WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:12.039
Ah Calorogus, Shark media, how Lo, and welcome to Palace
2
00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:15.720
Intrigue Weekly. I am your host, Mark Francis. It has
3
00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:18.000
been a week in which Royle, inside a deep crown,
4
00:00:18.079 --> 00:00:21.399
published his royal power rankings, placed Queen Camilla at the
5
00:00:21.480 --> 00:00:24.079
very top and Meghan Marker at the very bottom, and
6
00:00:24.120 --> 00:00:27.559
then the week obligingly spent seven days proving him right.
7
00:00:27.960 --> 00:00:31.320
A new baby arrived in Lisbon, Meghan turned forty five,
8
00:00:31.559 --> 00:00:34.679
and the Internet convened an inquest into every frame of it.
9
00:00:35.119 --> 00:00:37.880
King Charles pulled on a kilt, sipped a whiskey and
10
00:00:38.240 --> 00:00:41.520
remembered an avalanche that nearly killed him, and an eight
11
00:00:41.560 --> 00:00:44.359
year old pool faces at a velodrome and briefly became
12
00:00:44.560 --> 00:00:47.159
the most beloved man in Britain. So the question of
13
00:00:47.159 --> 00:00:49.840
the week keeps circling is as a simple one in
14
00:00:49.880 --> 00:00:53.920
this family, where does power actually sit? Because it's almost
15
00:00:54.119 --> 00:00:57.000
never where the noise is. Let's get into it. We
16
00:00:57.079 --> 00:01:00.359
begin with the happiest news, because there was some. Princess
17
00:01:00.359 --> 00:01:03.880
Eugenie and Jack Brooksbink welcomed their third child, a daughter,
18
00:01:03.960 --> 00:01:06.840
born in Lisbon on Monday evening, a little sister for
19
00:01:06.959 --> 00:01:10.319
August and Ernest. The palace, said, the King and Queen
20
00:01:10.359 --> 00:01:14.799
were delighted. Eugenie announced it herself beyond in love without girly,
21
00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:17.280
the name to follow in due course, as is the
22
00:01:17.319 --> 00:01:20.400
family custom. The baby is now fifteenth in Lyne to
23
00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:23.239
the throne, will not be a royal highness, and this
24
00:01:23.400 --> 00:01:26.359
is the important part, will almost certainly never come within
25
00:01:26.359 --> 00:01:28.840
one hundred miles of the crown, which is quietly the
26
00:01:28.879 --> 00:01:32.359
whole point of her hold. That thought. Now to the
27
00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:35.680
rankings that framed the weak deep crown put Camilla first,
28
00:01:35.680 --> 00:01:39.120
and not for survival alone, though she has survived plenty.
29
00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:41.719
She entered public life as the villain of the most
30
00:01:41.799 --> 00:01:45.400
watched love story in modern history, was loathed and protested,
31
00:01:45.799 --> 00:01:49.200
and became queen. Anyway, What earns her the top spot,
32
00:01:49.280 --> 00:01:51.680
he argues, is what she does with it. She has
33
00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:55.159
Charles's ear in a way no courtier or politician does.
34
00:01:55.439 --> 00:01:58.640
Behind every significant decision, there is a conversation we are
35
00:01:58.680 --> 00:02:02.000
not privy to. She is in the room. When his
36
00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:05.680
health fulted, she stepped forward and held the institution together
37
00:02:05.760 --> 00:02:08.960
with the particular competence of someone who has spent years
38
00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:13.439
being underestimated at the very bottom tenth of ten. He
39
00:02:13.479 --> 00:02:17.039
placed Megan what she has, He wrote, his soft power,
40
00:02:17.479 --> 00:02:21.520
the kind measured in press releases, podcast launches, and an
41
00:02:21.639 --> 00:02:24.360
artisanal jam that generated a great deal of coverage in
42
00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:27.960
a rather more modest amount of revenue. The jam sold,
43
00:02:28.080 --> 00:02:31.759
the mockery sold better. Her power independent of Harry, he argued,
44
00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:36.520
is essentially theoretical. The Netflix chapter under delivered, the Spotify
45
00:02:36.599 --> 00:02:41.360
chapter ended. The lifestyle brand keeps accumulating announcements and shedding audiences.
