One week ago, we were being inundated with stories about how the royal family believed The Princes and the Press was pro-Meghan propaganda, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were so mad about the BBC documentary, they were removing Kate’s Christmas Jazz Hands special from the BBC in a punitive measure. While most of that was lies and keen huffing, it was absolutely clear that William in particular was threatening all kinds of things behind-the-scenes. Everyone was waiting for Part 2 of the documentary to drop on Monday night, and I fully expected to come into work this morning and see a million headlines about how William was newly engorged with rage. Except it’s been pretty quiet on the subject of the documentary. No bleating from Kensington Palace, no condemnations from the palace. What happened? The Daily Mail suggests that the BBC may have done some last minute edits:
The royal households believe The Princes and the Press contains a slew of unsubstantiated and categorically inaccurate accusations about collusion with the media, particularly in connection with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during the tumultuous period of their decision to quit royal duties, dubbed ‘Megxit’. The households’ lawyers had been preparing to examine the final programme with a fine-tooth comb and had not ruled out a formal complaint.
But last night’s prime-time offering had seemingly been watered-down at the 11th hour, with editing going on up until the last minute. Plans for an accompanying podcast have also been postponed by the BBC.
A royal source said: ‘It is unlikely the matter will be taken further.’
The programme did, however, give significant airtime to Meghan’s personal solicitor, who went on the attack to defend the duchess against accusations of bullying, denying she had ever ‘improperly’ used her ‘power’.
Valentine Low, a reporter from The Times who reported details of the bullying allegations earlier this year, flatly denied that William had any knowledge of or colluded with the allegations being made public. But he did say those who had spoken to him were ‘very glad’ that their stories were being made public and were ‘still in tears’ two-and-a-half years later because of their experiences working for Meghan. He said: ‘Some were still psychologically traumatised. So something went badly wrong in those days.’
Mr Rajan himself suggested that unfavourable stories about Meghan were published because of a perception she didn’t ‘behave’ as a princess should. ‘There are plenty of reasons why negative stories are written about people in the press, and often that criticism is justified,’ he told the programme. ‘But some of the criticism levelled at Meghan arose from the feeling, the sense, in some quarters that this isn’t how our princesses are supposed to behave.’
It looks like the BBC blinked. I have no idea why – they were in a stronger position and it felt like William was about to be hoisted by his own petard. I’m very curious about what happened behind the scenes over the last week, not only with William’s tantrum at the BBC, but what was happening within the royal family about William generally. He was trying to convince everyone to cancel their projects with the BBC, including the Queen’s Christmas speech, and I’m sure his rage attack did not go over well. Did the Queen make a call to the BBC to get this to go away? Did Charles convince William to settle down? I truly do not know.
As for Valentine Low’s statements about how “something went badly wrong in those days” and people are still crying about it two years later… lol. Meghan was like “I have a binder full of research, let’s make some calls” and those bitches are still having nightmares about it to this very day.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
