If a person should ever fancy a good cry or a sulk or to do a bit of yelling, then it would be particularly handy to be a member of the royal family.
The options are nearly endless for said catharsis.
There are Buckingham Palace’s 775 rooms, the 120 grace-and-favour royal palace apartments scattered across central London and Windsor, and even the 50,000 acres and myriad properties strewn all over the Balmoral estate. (Best take a jumper though).
We don’t know where, but it was at one of these properties (which range from so grand Louis XIV might have thought them a bit too flashy to relatively humble farmhouses) that a very strange and sad scene played out in early 2021.
So, it’s sometime in late February or early March 2021 – the pandemic is still chugging along, with Queen Elizabeth trapped inside “HMS Bubble”.
Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have scarpered off to be newbie Californians.
Prince Philip had been admitted to hospital and things did not look good.
Storm clouds and other clichés were gathering overhead thanks to CBS announcing that the Sussexes were set to be interviewed by TV confessor Oprah Winfrey. There would be emoting, feelings and “truth” dispensed in talk show soft lighting.
Meanwhile, every warning, every alarm and every high-sheen polished brass bell should have been going off behind royal closed doors.
And it was around this point that back in the UK, Prince William reportedly did something that has never been reported before – he did a bit of a bolt.
Now, Charlotte Griffiths, the Mail on Sunday’s editor-at-large, has revealed the torment that the future King went through in the lead up to the Sussexes’ Oprah bombshell airing – and if you’re reading this on a full stomach, look away now.
According to Griffiths, William “hid away” at an unspecified royal residence before the interview’s release and was “left physically unwell”. (What I wouldn’t give to see the collection of solid silver sick buckets the royal family might have tucked away – no old ice
cream containers here, thank you very much).
Griffiths, who made the comments while appearing on frequent Sussex critic Dan Wootton’s show on the GB News TV channel in the UK, said: “What I find quite surprising, and I’ve heard this for a long time now from many different sources, is that in the lead-up to that Oprah interview, William was quite literally sick with worry. He was not eating, and he became – not reclusive – but he definitely was hiding away. He went to a royal residence for a period of time to cut himself off from the world. He was just in bits basically”.
And that right there is a truly arresting image – the Prince of Wales, a bundle of nerves, tucked away somewhere on his own, suffering in the tense, ominous period before the Oprah special was screened.
This is not the William that the world has come to know and have mixed feelings about.
Thanks to that Oprah tell-all, thanks to Harry and Meghan’s melodramatic six hours of Netflix airtime, and thanks to Spare, a book which felt like it was only a smidgen shorter than War and Peace, the image of “Willy” is not of a man overcome with feelings.
The William the world has come to know, via Harry, is the big brother who is by turns jealous and browbeating; who encourages the duke into one of his biggest scrapes – the Nazi uniform – and then leaves him to swing; who does not seem particularly welcoming towards Meghan and who later thumps his brother in an altercation over the duchess’ alleged treatment of their shared staff.
The nearly-settled picture of the Prince of Wales today is not one of a man “going to bits” on his own in some secluded royal property while a footman nervously waits outside the door ready to proffer tissues and maybe even dispense a well-timed hug.
Sympathy for William has thus far been a commodity in very short supply, however, the version of events presented by Griffiths poses a real challenge to that.
Think about it. Stoic, steely, occasionally thuggish William unable to eat (not even a thin slice of venison or a single delicate marzipan petit four) and “in bits” over Harry’s decision to dump royal dirty laundry in the TV-watching masses’ laps.
The bigger picture here is that what has largely been overlooked in the nearly two years and change since Oprah is that William has feelings too, feelings that are never really priced in when it comes to Megxit post-mortem mode.
Wherever you might sit on the Harry-as-victim scale, what we have never really dwelled on is that William lost a brother in all of this too.
There are only two people in this world who truly understand what it was like growing up with parents whose marriage was irreparably broken before they could both walk; parents whose anger, hurts and infidelities were played out on front pages year upon sad year.
There are only two people who know what it’s like to be small children strapped into the back seat as they were pursued by the paparazzi through the streets of London; who know what it’s like to be forced into a tiny suit as a primary schooler and to have to shake hands with hundreds of strangers and who intimately appreciate the pressure and the scrutiny and the personal cost of all of this.
Two people who as boys were made to endure the unthinkable agony of following their mother’s coffin through the streets of London while a billion people watched on TV.
And now, those men don’t even have each other. If that is not some Shakespeare-level tragedy worthy of the Bard grabbing a fresh quill then I don’t know what is.
There was more that Griffiths revealed too. What was William’s better half, aka the Princess of Wales, doing while he was curled up in the foetal position wondering if former royal nanny Mabel Anderson might be up for a bit of hair stroking and lullaby-singing? The princess was going full on Tammy Wynette.
According to Griffiths, “what Kate was doing was standing by her man. Kate was like: ‘I’ve got to stick up for this guy and protect him. He’s being destroyed by this’.”
Earlier this month, the Times’ Valentine Low revealed in the updated edition of his excellent book Courtiers that it was Kate who played an instrumental role in the Palace’s push back against the Sussexes after Oprah aired.
Just shy of two days after Oprah was broadcast, the Palace put out their now-famous “recollections may vary” statement.
An insider told Low: “It was Kate who clearly made the point, ‘History will judge this statement and unless this phrase or a phrase like it is included, everything that they have said will be taken as true’.”
Griffiths has now told Wooton that seeing her husband so badly affected “probably made her quite steely even though she has this reputation for being shy. But when it comes to protecting her husband, she’s going to step in and protect him’.”
In the years since then, William would seem, based on myriad reports, to have moved from grief to simmering, seeing-red anger.
In January, in the wake of the publication of Spare, a friend of the prince’s told the Times that William was “anxious”, “sad” and “burning inside”.
Then, in April, a friend of William’s told the Daily Beast that the royal “will never trust Harry again. How could he? The truth is William absolutely hates Harry now and will never forgive him for the damage he has done to the family”.
Just over a month after the Prince of Wales was “in bits”, Philip went off to his reward and Harry returned to the UK for his funeral. Afterwards, the two brothers and their father King Charles met for what was their last reported meeting.
It did not go well, with their father at one point pleading, “Please, boys – don’t make my final years a misery”.
I wonder then, how did William really react to the Sussexes’ Netflix docuseries? To Spare?
Was priceless china hurled at walls, was some remote Highlands lodge temporarily requisitioned for some princely tears? We may never know.
But no matter what the prince was doing these last seven or so months, the good news is that he has definitely gotten his appetite back.
Appearing in a video for a charity afternoon tea, William recently offered his thoughts on the eternally fraught scone debate – does cream or jam go on first?
His opinion: “I go with whichever is closest to me to start off”.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’
experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.