The Truth About the Royal Family with Royal Reporter Robert Hardman

25:50And it's essentially the UN sort of index of what's the best country in the world. It has various metrics such as life expectancy, education, income, GDP, all this stuff. They put it through the algorithm. Every single time, in the top 10, about half are monarchies. The top 20, I think it's 12 out of 20, are monarchies. When you consider it's 193 countries, but only 40 are monarchies, that's a disproportionate result.

26:22Francis Foster:These are constitutional monarchies? These are constitutional monkeys. These are not the absolute ones like Saudi and whatever. They're coming a bit further down. But if you look in the top 10, Britain isn't in the top 10, actually. But you've got Norway, Sweden. Denmark. Yeah, Denmark. And Australia. Australia, which, of course, the king is king of Australia. And then you look at the top 20. Britain's in there. I mean, number 15. I think New Zealand and Canada come in there. So, yeah, of course, it's absurd to say that by having a hereditary state, you've got a longer life expectancy. I mean, I wouldn't posit that as a sort of logical argument.

26:58But you can look at that sense of stability and continuity. What a modern constitutional monarchy, that sort of sense of confidence, if you like, that it gives a country. By the way, the top one is Switzerland, I think. And I mean, you've got others in the mix, including Ireland's right up there. It's very clearly not a monarchy. You can't stand a monarchy. But overall, it shows that when people say, oh, it's sort of so backward, why don't we grow up as a nation? We've got to grow up as a nation and modernize and why we've got this sort of throwback system. To which I say, well, if you want to grow up as a nation, just look at all these countries.

27:38You're saying Norway and Sweden and Denmark. Japan doesn't just have a monarch. It's got an emperor, for God's sake. You know, they seem to do all right with that. So it's just a system that, like I said, it's evolved. I think it would be incredibly unsettling, damaging, and frankly constitutionally suicidal to try and dismantle it. It just works. Don't fix it. I love the fact that we're talking about dismantling because what Queen Elizabeth saw over her reign was essentially dismantling the last vestiges of empire. So why don't we talk about that? Because that's very interesting. Yeah, I mean, that's fascinating.

28:15I'm glad you raised that because that was what set her apart from all the other monarchs when she came to the throne was all her predecessors were expected to make Britain great, not again, because it already was great. It was this idea of you've got to consolidate power. We've got to make the empire strong and hold on to all these possessions. She comes in and the British Empire has effectively gone in 1947 with the partition of India and just evolving as this new concept of the Commonwealth, the modern Commonwealth. And her job is not to consolidate an empire. Her father was crowned emperor, so it was his father and his father and his mother and everybody.

29:05She wasn't. The empire had gone. She was all about dismantling it, but doing it amicably. So basically, there was still a lot of the world what was a British colony in 1952. And I think she would regard her greatest achievement as creating the Commonwealth, as moving from an imperial structure to a post-imperial structure, and one that's happened amicably and constructively. But what I think we are seeing now is a change in tone. So it was a very forward-looking thing. A lot of these young countries were becoming democracies. They wanted help. She loved sort of holding these Commonwealth summits, these leaders.

29:50I think felt, because these were young countries finding their feet, and here was this big establishment figure, the Queen, who would meet them and treat them as equals. And there was a real sense of kind of harmony at these Commonwealth events. Mrs. Thatcher fell out with the Commonwealth famously in the 80s, but the rest of them, they felt a sort of kinship. And it did all sorts of good things, the Commonwealth. I think it was one of the driving forces in dismantling apartheid, for example, in South Africa. and as we've gone on now there's been a sort of change of attitude instead of looking forward and thinking these countries are growing and becoming stronger and more independent now there is a sort of a rearward glance and saying well hang on the only reason you're in the Commonwealth is that you were colonized and that this was a bad thing and that this must now be atoned for and so you have this reparations debate starting to sort of build and I think it's a very difficult one for both the government, the British government, but particularly for the monarchy to handle because obviously empire was conducted in the name of the crown and the crown was a direct linear link.

31:10Because I think it was the Prime Minister of Barbados who said that they no longer want the royal family being the official head of state, which I don't think even 30 years ago that would have been entertained as an idea. But it became very mainstream, very quickly, that conversation. It did. I mean, it happened actually just before the Queen died. It happened at the end of 2021 when Barbados, as you say, had been a... When all these former colonies went independent, they were all given the option. What do you want to be? Do you want to be a presidency? Or do you want to carry on with the crowd?

31:52And a lot, most actually said, no, I want a president. You want to stand on your own two feet. But a lot could see the advantages in having the crown as this sort of, you know, you're trying to build a new nation. It's actually quite useful. It's quite cheap as well. You haven't got to start worrying about having a separate residence and all the rest for a president because your head of state pays their own bills. And there was a very interesting conversation in the 70s, or 80s in fact, when the then Prime Minister of Antigua, Lester Byrd, was talking to Fidel Castro and said to him, I'm thinking of dumping the monarchy and we're going to become a republic.

