Endgame, p.24
Endgame, page 24
As for Harry, who started the year claiming in interviews that he was hoping for reconciliation with and accountability from his family, he dramatically shifted after his father and brother actively continued to avoid conversations about their part in the difficulties that the Sussexes experienced. In February and March, the prince turned to a mutual friend back in London to try to set up a conversation with his brother, but the attempts were ignored. Harry, said a source, chose to “keep focused on the future, not the past.”
As the duke left California on May 5 for King Charles’s coronation—a decision he had made because “it was the right thing” to support his father on such a big day—his emotions were a world away from how he felt landing in London with knots in his stomach for the Platinum Jubilee just a year earlier. “Though he hasn’t found closure with his family, he’s accepted that things are unlikely to change, particularly with his brother—who refuses to even properly talk with him,” said a source. As Harry later explained to a friend, “I’m ready to move on past it. Whether we get an apology or accountability, who knows? Who really cares at this point?”
10
The Men (and Women) in Gray
Royal Courtiers and the Struggle for Power
The courtier’s final aim is to become his prince’s instructor.
—Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier
A prince’s court
Is like a common fountain, whence should flow
Pure silver drops in general, but if’t chance
Some curs’d example poison’t near the head,
Death and diseases through the whole land spread
—John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
When the showy, obsequious courtier Osric appears in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince Hamlet inquires whether his friend and confidante, Horatio, knows the young Palace aide. As Osric ingratiatingly introduces himself, Hamlet, in a wry aside, asks Horatio, “Dost know this waterfly?” Osric then shares the details of the King’s wager—a duel refereed by Osric that eventually causes Hamlet’s death—while the prince haughtily toys with the courtier, forcing him to agree with everything he says, despite intentionally contradicting himself. One minute Hamlet says he’s hot, the next he is cold, and Osric zealously concurs both times. With a touch of a sneer, the prince scolds the aide for not wearing his hat like a proper courtier: “Put your bonnet to its right use. ’Tis for the head.”
Shakespeare’s gentle mocking of Osric would have easily landed with his Elizabethan audiences. During Queen Elizabeth I’s reign in the sixteenth century, the stereotypical courtier dressed extravagantly to signal their wealth and position in the court. The women literally assembled their outfits, attaching puffy sleeves to bodices and draping elaborate skirts over hooped petticoats known as farthingales. With long, frizzy hair swept up from the forehead into hair helmets and elaborate buns, necklaces, and dangling earrings, female courtiers dazzled like cockatiels. But they were often outdone by the men. Adorned in cloaks, decorative doublets with ruffled collars (think: a gaudy, snug jacket topped by a frilly dog collar cone), ballooning knee-length trousers, tight hose, and, of course, a flamboyant hat, male courtiers were the peacocks of the Elizabethan court.
Colorful, noisy, and always hovering, Queen Elizabeth’s advisors and hangers-on were also the insects of the House of Tudor, hence the bard’s reference to a waterfly. Like Osric, they buzzed around the monarchs and their advisors, flitting here and there from situation to situation like bugs, carrying messages, refereeing duels, and doing their bosses’ bidding. They were the waterflies who dropped in to deliver troubling news; the butterflies who fluttered through the palace, with whispers and scandal providing the uprush of air for their wings; the bees who pollinated the rumor mill and guarded the nest; and the flies who fed on the waste from their devious schemes.
Minus the doublets and farthingales, a courtier’s work profile and behavioral traits haven’t changed all that much over the centuries. To this day, modern courtiers retain similar responsibilities and perform comparable tasks to their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century predecessors. Current members of the court still diligently guide, protect, and serve their monarchs, often with great skill and even some of that old Elizabethan flair. But instigating and umpiring Palace duels also remain part of the job description, though leaks and press releases have now replaced daggers and swords. The flashy capes may be gone, but Palace advisors still operate in cloaks of secrecy and often trade in gossip and favors. You may not see a courtier donning a feathered bonnet or carrying a scrolled message in the twenty-first century, but King Charles and Prince William continue the tradition of dispatching loyal aides to announce, arrange, fix, and, at times, provoke. Now they’re professionally trained and, in some cases, groomed for the job. Today’s Osrics sport office attire from Savile Row and have earned their stripes in the creative but wily realms of public relations and communications.
Palace advisors and aides may now come tested and highly qualified, but one royal family member still refers to them as mere insects. In Spare, Prince Harry singles out three courtiers—without ever naming them—for the bug treatment, dubbing them “The Bee. The Fly. And the Wasp.” Beyond Harry’s zoological monikers, courtiers have been subject to an array of nicknames over the years. Queen Elizabeth I referred to her top consultants as “Spirit,” “Eyes,” and “Elf.” One of these, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was purportedly her lover, so it’s fortunate for him that she labeled him Eyes instead of Elf. Both Prince Philip, who often butted heads with members of Queen Elizabeth II’s court, and Princess Margaret called them the “Men with Mustaches.” A long-serving courtier for both King George VI and Elizabeth II, Sir Alan “Tommy” Lascelles, wore a rather sizable ’stache and did in fact routinely clash with both Philip and Margaret. In The Crown, Lascelles is portrayed as a rigid, assiduous member of the old guard—an emblem of establishment order and duty to the monarchy—and the show’s Prince Philip character derisively calls him the “dreaded mustache.” Princess Diana’s well-known tag for the courtiers in her orbit was “the Men in Gray,” because of their ubiquitous gray suits; the Duchess of York, Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson, jumped on Diana’s train and referred to them as the “Gray Men,” while Meghan and her friends privately called them “Palace Vipers.”
