things are going better on this particular front in some of the European monarchies. The Dutch and the Belgians look like tight-knit groups, and the late Queen Ingrid did much to strengthen the family ties between the Scandinavian monarchies. Her influence cannot be stressed enough. However, it does seem that there might be some issues among the SRF due to the king’s obvious favoritism towards his son who won’t become king even though his father desperately wished him to be. He was quite public about his displeasure when the Swedish Parliament changed the laws of succession to the firstborn regardless of gender.
@ LAK, I think you’re right.
This is of course all true.
Prince Charles is one smart guy so good for him for playing the game and winning.
When he becomes King a lot of heads will roll!
It’s as if in the new era of transparency and social media, the whole sad familial façade is being exposed and the shaky infrastructure crumbling. Long overdue though, and the sooner this family starts working towards the better good of the people they represent the better, although William, and by proxy Kate, are certainly digging in their heels and refusing to move with the times.
And that’s why the Queen is still reigning.
yeah William is a lazy ass now, but being sold out by your daddy’s press office? And Harry, too? Yikes. And at such a potentially awkward moment like meeting your dad’s gf whom he cheated on your dead mother with……..they seem to have good relations now but stuff like the first meeting should have been kept private.
He is so nasty. What an awful ‘man’.
Don’t believe everything you read. It’s gossip. Not gospel.
Well, that certainly explains William’s issues with the press office.
“Charles sounds ruthless, and like he hires ruthless people.”
Almost like he’s royalty or something.
This cycle of English royal parents not getting along with their heirs, and the heirs rebel, and then later the heirs get all conservative too and do exactly the same things to their own children, has been going on forever. An heir/king dragging his own wife through the mud is also far from new. These are not nice people. Elizabeth II’s been able to fake it better than any of her precursors, and I guess people have gotten used to that. But we’re back to the usual with Charles and his son.
Really, the English monarchy gets terribly dull once you’ve studied its history long enough. They aren’t an original bunch.
Family dysfunction can back multiple generations.
In the olden days when the moarch had real political and military power, family conflict often turned lethal. Richard III had his brother and most likely his nephews killed. Henry IV had his cousin Richard II starved to death at Pontefract Castle and Queen Isabella had her husband Edward II killed, though I doubt they used a red hot poker as legend says.
ArtHistorian: small correction. Richard III did not kill his brother. George was executed by their brother Edward 4 for treason (though really because George had taken it upon himself to execute a couple he thought had poisoned his wife which was one bad thing too far that he had committed as far as Edward was concerned). Richard tried to persuade Edward not to execute George and failed. It’s the only time Richard and Edward were on the opposing side of an issue even though they both agreed that George was a pain in their collective behinds – which he was.
As for the Princes in the tower, again not Richard. In his own lifetime, they were thought to be missing from the tower, but not dead. Ditto much of the tudor reign when they were thought missing, probably in Flaunders having been smuggled out of the tower, but not dead.
This is the principal reason so many people rallied to Perkin Warbeck’s standard during Henry Tudor’s time because they believed him to be one of the missing princes as he presented himself. Including the original princes’ relations.
When the Tudors decided to re-write history, they needed to whitewash their illegitimate origins and to tradunce the previous king who they had usurped. And they did a fine job of it. Not simply removing records that might contradict their version of events, but also setting it out in music, plays and anyway they could.
Consequently, Edward 4’s misdeeds were either put into the background or put onto Richard and of course Shakespeare and Thomas More are the most famous works of traduncing Richard that exist.
It’s quite amazing how many people take the shakespeare play to be the truth about Richard. I had a conversation with someone who swore blind that George died in the tower by drowning in wine – an event made up by shakespeare in which the only truth is that George was executed in the tower.
The mystery of the princes’ fate was concluded in the 17th century when bones of children were dug up in the tower. As for who killed them, that remains a mystery though the tudors did a great job of saying Richard did it.
Personally I think it was Margaret Beaufort. Richard didn’t have any motive to kill them. And Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick – George’s son and Richard’s ward, would have succeeded him. So why kill the princes and leave Edward alive?
Margaret had the ultimate motive in the form of her son Henry Tudor. And Henry Tudor never forgot her advise because he made sure to execute Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick for simply being too close to the throne per wedding condition to allow marriage of his son Arthur to Katherine of Aragon. A repeat performance you might say.
Regarding the Princes in the Tower.
I know that a lot of Richardians like to argue that Richard III had nothing to do with their disappearance (and most likely death). Of course, Shakespeare’s play hasn’t much to do with fact and neither has the work it was based on, Thomas More’s book, which was a blantant piece of Tudor propaganda.
So, the Shakespearean Richard III is not the truth, but neither is the misunderstood martyr that Richardian apologists like to portray. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between – and there are of course things that we’ll never know, like what happended to his nephews in the Tower.
As far as I recall, the bones dug up in the Tower has not been proved to be that of the princes, there are also another set of bones that could be theirs. However, nothing has been proven or disproven yet. That makes for great discussions and theories – so I’d just briefly give a short counter-argument as to why Richard III might have killed his nephews but allowed another to live. The two princes were, politically speaking, a much greater danger to Richard than his other nephew – mostly because the whole argument by which he claimed the throne was somewhat shaky. Furthermore, many many people didn’t care about legal sophistry, to them Edward IV’s eldest son was the true and rightful king. George’s son didn’t represent the same danger.
I just goes to show that one really have to be critical about what to read, especially when it comes to Richard III. I’d recommed sticking to academic historical studies for a fairly unbiased account.
The recently find and confirmation of Richard III’s remains is very interesting – and they do offers corrections to both the Richardian and the Tudor accounts of Richard.