32:34And Castro said, well, hang on a second. Why do you want to do that? Well, we know we're going to stand on our own two feet. And Castro said, well, does the Queen interfere in your politics? And he said, no. Is she good for business? Is she good for tourism? Yes. Well, why do you want to do that? And I know this happened because Lester Byrd regaled this conversation to Sir Sonny Ramfarl, who was one of the great Secretary Generals of the Commonwealth, who told me for my book. So, you know, it's gospel. Fidel Castro was a fan of the monarchy. You know, go figure. There you go. That's the title of the episode.

33:11Francis Foster:Some business advice from one of the most famous communists in the world. I would imagine a lot of the psychodrama that we now see with the royal family, because there's the monarchy and then there's the royal family, somewhat separate things actually in some ways, is actually very much par for the course in terms of history. I mean, the royal families have always had the spares and the others and all of this scheming and plotting and whatever. But we live in a very different age now where the power of the media and social media and the ability for people to see into that world, to discuss that world, it must be so difficult for them to manage all of the different things that we've seen.

33:49Francis Foster:I mean, I think the death of Princess Diana was the beginning of it, but now, of course, you have, you know, Harry and Meghan, then you have Prince Andrew and all of this stuff. What impact will all of this have on the royal family and on the monarchy? Well, you're absolutely right that it's a completely different media landscape. I mean, of all the changes, I think, that Elizabeth II reigned through was the media landscape. When she started, it was completely reverential. And the monarchy called the shots. And then by the end, it's 24-7 news, rolling news, social media, everything else. And that does make it difficult.

34:31However, I think as long as the public can understand that they are a family, they're an institution, and they're a family. And every family has its tricky members. and so you know the king some more trickier than others and when you think about it I mean the ride at the end of the Queen's reign you had the start of the kind of Andrew catastrophe unfolding with his news interview in 2019 and I think luckily she didn't have to see how that would unfold after her death but right away at the start of the King's reign I mean he took the throne in September 22 By late October 22, you had the first sort of trailers appearing on Netflix for Harry and Meghan's six-parter basically complaining about the monarchy.

35:25You had the whole new series of The Crown depicting Charles in a very unflattering light, someone who was sort of constantly at war with his wife and trying to unseat his mother from the throne. You had all these things bubbling under. And then that only got worse because as the Harry and Meghan show kind of went out, there was lots of publicity with it, them saying how horrible life was in Britain and the monarchy didn't treat them very well. And then as soon as that was over, we were straight into the launch of Harry's book, Spare, which was full of unflattering remarks. And all that, of course, followed on from the Oprah Winfrey interview, where the couple had accused the monarchy of all sorts of things, notably racism.

36:12And you'd think at the start of a reign, that's really not very helpful. You've just come in, you're a new king. But when you look at the polling, this is what's interesting, the polling pretty much flatlines all the way through that. You've got about a three-month period of what someone at the palace described to me as headwinds from California. And sometimes those headwinds were quite strong. But it just didn't make any great difference. You know, overall, most people could understand, yeah, the family's got problems, but as an institution, as a form of government, we're broadly, we're happy with it.

36:48And then you get things like the whole Andrew saga. And the king, I think, I mean, he reacted, I was surprised at the severity of the punishment that was doled out to Andrew almost immediately, as soon as it turned out that in that Newsnight interview that he'd lied about severing his links with Epstein. He wasn't just told, you're not HRH or you're not Duke of York anymore. I mean, he was stripped of everything, the whole lot, all the honours, everything. He was born a prince, but even that was taken away from him. His birthright was stripped from him. Everything went. and that was decisive. And barring, I mean, given that he's been arrested, so who knows where things go from here.

37:37The king is the head of judiciary, so he has to tread carefully. But I mean, you could hardly have dispatched Andrew to more of a sort of internal Siberia, if you like, than a sort of farmhouse at the end of a lane in the middle of nowhere in Norfolk. That's where he is. So, yeah, he's a blot on the royal name, Andrew, but still people can understand that the monarchy is different. I don't think it's done any great damage to the idea of constitutional monarchy. I mean, it's clearly embarrassing for the House of Windsor. But, you know, the monarchy moves on, where it would have been, I think, very dangerous if he'd been in line to the throne, If there was actually any serious chance of him being our head of state at that point, I think the monarchy would have been in great trouble.

38:26But he's not. He's disposable. And one day he will be gone.

38:31Francis Foster:Do you think that part of the blot, and this is maybe the one blemish on the impeccable legacy of the late Queen, as you say, is that she was not the one that dealt with Prince Andrew, now Andrew, as harshly as the king has now done. And in fact, some say, was very protective. Oh, Andrew, which, look, if you have kids, you've seen your wife. It's very difficult for a mother to discipline her children, particularly even when they've done something terrible. But is that perhaps a fair critique? I think it is. It is. It's fair to apportion a degree of blame to the late Queen. I think the way that she's effectively now, because she's conveniently no longer around, we just pin everything on her and say it's all her fault.