But who are these men, and now women, in gray, these wasps and mustaches? And what exactly do these courtly bees and elves get up to? Full disclosure: it’s a vast and intricate subject, one that is beyond the scope of one chapter, though I will hit some highlights. One could write an entire book about British courtiers and their powerful positions in the monarchy. In fact, some have, including historian Lucy Worsley’s Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court and royal reporter Valentine Low’s Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown. Low’s book mostly looks at major players from the House of Windsor, which came into being in 1917, including the scornful and “unhelpful” Commander Richard Colville and the modernizing Lord Altrincham, a man who daringly told Queen Elizabeth II and her family that they were out of touch, and then, later in his tenure, let some fresh air in on what he considered an over-stuffy institution buzzing with too many upper-crust drones. Worsley’s book pulls the curtain back on the eighteenth-century court, revealing how it’s often not just senior officials who wield enormous power in the Palace. King George I’s Turkish valet, Mohammed, not only helped dress the King (and treat the monarch’s, erm, hemorrhoids) but, because of his intimate access, was considered as important and influential as a government minister.
Centuries later, similar was said about Elizabeth II’s personal assistant and senior dresser of three decades, Angela Kelly, whom the late monarch confided in more than any other aide or family member. Discreet and trustworthy, Kelly (nicknamed by some staff as “AK-47” because of her easily triggered temper) knew all Her Majesty’s secrets. She was one of the first and few to know about (and keep) the secret of the Queen’s health diagnosis and related struggles (revealed by family sources after Her Majesty’s death as myeloma, a form of bone cancer). Kelly was also a shoulder to cry on, often sitting with the Queen for hours at a time after the death of her husband, Prince Philip. Charles is said to have never trusted Kelly and, after his mother’s death, made one of his first acts as king to evict the sixty-five-year-old from the Windsor grace-and-favor home the Queen had gifted to her. “He wanted to keep her at arm’s length and away from the goings-on in Windsor,” said a source. And so Kelly was moved four hours away to a property in Yorkshire. Even that came with a condition. After publishing two books about her life working with his mother (with Her Majesty’s blessing), the Mail on Sunday reported that Kelly was made to sign a new NDA with Charles promising that any future commercial projects don’t include the words King or Palace.
Lowly or high ranking, emblematic or modern, these individuals worked in a position that goes back thousands of years. The 1528 book Il Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), essentially a how-to guide for aspiring courtiers, described court life as one that “revolved around the monarch or prince it served”; it is a world that has existed since the first monarchies. “Whenever there is a monarch, there is a court; and whenever there is a court there are courtiers,” said Low.
The line of British monarchs stretches far back into the mists of time. Sometime during 924–939, Saint Dunstan served as an influential attendant at the court of King Æthelstan, a sovereign whom many consider the founder of the English monarchy. Dunstan was the King’s favorite until other jealous courtiers hatched a sabotaging plot: they started a rumor about Dunstan to disgrace him (some things never change). After convincing Æthelstan that his chosen courtier practiced black magic and witchcraft, the King sent him packing. On his way out, his rivals attacked him, threw him in a cesspool, and left him to die. He survived and later joined a monastery. One can hardly blame him.
Two hundred years later, Sir William Marshal transformed the role. As a knight and soldier, he broke the mold of the mere court attendant, becoming King Henry II’s most trusted advisor and influencer. An exceedingly powerful courtier who joined military crusades and signed on for administrative posts, he shaped medieval English politics and society in the process. A fellow knight who eulogized him said he was “the best knight who ever lived” and Sir William’s legacy is a lasting one—a statue of “the Marshal” was unveiled at Pembroke Castle on the rugged southern coast of Wales in 2022.
Sir Nicholas Carew’s legacy is not so grand. As a master of the horse—a top position in the royal household that remains a ceremonial title to this day—Carew was an important figure at the court of King Henry VIII, a transforming but execution-friendly monarch who reigned and terrorized in the early to mid-1500s. Letters between Carew and a fellow conspirator revealed there was a movement afoot to depose the King, and somehow these ended up in Henry’s possession (it appears there were leaks then, too). Carew was tried for treason and beheaded on the infamous Tower Hill on the north bank of the River Thames in 1539.
The influential, trailblazing Duchess of Marlborough, Sarah Churchill, kept her head, but she did experience a steep fall from being Queen Anne’s favored courtier in the early 1700s. Churchill was Queen Anne’s right-hand woman and a quintessential gatekeeper—those who wanted to sway the Queen or sought favors from the monarch approached the duchess first. Anne rewarded Churchill for her loyalty and counsel by promoting her to Keeper of the Privy Purse. Churchill was the first of only two women to hold this powerful position. The second to hold the royal purse strings was her challenger, Baroness Abigail Masham, an ambitious protégé of the duchess whose rise to power eventually eclipsed her boss’s, leading Queen Anne to outright dismiss Duchess Churchill from her court.