46
00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:44.840
The Palace, he concluded, does not fear her. They have
47
00:02:44.879 --> 00:02:48.159
simply stopped thinking about her very much at all harsh.
48
00:02:48.280 --> 00:02:51.080
But then the week set out to illustrate both ends
49
00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:55.120
of the list. Take Camilla, according to New Idea, she
50
00:02:55.159 --> 00:02:57.759
had been very clear that nothing from the Sussex's visit
51
00:02:57.800 --> 00:03:01.120
should appear on social medium, and when Meghan posted those
52
00:03:01.159 --> 00:03:04.400
summer photographs that appeared to show the family at allthorpe
53
00:03:04.520 --> 00:03:07.039
a source said, Camilla felt the condition had been broken,
54
00:03:07.199 --> 00:03:10.159
and that if Megan believed Diana's family home was somehow
55
00:03:10.199 --> 00:03:13.560
an exception, the door would remain shut for her forever.
56
00:03:14.360 --> 00:03:17.560
Believe the anonymous sourcing or don't, but the shape of
57
00:03:17.560 --> 00:03:20.639
it is telling. The person reportedly holding the door is Camilla.
58
00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:23.280
Her biographer Catherine may have put the same thing in
59
00:03:23.479 --> 00:03:27.719
grander terms, calling Camilla non negotiable for Charles, the one
60
00:03:27.759 --> 00:03:30.960
person he decided, after the divorce and after Diana's death,
61
00:03:31.159 --> 00:03:37.479
that he simply could not do without. That is power, quiet, unglamorous, decisive,
62
00:03:38.479 --> 00:03:40.759
And here is the purest example of the kind of
63
00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:43.919
power that actually matters in a family like this. Robert
64
00:03:43.960 --> 00:03:46.280
Jobson reported that the one person who can tell William
65
00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:48.919
his being pompous and have him take it is his
66
00:03:49.039 --> 00:03:52.199
cousin Zara Tyndall. She knew him, Jobson wrote, before he
67
00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:55.120
was a headline. She has no official role to protect,
68
00:03:55.319 --> 00:03:58.800
no agenda beyond honesty, which is precisely why he listens
69
00:03:59.439 --> 00:04:02.240
in an instant hush and drowning and courtiers and unnamed sources.
70
00:04:02.639 --> 00:04:05.199
The rarest and most valuable thing anyone can offer the
71
00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:08.680
future king is the truth with no angle attached. Zarah
72
00:04:08.759 --> 00:04:13.159
has it. Most people around him don't more palace in
73
00:04:13.240 --> 00:04:19.800
just a moment. Now to the noise, because the noise
74
00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:23.360
was considerable, and nearly all of it was about her birthday.
75
00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.279
Megan turned forty five, and the machine ran at full throttle.
76
00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:30.839
She posted a video picking blackberries and white shorts and
77
00:04:30.879 --> 00:04:34.480
a wide brimmed hat, and the Internet convened to explain
78
00:04:34.519 --> 00:04:36.920
that no one who has met a BlackBerry bush picks
79
00:04:36.959 --> 00:04:39.600
fruit in white shorts and lives to smile about it.
80
00:04:40.279 --> 00:04:42.519
She posted a kitchen dance and a tiara and a
81
00:04:42.519 --> 00:04:45.639
T shirt reading It's giving Missus, and was accused of
82
00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:49.240
copying a Victoria Beckham video. She posted black and white
83
00:04:49.240 --> 00:04:52.319
photos jumping into a pool holding balloons and was accused
84
00:04:52.360 --> 00:04:56.319
of copying Princess Diana. She wished herself a happy birthday
85
00:04:56.360 --> 00:04:59.480
and was informed that wishing yourself a happy birthday is needy.