39:20Andrew is her fault. I totally disagree with that. I went into some detail in the book. There's no question Andrew was behaving monstrously long before the Epstein stuff came to light. Really? What was he doing? He was just throwing his weight around. He was just boorish. He'd be rude to people. I interviewed David Cameron for the book who told me one of the hardest things he had to do, and it was quite early on in his premiership, was to go to the Queen and say, I'm afraid I'm sacking Prince Andrew as a trade envoy. When he left the Navy in 01, the Queen was desperate to keep Andrew in the Navy because there wasn't really anything for him to do.

39:58And then the Navy said, look, we've run out of road here. We can't give him anything to do. He's no longer ours. So he left the Navy. And it was the government prodded along by, at the time, a very senior Labour figure called Peter Mandelson, who came up with the idea of a trade envoy. And so, you know, the Queen was obviously behind this. I mean, great. It's a sort of, you know, we've got him a job. There's something for him to do. But it was the government who came up with this idea of a trade envoy. And all those years he was being a trade envoy. It wasn't the Queen who was sort of saying to people, oh, no, no, you've got to send Andrew here.

40:36It was, you know, the Department of Trade and Industry would send him to places. He'd go on these trips under the auspices of the Foreign Office who would organize them. Everywhere he went, he was being accompanied by police officers from the Metropolitan Police, who aren't sort of the Home Office. So you've got different arms of the government are also involved, if you like, in this kind of Andrew, on these tours where gradually things sort of unfolded. And he'd go off and he'd go on some of these trips with Epstein. and why weren't other people getting involved? I mean, it's not for the Queen to know exactly what's in his diary, but it is for some of these public servants and also people at the palace.

41:19They should have known what was going on. And finally, by the end, obviously things came to a head. He was seen with Epstein after Epstein had been convicted. And at the same time, as Cameron said, he was just useless as an envoy. He'd just go into a trade fair and say the wrong thing. I mean, it was at one telecoms event. He went, what's orange? And everyone sort of put their head in their hands. You know, I mean, he just wasn't delivering, if you like, for the country. So, you know, as I say, a lot of people, I think, let Andrew go on for too long. And the Queen, of course, she would accept that she had a part to play.

42:07And it's a very fair point, Constantine, that people were always worried about upsetting the Queen. We'd better not be too mean to Andrew because we might upset the Queen. That was definitely a thing. But, you know, even after all that, I've got the story in the book of how he actually hit a very senior member of staff in a row about he wanted to hold a conference at the palace. and he couldn't, and the master of the household, who had to explain, I'm sorry, you can't do that, and he ended up hitting him. And the Queen was appalled, and Prince Philip ended up writing a letter of apology to this chap.

42:45Andrew wrote a sort of grudging note. So everyone knew what he was like. And therefore it's fair to say, well, why didn't people act earlier? But I would say there were a lot of people who could have acted earlier. I was just going to say, but there are people listening to this, Robert, who's like, look, fair enough. He was an adult. He had a responsibility. There was, you know, responsibility was also spread amongst other people. But look, Virginia Gaffray, the accusations that came out, the Queen lent Andrew 12 million quid in order that these charges just go away. I mean, we're in Michael Jackson territory here, aren't we?

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44:47Francis Foster:After you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about them. So make sure to mention Trigonometry to support the show. Once again, head to superpower.com and use our code Trigger at checkout. He was an adult. He had a responsibility. There was, you know, responsibility was also spread amongst other people. But look, Virginia Gaffray, the accusations that came out, the Queen lent Andrew 12 million quid in order that these charges just go away. I mean, we're in Michael Jackson territory here, aren't we? Well, we certainly don't know. We don't know exactly how much it was. We don't know exactly how.

45:25Was it a loan? Was it a gift? Who paid what to who? I mean, there's there's there are a lot of questions. I don't I don't pretend there aren't. But, you know, at the time, companies would I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but people pay off. It looked terrible. It still looks terrible. And we still don't know the exact details of it. But yeah, that was, I think, a grave mistake. It was at the start of the platinum jubilee. And there was a sort of sense of, well, let's just make this go away. But of course it didn't.

46:09Francis Foster:Like I say, it's very, very hard for a mother to disown her child. It was the hardest thing. I talked to people who worked with her. They said that that moment where she had to, after his Newsnight interview, where they had effectively, she had to kick him out of public life. That was very, very painful for her. Because also she was a princess of York. I mean, you know, she, her dad was Duke of York. She was born the daughter of the Duke of York. That's why that title to her, you know, meant everything. That's why she was so pleased and proud to give it to Andrew on his wedding day. You will now be the Duke of York.

46:46You know, this is an extra special thing. It's one of the reasons why everyone is very glad that she was not around to see him lose that title.