Although modern courtiers won’t find themselves face-to-face with a hooded executioner or at the bottom of a cesspool (not literally anyway; metaphorically the list is long, with finding oneself floating in the sewer of British politics at the top of it), they, too, are often overlooked, plotted against, and caught up in political beef and family feuds. This has much to do with the nature of their work. The label of courtier is synonymous with “Palace aide,” and it broadly applies to those who work in royal communications or serve as private secretaries, estate managers, equerries, event coordinators, ladies of the household, dressers, valets, and much more.
More narrowly, though, the term courtier is most often linked to press officials and private secretaries. When royal correspondents or talking heads reference courtiers or aides (including quoting them anonymously), chances are they are referring to those Palace staff who manage and offer advice to working royals or those in the communications offices who strategize engagements and release calibrated information. Toiling behind the scenes, they also advise, consult, and, like their ancient predecessors, finagle—surreptitiously directing and promoting their bosses (and, in theory, the Crown) whenever an opportunity presents itself.
Working so closely with the family members puts them in a tough spot. Courtiers must tread carefully to achieve a certain balance. If they are too fawning, principals (the term commonly used by courtiers when referring to their boss) and other influential Palace staff may grow weary of them and discount them, but if they are too direct, their bosses may quickly show them the door. And while they’re walking this tightrope, they often have the odious task of persuading monarchs to do some things they might not want to do, like, for instance, stripping Prince Andrew of his titles or disallowing Princess Margaret to marry her beloved Captain Townsend. The hours are long, the pay is often nothing to write home about (after all, it mostly comes from the public purse), and it can be a thankless position with minimal job security. Some stick around for years, but for many it’s a brief stint—a springboard to a well-paid job elsewhere.
But underestimate courtiers at your peril. As the historian and royal biographer Robert Lacey says, “[The] courtiers in the British system are the rulers of their masters and their mistresses, they’re not really underlings.” This is an overstatement, as the monarchs always have the final say, but courtiers are most certainly powerful players. The system promotes a hierarchy and, as a result, aides look for ways to exert their own power to consolidate it for their bosses. This sometimes requires hush-hush dirty work and brutal machinations. Being adjacent to power can be an intoxicating if sometimes corrupting position. Courtiers are the ultimate institutional insiders who—invisibly but with great influence—assist their principals with strategies around work and family complications, and they do what it takes to keep ugly stuff out of the media’s relentless gaze. They help them navigate the churning waters where the rivers of their personal lives meet the wild, expansive sea of public opinion.
In this respect, courtiers have played key roles in pivotal moments throughout the monarchy’s history, acutely so in more recent times. The information age tore up the ledgers and rule books and reformatted the cultural layout, even scrapping the entire design in some cases. It engendered “truthiness” and introduced multiple platforms for consistent messaging and content overload or campaigns of disinformation.
Through all this change and rearrangement, an ancient monarchy has hung on and stayed relevant—at least enough to survive anyway, both as an institution and a cultural attraction. They’ve done this by serving the tyrannical notion of image and practicing “brand management”—work that primarily falls under the purview of the courtiers. Essential to the royal brand is the reputation of the monarchs, so courtiers are responsible for managing and repairing the reputations of the family, both individually and collectively. When it’s going well, the marching orders are promote, promote, promote! In times of duress or when under attack, it’s defend, defend, defend! Or sometimes the edict is to simply stay silent. Either way, the brand must be maintained, the image upheld at all cost, and senior courtiers are on the front lines of these efforts.
Sometimes they do this ethically and responsibly, and sometimes they do not, which leads to the more important questions about senior courtiers: How do their practices and ploys impact the royal family, both as a family and as a brand? Do their ethics and values always reflect those that the monarchy is supposed to uphold? This brings us back to Harry’s insects.
“The Bee” is Queen Elizabeth II’s former private secretary, Sir Edward Young. A former banker and advisor to Conservative politicians, Young looks the part of both. An “oval-faced” (Harry’s words) middle-aged white man with neatly parted salt-and-pepper hair, he looks like two different people depending on whether or not he is wearing his glasses. Bespectacled, he’s all business administration with a touch of the professorial; without, he appears a little softer around the edges and slightly lost. But don’t let the latter look fool you. Following a three-year stretch as head of communications for the Granada media conglomerate (now ITV plc), he joined the royal household in 2004 as an assistant private secretary to the Queen until Her Majesty promoted him to the head job thirteen years later. Dedicated to his role, he was fiercely protective of the late monarch, particularly during the engulfing drama of Harry and Meghan’s departure. Harry’s contention is that Young abused his gatekeeping power, gaslighting him when it came to passing along important messages about his lawsuits against the media, and then prohibiting access to his grandmother when Harry needed her the most, all under the guise of “protecting the sovereign.”