There are lot historial mysteries that intriguing and that have been hotly debated and sometimes investigated with modern forensic means. One is the death of the Danish anstronomer Tycho Brahe at the imperial court in Prague in the 16th century. The story that has been handed down through the ages was that he dies of a burst bladder. However, a few years ago a Danish man (I’m unsure if he actually was educated as a historian) who claimed that Brahe was poisoned with arsenic by a faction at the Danish court. a couple of years ago the Catholic authorities gave permission for the exhumation of Brahe’s remains so they could be examined with modern forensic methods. However, the results did not support the allegation.
I’ve been working on a project on Richard III (amongst other things) and have read extensively and widely on the subject to reach my conclusion. It’s given me a lot to digest and I am completely astonished how Richard specifically has been misrepresented even with the available material from his contemporaries that is at odds with Tudor version of history.
It’s easy to think that i’ve romanticised him after such extensive research, and perhaps I have, but his records, motives are all a matter of public record where you can find them since the Tudors went to great lengths to expunge the record.
Thank goodness for Ambassadors and their need to copy and comment to their rulers.
One more thing, Richard was very public about his actions. More so than his brother Edward. By this I mean that he would write a public explanation for his actions together with what he considered truthful evidence to support his actions. Many of these public explanations were expunged by Henry Tudor who made it a treasonable offense to be caught with a copy. The most famous of these public explanations being the Titulus Regius which wasn’t simply one document with a declaration, it also included evidence as to why it was necessary. Specifically the illegitimacy of the two boys.
As you know, illegitimacy was taken very seriously in terms of inheritance. No one was going to support a line of illegitimacy when a clear line legitimacy was present and uncontested.
Further, with regards Edward Plantagenet, if somehow the attainder of his father could be overcome as you are saying the illegitimacy could be overcome, he posed as much as threat to Richard especially because there was no doubt whatsoever about Edward’s legitimacy.
The tudors had to overcome the stigma of the titulus regius as far as Elizabeth of York was concerned, and the only way to do that was to declare Richard a usurper who had killed her brothers to further his usurpation whilst conveniently keeping quiet about Edward Plantagenet who they’d locked up in the tower and later executed.
With regards the princes in the tower, yes the bones were never tested, but their ‘discovery’ fed into a well established Tudor driven narrative. In trying to decide who killed them, the only thing we have to go on is motive and gains of the various people around them.
My conclusion is that Margaret Beaufort, Henry Tudor’s mother had the best chance being in the country, had the resources to persuade others to formulate rebellion several times, and ultimately the motivation of putting Henry on the throne.
Margaret Beaufort was a gradual conspirator who pulled together the eventual faction and army that would put her son Henry Tudor on the throne. If she defeated Richard, the princes (and Edward Plantagenet) would be a strong threat to Henry.
There is much evidence of her repeated plotting to extent that at the battle of Bosworth field she was under house arrest for her latest effort.
She was also married to Baron Stanley, the man who really betrayed Richard on the battlefield of Bosworth field.
The thing about Margaret is that she played her part very well, and she was a master at propaganda such that when she triumphed, she whitewashed her image so completely that people really thought she was a pious harmless lady. No doubt helped by her insistence on being painted as a nun in all her official portraits.
Finally it’s also important to note when they were declared dead. Officially and unofficially. During Richard’s lifetime and for sometime after Henry Tudor took the throne, they were considered missing not dead.
You can’t get away from the fact that Margaret of York so believed that Perkins Warbeck was one of the boys that she supported his rebellion. That fed into a widely held belief that at least one of them had been smuggled to Flaunders.
Sounds like there are some disgruntled ex employees. The Royals are always going to be a target for gossip. I don’t know that I believe much of this. Maybe there are some truths, half truths and complete bs. I dont believe Charles sold out his sons. Not for a second.
The doc is on youtube. ‘reinventing the royals’.
Mark Bolland was a notorious figure at the court of Charles. The people talking dealt with him directly. He was charged with a task, he did it brilliantly. We might disagree on methods, but job done.
In any event, and I’ve only watched the first third of it, Charles operated like HM whereby he didn’t get his hands dirty, but allowed his office to work to an end.
We can all go ahead and trash Mark Bolland, but he (and all other courtiers, no matter who they serve) always work with the sanctioned authority of the royal they serve.
I’ll trash Bolland, he’s the guy who said this stuff.
I doubt The Royals peruse EVERY SINGLE WORD from their representative courtiers, and eventually it catches up with them.
The guy who trashed the golden princes was in fact, Bolland – not their father, IMO.
Just finished watching the first part of this doc.
In as much as royal officers work with the sanction of their royal, the person this documentary is most scathing about is Mark Bolland.
His name is mentioned so often that i’m left with feeling that the doc was a set up to expose Mark Bolland with the royals as bait to get the public to watch it.
Well, and we know what happened to Mark Bolland. AXED. End of story.
What does this mean: “Harry had felt trapped by Bolland’s alleged arrangement in which the palace agreed not to contest the drug allegations if the editorial flagged up the way Prince Charles had supposedly responded by taking his youngest son to a drug treatment center as a warning. ”
I understand the part about Harry being trapped. I don’t get the rest of it where the palace agreed not to contest. Does that mean maybe there was a choice for Harry to say he didn’t use marijuana? The story sounds more complicated in full…did the press officer actually telling everyone that Harry did drugs, or was that something the newspaper figured out on its own? Then the press officer found a way to finesse the whole thing to make sure no one got in trouble from a public image standpoint (even Harry’s image seems to have benefited a bit since the exchange meant that we never had to hear about the full extent of any drug use beyond marijuana use. If Harry did more than marijuana, it sounds like things could have actually gotten worse press wise if the officer hadn’t finessed the arrangement the way he did. The story just sounds less sinister when I read the whole paragraph rather than a few lines…)