46:56Francis Foster:And what do we know about Prince Andrew now in terms of what he was up to, how he was able to get away with it, and also why he was doing it in the first place? Well, I mean, it's an ongoing legal process, so I suspect we're going to find out some more. Like I said, he was given a very long leash, long reign to do what he was, to hang out with Epstein, to go to all these places. As things have unfolded, a lot of it's not just about the accusations to do with young girls, but it's to do with state records, state documents, who was telling what to whom. So yeah, I mean, it's by no means over. It's an ongoing scandal.

47:54It's definitely one of the, I would say, one of the gravest sort of royal scandals of modern times. But like I said, it doesn't involve the direct line to the throne. And there's going to be a lot of people listening to this who are going, well, we've spoken about the Queen, we've spoken about Empire, we've touched on probably the wrong way of describing it Prince Andrew ex-Prince Andrew but what about Meghan and Harry? yeah Meghan and Harry I mean again that is well we have touched on them already but you know they've parted company with the monarchy I think following Harry's the events of recent days what's he so upset about?

48:41He has multiple issues to do with, you know, how... I think essentially he feels that he hasn't had, hasn't been dealt fairly by Britain, by the media, by the government, and notably by the monarchy, by the institution, I think.

48:57Francis Foster:What does he want that he didn't get?

49:02Treatment to... He feels that, I mean, you have to ask him, but I mean, if you read his book, you listen to his interviews, He feels that when at times when he felt he needed sort of the help, the support of the institution for whatever reason, that it was lacking. He felt that, you know, and it is a hierarchy. I mean, you read throughout the book, there are these little sort of, you know, slights, he sort of takes offence. William got the bigger room. William got the bigger bed. He got the this, the that. I mean, you know, it's in there. Read the book. But it's a hierarchy. It's not a huge surprise that the one who's the heir is going to get the big stuff.

49:44One of the reasons the late Queen was very sympathetic to Harry, and she really was, and he talks about having a special relationship with her, and I think that's true, is that she had a great affinity with spares. Her father was a spare. He wasn't born to be king. Throughout her life, she would be incredibly tolerant when Princess Margaret was behaving at the time. and it's pretty, you know, she can be very difficult, but the Queen had great sympathy with her. She was a spare, and Andrew was a spare. Harry's a spare. She could see that if you're the firstborn, it all sort of goes on straight, it goes down crane tracks.

50:22It's all coming to you, everything. If you're not, yeah, it's a more sort of nebulous situation. You're in this sort of vague, and no one's quite sure what you can and you can't do, and so that, as we saw with Harry. I mean, there was a time when Harry was absolutely the most popular member of the family by a mile. I would say peak Harry, peak, peak Prince Harry was late summer of 2012. We'd had that wonderful summer. We'd had the Diamond Jubilee. We'd had the Olympics. It had been a huge success. Queen opened the Olympics with James Bond famously. It was while I was in the stadium that night.

50:56It was great. And then we came to ending the Olympics. The Olympic rules say the Games will be closed by the head of state. Well, the Queen said, no, actually, I'm going to Balmoral. I've opened Olympics before. She'd opened the 1976 Olympics. I mean, the House of Windsor has more Olympics than any other family in the world. They've done the 1908, the 48, you know, the 2012 Olympics. So the Queen said, no, I'm going on holiday. One of the family is going to close the Olympics. And it's a big deal. Billions of people are watching. you kind of hand over to the next Olympic city and everyone assumed that it was a job for Prince Charles or possibly Prince William.

51:35And with very short notice, it was just quietly announced that Prince Harry will close the games. And everyone thought, that's interesting. I mean, why? Why Harry? What we didn't know at the time, but what he knew and what the Queen knew, was he was about to go off on active service to Afghanistan for the second time. And it was dangerous. And there and no one talked about it, but he might not come back. He wanted him to have his moment. And it was a very proud moment for Harry. It didn't involve very much having you turn up at the Olympics, but effectively you are sitting there in the place of the sovereign, acting as head of state.

52:11And that was a big moment for him, and he was very chuffed about that. And yet, just a few weeks later, he's about to go off to Afghanistan, and he goes on this boys' trip to Las Vegas, where they fall in with some party girls. One of the party girls takes a picture on her phone of them all playing them strip billiards, and the picture gets out into the internet, and suddenly it goes viral. And no one cared. I mean, no one thought, look, here's a single guy. He's about to go off and fight in a war. He's in Vegas. He's having a good time. Great. Good luck to you. But he took it very badly. He felt really let down.

52:46He felt that the press had this, you know, this shouldn't have happened. And he felt that he just felt he let the whole lot down, the army, the family, the monarchy, the country. And I think that was a moment where he started. I just detected a sort of a more sour demeanor. You know, he went from happy Harry to sulky Harry at that point.

53:08Francis Foster:It's a very interesting response because you think you'd take some responsibility for your role in all of this, wouldn't you? Well, I think he did. He did. He gave an interview a few months later where he just said, it was my fault. He wasn't blaming anyone for what had happened. He was very unhappy. He felt that the press shouldn't have published these pictures. The response from the public, as I said, was, well, we don't care. There was a website went up on the Facebook page called Give a Naked Salute to Prince Harry, and it was full of members of the armed forces. all being naked sort of with their backs to the camera.

53:47You know, you'd have all around the armed forces. I mean, everyone thought, you know, he's a playboy prince. So what? But, you know, I think from that point on, I think that marked his growing distrust of the media. And then he felt that that, you know, obviously impacted on Meghan. I think they felt that after the marriage that they weren't getting the same support levels from the institution that William and Catherine were getting. And I think it was very badly handled. When there came a point where they were going to split the offices, they shared an office until just after Harry and Meghan got married in 2018.

54:31And fairly soon after that, the palace was being refurbished. And there was a bit of forward planning. And that forward planning was, look, at some point, you know, the Prince of Wales, Charles, is going to become king. And at that point, William becomes the new Prince of Wales. Harry, you come under the cost centre of the monarch, not the Prince of Wales. So you need to have your own office. And it was just done very badly. It was just sort of treated like in a sort of managerial way, which was sort of, right, go and find yourself some new office space. You know, It was handled, yeah, it was a bit corporate.

55:06And I think when you're dealing with a, yeah, it's an institution, people sometimes call it the firm, people call it the monarchy, PLC, or whatever, but fundamentally it's a family unit. And I think that officialdom didn't do that very well, and Harry and Meghan, I think, took that very personally, and then gradually they felt that they weren't getting the support that William and Catherine were getting, and that actually, why are we doing this? Let's get out of here. How much of this comes down to the horrific events of 1997 and the way that his mother died and his anger and resentment to the press, maybe to his father as well, with the way he perceived the way that his father treated his mother?

55:47Well, actually, if you read his book, Spare, he's actually very fond when he's writing about his father. I mean, he's very affectionate. He loves his father. I mean, I think, yeah, the death of his mother, unquestionably still to this day, I think, really informs his attitude towards the press, the media generally, but the press in particular. I mean, the fact is that Fleet Street were not involved. Fleet Street weren't in the Alma Tunnel on August the 31st, 1997. I mean, it just, you know, but he sees it as a sort of part of a...

56:29Francis Foster:Wait, was that car not being chased by paparazzi at the time? Yeah, yeah. It was the French paparazzi were pursuing a car being driven by a drunk driver. I mean, I think we can unpack that. I mean, there have been multiple investigations and inquiries and all the rest. But, yeah, there was a car chase. But what I'm saying is you can see why he would think the press caused a death, right? I would say, yeah, if you assume that the sort of paparazzi right up to the, you know, Fleet Street are all one and the same thing, then, yeah, you can draw that inference. And I don't blame him, and I don't think most people would.

57:05I mean, you know, young boy, and you want somebody to blame. I mean, I think there are multiple people to blame in that. Unquestionably, the paparazzi were an integral factor. But whereas Prince William has moved on, he understands that the press, a free press, has a role to play in a constitutional democracy. And you deal with that. I mean, it's a fact of life. I think Harry finds it much harder. On the one trip that he did do with Meghan, the one sort of big tour they did soon after they got married, They did this big kind of Pacific tour and the press all came along. And, you know, the press call, that press call, I mean, none of them had been around at the time of Diana's death.

57:55I mean, this was years later. And on these trips, these are hard work for the press. They're not jolly by any means. And there's a sort of, there's always an understanding, you know, the press do their job, the royals do their job. But if Charles and Camilla were on a trip, or William and Catherine were on a trip, there'd be a bit of sort of, hello, how are you? At no point, there was no engagement at all with the media. And on the final leg, the Prince's private secretary said, you really do need to just go and say, at least to say hello to the press. I mean, you know, they'd been following, they'd been working, you know, around the clock for two weeks, and it would just be a courtesy.

58:38so he sort of grudgingly went to the back of the plane and sort of hacks are sitting in sort of the cheap seats at the back and sort of poked his head through the curtain and said thanks for coming, not that you were invited shut the curtain so the press thought well okay how do you respond as a professional when you're in that sort of situation it doesn't mean you instinctively warm and then at the time of Archie She's birthed, the palace put out statements saying the Duchess has gone into hospital. When in fact she'd already had the baby and come home. It was raw, it wasn't as raw, it was a lie.

59:21People don't like being lied to. And so there was just a level of distrust, mistrust and it got worse and eventually they thought we're out.

59:33Francis Foster:You actually seem fairly sympathetic to Harry, I think, on balance. What about Meghan? Has she played a constructive role in the royal family? Well, I mean, people talk about Megxit, which I think is unfair because it implies it's all down to her. I mean, I would say it's 50-50. I mean, it's as much him. And one hears, I know, from talking to people. I mean, there'd be moments where actually Meghan would be sort of advocating a more kind of constructive role. And often, I mean, Harry's response to at least two people I know when they said, look, you do need to sort of forge a better relationship with the media, he just said, well, they killed my mother.

1:00:09And that's the end of the conversation. So Megan, you know, she could be practical. She could see the need to find some sort of common ground. But no, I think, you know, when they decided it was time to go, I think she was very much, you know, you just look at the Oprah Winfrey interview, which was so damaging, I think, to relations that was essentially her interview he comes in at the end he sort of comes bounding in after about 40 minutes um and then slightly messes up all her narrative anyway because she sort of talked about how um you know how uh while she was pregnant a member of the family had started asking about the the baby and then harry kind of comes into the safe and goes yeah that was right at the start of our relationship you think oh hang on no that's not going to stand up in a court of law because she just said it happened in 2019, and you said it happened in 2028.

1:01:06So, yeah, I mean, of course she has a part to play in it. It's just really sad. They could have been such an asset to the monarchy, particularly to the Commonwealth. I mean, that's what the Queen thought when they were getting married. I mean, she made both of them. She gave them these very sort of senior positions as Commonwealth youth ambassadors. She had all sorts of high hopes. She set aside one of the oldest and most important of her patronages, which is the Association of Commonwealth Universities, which is one of the oldest, I think it's the oldest university, sort of pan-global international university association.

1:01:46And the Queen had been a patron of that for her whole reign. And she said, no, let's give that to Meghan. This would be very useful. We'd give her a platform. She can go and talk about important issues in an apolitical space. So the Queen really had high hopes and was very touched on Meghan's wedding day and Meghan's veil at her wedding. She'd had all the flowers of every single nation of the Commonwealth embroidered into her veil. It was a charming touch. And the Queen thought, this is great. We're going to have a slimmed down monarchy. William's obviously going to have a lot of stuff to do here.

1:02:18And Harry and Meghan can go and travel the Commonwealth and sort of keep the Commonwealth. because don't forget the Commonwealth when she started it had eight members when she died it had 56 I mean it was it's an extraordinary institution and she could see that they'd be great for that and then of course that didn't happen and and then they they they kind of started turning on the Commonwealth in some of their interviews they they they one one interview I think Harry said yeah it's got a lot to answer for one he thought oh wow that's not gonna um slightly off message But, you know, and actually on that point, I know we talked about the Commonwealth earlier, but another important point is people still want to join it, and all the new countries joining it were never part of the British Empire anyway.

1:03:05So while people might want to kind of have this sort of revisionist argument about the evils of the British Empire, which unquestionably had things to answer for, I'm not saying it didn't, but when, you know, you've got countries like Gabon and Togo, Mozambique and Cameroon and Rwanda, which held a recent Commonwealth summit, None of them had anything to do with the British Empire at all, but they want to join it because it's a great network.

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1:04:01Francis Foster:With PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just$276 a year for$1 million in coverage. Head to policygenius.com slash trig to compare life insurance quotes from the top companies and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash trig. How much of this, and this is a pretty blunt question, is I've got mates who went to Sandhurst with Harry or knew Harry in the armed forces, and they went, the consensus is always the same. Lovely bloke, not very bright. How much of this is he's been, now he's away from the royal family, he's had cameras put in his face, he's giving interviews, and he's just exposing himself time after time after time.

1:04:51Well, it's a fact. I mean, he's not academically top of the tree. I mean, we... But people sort of say, oh, yeah, Harry's thick. I disagree with that. I've watched him close quarters. He's got great emotional intelligence. I think he's very good at working a room, both he and William are actually, but he can go into a space full of very old, very young people he's never met before who are all tongue-tied, who've got nothing to say. And some royals find that and have found that very difficult. It's a bit sort of, have you come far? And it's all a bit stiff. And Harry is really good at going in and chatting.

1:05:35And so I think he may not, I mean, his A-levels were not great. I think he got two of them and it was enough to get into the army. But at a personal level, he's good. And he's not, I think he's got good instincts. I mean, in terms of, he does have a sort of sense of, you know, if he's at an event, okay, what's the point of this and who are the key people here? And that person over there is looking a bit lost. So he's good at that. So I think he has strengths. But I think you're right, having left the confines, as he would put it, of the monarchy or the structures and all that goes with it. There is a sense of a lost soul who's sitting out there in California and just listening to whichever PR person they happen to have hired that week.

1:06:26I mean, they seem to get through spokespeople at a rate of knots. You're always reading about yet another new appointment to their empire, and then that person sort of moves on within a matter of months. So you've only got to look at this court case. He's just lost. I mean, absolute catastrophic blunder. Well, tell people about that, Robert. This is his case, along with others, against the Daily Mail, the paper which I write. So I declare an interest, but I wasn't involved in the actions. But, you know, it was a very, you know, it was almost sort of felt at times like he, you know, he's had his court cases against the media before.

1:07:15I mean, he's fought multiple cases. But this one was really very flimsy from the start. He pressed ahead, and as it went on, in court it was quite clear that the proof that he was relying on just wasn't there. He ploughed on, and now, even after it's over, he's issued a statement saying, attacking the judge, and saying it was a whitewash. That makes life very difficult for repairing fences with his father, because the king is the head of the judiciary. and this is one of the reasons why the king always had to be quite careful talking to Harry when he's involved in various legal actions. I mean, Harry has been suing the British government.

1:08:01That puts the king in an impossible position because he's the head of the judiciary. So, you know, if Harry's sort of going to sort of start putting out statements accusing judges and ministers and whatever of whatever, that's just not what royals do so no Harry I think he has been badly advised and I don't really see any end to that I think he'll go back to California and let's I don't know what will happen next

1:08:30Francis Foster:It sounds to me I hadn't paid that much close attention I sort of start to feel sorry for him really It just sounds like obviously the death of his mother it would be a traumatic event for anyone but it's unresolved and it's unprocessed trauma which I imagine is driving much of this. It's sad, really. It is. Read his book. It's an extraordinary book. There's a lot in it that doesn't quite stack up. There are assertions he makes which are just factually wrong. One could say they're just untrue. But he is... I just go back to that. I remember sitting there on his wedding day, May 2018. It was such a happy day.

1:09:16This country had had a miserable couple of years after the whole Brexit saga, and politically everyone was sort of at each other's throats, and everything just felt a bit rubbish. And then suddenly we had this sunny day and this great event, and it was fabulous. And you had the first biracial member of the royal family, and it was great, and everybody loved it. And I think everyone felt, okay, this is a sort of reboot moment for the monarchy. actually not, I mean the monarchy had been on a high really ever since I think I would argue since 2011 which was Williams wedding, the state visit to Ireland, the Obama's coming to Britain and followed by the Olympics and Jubilee and everything and all the way through there being this sort of great run of great things and this moment just felt like a happy day for the country.

1:10:07And it just didn't last. I just think it's sad and I think there's not much we can do about it now. We've got to move on.

1:10:16Francis Foster:Well, that was the thing that I found really surprising because, as I say, someone who's not a close observer of these things like you, I remember them having this wedding, which was universally adored by everyone, clearly. And then fast forward, not a very long time at all. Suddenly they're complaining about how they've been treated, everyone's racist, like all this stuff. And it just didn't match my visual experience of what I saw, obviously, like not being on the inside, you know? Yeah, well, and that was their perception. I think you talk to people who worked around them at the time, and I think there was a kind of a cultural clash.

1:10:55I mean, you know, they particularly, you know, Meghan had come from a kind of can-do Californian, right? Let's get on and do this situation. I mean, and that's going be difficult when you suddenly come up against the royal household, which does things at its own pace. Compared to what she's used to, it's a bit dozy, a bit indolent. I know that tiny little things would be irritating. There was some problem with a lock on a door in their cottage and it just took weeks to sort it out because it had to be done by this official and that official because it's an an old listed building. You could see why it's like, what, that just meant the lock, you know.

1:11:36You could see why it would drive them, and drive Meghan in particular. It would sort of infuriate them. But, you know, the Queen went out of her way to make it work for them, as I say. And I think she just felt that they hadn't given it enough time. You know, these things aren't, it's not all sort of happiness and sweetness and light. You know, there's hard graft involved. and there is, it is a hierarchy and that's the way it is. And I think the media sort of stoked up this idea of the Fab Four. People talked about the Fab Four, which was just wrong. I mean, it was never going to work because inevitably, you know, you're going to have the Fab Two and then the next two and they're going to move at different levels because it's a monarchy, it's a hierarchy.

1:12:20It's how it goes. And I think one of the great sadnesses, particularly for the Queen towards the end of her reign, was the knowledge that this book was coming out, Megxit, that must have been incredibly painful for her. I think it was painful, but we need to put it in perspective. I mean, she'd been through everything. I mean, when you've, as a 14-year-old, watched your father, who wasn't meant to be king, trying to kind of hold a country together when at any minute you're likely to be invaded, and if you are invaded, and don't forget, I mean, the Romanovs are still fresh in the family mind. I mean, it's not long since they were put up against a wall and shot.

1:13:00You know, your father and mother nearly get killed twice in a week. You've been through all that. You've seen the sort of stresses. You've suddenly taken over this job at a very early age as a 25-year-old mother of two. Within years, I think we have a sort of rosy picture of the early part of her reign. It's all just lovely and wonderful and everyone's nice and it's super. It's not. I mean, the Suez crisis really rattled her. That was only three years into her reign. You know, there'd been along the way a lot of serious, difficult moments. I mean, as I say in the book, she had something akin to a, not quite a nervous breakdown, but certainly nervous exhaustion in 1969.

1:13:41I'd see, I mean, some utterly appalling moments in the 80s, which a lot of people, I think, might have just chucked in the job. I mean, I still look back. I think the most extraordinary moment of her entire reign, if not her entire life, was that morning in 1981, 1982, sorry, where she woke up to find a strange man barefoot at the end of a bed, dripping blood and holding a broken ashtray. and she's ringing the alarm bell and nothing happens. Nobody comes. I mean, how terrifying is that? That she manages to keep him talking and keep him calm. It's Michael Fagan. It's this loser, drug addict, mentally ill man who's broken into the palace.

1:14:27She doesn't know who he is. This is at a time when the IRA are trying to blow up the royal family. They killed Lord Mountbatten only three years earlier. There were bombs going off. Anything could be behind this. and she's got to sit there and here is this madman at the end of her bed. And finally someone comes in, the maid comes in and goes, flipping heck man, what's he doing here? And then he gets taken away. What does she do? She's got an investiture at 11 o 'clock that morning. She knows that several hundred people are on their way there. They bought new hats and shoes and it's going to be the biggest day of their life.

1:15:02So she just gets on with it. And no one had the faintest idea. 11 a.m., there she is, bang on time at the investiture. And it was only when it came out in the papers the next day, people thought, oh, my God, what's she just been through? And, you know, she was brave. You have to be brave, I think, to do this job. She was very brave. She only had one phobia, which was helicopters. But she got over that. And remarkable. So going back to your point about, you know, how much of the Harry business must have been a shot. Well, yeah, the 90s, that was a bigger deal because her anus herribilis, that did involve the direct line of succession.

1:15:39I mean, the fact that the heir to the throne's marriage was falling apart, as were the marriages of her other children. There were huge rows about tax, about money. The royal family was not in a good place. And then in 1997, as we've discussed, the death of Diana. I mean, these were not existential threats to the monarchy. I don't think it was ever as bad as that, but they were very, very grave challenges. much, I think, far graver than either Andrew or Harry, who, let's face it, are secondary to the direct line. So, yeah, she was upset at the end, but she'd seen it all. She'd had the most extraordinary life, and she always abided by her father's dictum to her as a former naval officer, which is, this storm too shall pass.

1:16:26That was always like, the sun will come out. We've just got to get through this. She was incredibly stoical.

1:16:32Francis Foster:And that being the case, what is now the future of the Royal Family? You have a relatively new king in place, he's of age, you might say, and then you've got the potential eventual succession of Prince William. What do you make of how this is going to pan out from here? What do you think? I think it, as ever, will have to adapt, it will have to move with the times. There will be challenges, but overall it's a 1 ,000-year-old institution that has endeared with one brief interlude when Charles I parted company with his head. But Britain fairly soon afterwards resumed its love for having a constitutional monarchy.

1:17:13Well, actually, it wasn't particularly constitutional with Charles II, but it will carry on. It will have to adapt. I mean, it is shrinking. The next generation is going to be the current prince and princess of Wales. and helped by some of their older cousins. But if you look at the working unit, William and Catherine, by some margin, the two youngest, their children, should their children want to do it, by the way, there's no guarantee that George and Charlotte and Louis will necessarily want a life of royal duty, but we hope they do. that it's going to be a challenging time. And I think we, as the public, we have to manage our expectations.

1:18:02We have to realise that we've got a smaller royal unit, so they can't do necessarily all the things that we're used to the royals doing. We can't just expect them to keep turning up to open hospitals and cut ribbons and do all that stuff, because there aren't enough of them to get around. So we have to deal with that. But overall, the fundamental role of having this figure to whom the armed forces and the judiciary and the civil service is in charge of the honours system, all that stuff, and is separate from government and has this soft power role,

1:18:34Francis Foster:which just works. I was in Washington with the King the other day, and you just see how, watch the monarch address in Congress, and it just shows how it works. And it's not, as I said earlier, it's not rational. We wouldn't create it tomorrow, but it's there. And yeah, there's a perfectly respectable argument towards having an elected head of state and saying that it's run its course. and there's a perfectly straightforward democratic solution to it which is any political party can put in their manifesto at the next election we will have a referendum on the monarchy see where that gets you none of them will do that because they know that the public fundamentally are very happy with this system and they know it's got its faults and they know nothing's perfect but you know boy be careful what you wish for Robert what a perfect place to end the interview The final question is always the same.

1:19:37What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? I talked to, I was talking about this before I came here with my wife, Diana, because I think there were lots of things, but she put this, and I totally agree, is loneliness, actually. It's loneliness, particularly as people get older. I think there is less human connection there, and we see it at every level. We see people working from home, social media, the way that people know, they have sort of friendships through web platforms instead of face-to-face. I think that's something we've got. We just need to, like this, we need to sit down with other people and look at them face-to-face and we need friends.

1:20:24Francis Foster:That we do. Robert, thank you so much. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Robert's going to answer your questions. Is King Charles' failure to be defender of the faith, i.e. the Church of England, as per his coronation oath, and his insistence of being a defender of all faiths, a betrayal of his mother's legacy?

1:21:01Thank you.