86
00:05:00.279 --> 00:05:03.720
Every frame was decoded, every gesture assigned a motive, and
87
00:05:03.759 --> 00:05:07.399
when the royal family posted no birthday message, several outlets
88
00:05:07.399 --> 00:05:10.439
called it a snub, until Tom Sykes had to point
89
00:05:10.439 --> 00:05:13.360
out the obvious that birthday wishes to a private citizen
90
00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:17.120
are sent privately, and that Charles, a scrupulously polite man,
91
00:05:17.120 --> 00:05:21.560
almost certainly sent his quietly, Which is the trouble with
92
00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:24.639
being ranked tenth. Everything you do is loud, none of
93
00:05:24.680 --> 00:05:27.920
it is power. And yet a fairer note also from
94
00:05:27.959 --> 00:05:31.160
Deep Crown, who allowed himself a moment of genuine wistfulness
95
00:05:31.240 --> 00:05:34.759
this week imagine, he wrote, the duchess. Had she stayed
96
00:05:34.839 --> 00:05:39.000
the first American born senior working royal standing beside Catherine
97
00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:43.639
at some commonwealth engagement, suddenly opening the monarchy to demographics
98
00:05:43.639 --> 00:05:46.240
it had never been able to touch, she could have
99
00:05:46.399 --> 00:05:49.759
been in the correct framing, one of the most consequential
100
00:05:49.800 --> 00:05:54.199
additions to the modern monarchy in a generation. Instead we
101
00:05:54.279 --> 00:05:58.160
got the jam. The distance between those two sentences is
102
00:05:58.199 --> 00:06:03.199
the saddest thing anyone published all week. There was buried
103
00:06:03.240 --> 00:06:06.519
under all the birthday content a genuinely serious Megan story
104
00:06:06.560 --> 00:06:11.079
that almost nobody amplified. She and Harry publicly backed Minnesota's
105
00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:15.879
new law banning AI neudification software, the technology that generates
106
00:06:15.920 --> 00:06:19.600
fake sexual images, and took direct aim at the company
107
00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:23.639
behind Ax's groc for challenging it in court. Should our
108
00:06:23.720 --> 00:06:26.000
children pay the price while we wait to find out?
109
00:06:26.040 --> 00:06:29.879
They asked. It is exactly the kind of substantive advocacy
110
00:06:30.160 --> 00:06:33.000
that once made people think the couple might matter. It
111
00:06:33.079 --> 00:06:36.240
got a fraction of the attention of the pool photo.
112
00:06:37.199 --> 00:06:40.000
Even the sympathetic voices found the transition hard to pass.
113
00:06:40.439 --> 00:06:43.000
Martha Stewart, who bumped into Megane at a California dinner,
114
00:06:43.040 --> 00:06:46.079
party the other night. Put it plainly to people, if
115
00:06:46.079 --> 00:06:48.759
you're an actress, it's hard to become a princess, and
116
00:06:48.839 --> 00:06:52.199
harder still to go from princess to homemaking guru. It
117
00:06:52.240 --> 00:06:54.759
doesn't sort of follow, she said, which is about as
118
00:06:54.839 --> 00:06:58.040
gently as anyone has phrased the central problem of brand Sussex.
119
00:06:59.199 --> 00:07:02.839
On the money, the numbers kept closing in. Kevin O'Sullivan
120
00:07:02.879 --> 00:07:06.279
never won to undersell a phrase called Harry the dim
121
00:07:06.480 --> 00:07:09.319
Duke facing a personal bill north of two and a
122
00:07:09.360 --> 00:07:12.319
half million pounds from the Daily Mail case and pronounced
123
00:07:12.319 --> 00:07:15.319
the idea of Elton John writing to the rescue extinguished
124
00:07:15.399 --> 00:07:17.879
like a candle in the wind. But it was an
125
00:07:17.879 --> 00:07:21.360
all red ink cookie. Queen's The Girl Scouts documentary Harry
126
00:07:21.399 --> 00:07:24.879
and Meghan produced actually premiered to ninety two percent on
127
00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:30.399
rotten tomatoes and warm reviews, a real quiet win, the
128
00:07:30.439 --> 00:07:34.920
sort that doesn't trend. And then the security question sprouted
129
00:07:34.920 --> 00:07:37.399
a new wrinkle and emerged that during the last month's visit,
130
00:07:37.639 --> 00:07:40.160
the family had slipped away to Tenera, more, a private
131
00:07:40.160 --> 00:07:43.720
island off Scotland's northwest coast, cruising the coastline on a
132
00:07:43.759 --> 00:07:48.600
restored vintage steamboat entirely undetected until they'd left, which critics
133
00:07:48.639 --> 00:07:51.879
were quick to say rather complicates Harry's argument that he
134
00:07:51.920 --> 00:07:56.639
cannot move safely through Britain. The trip stayed private, his
135
00:07:56.720 --> 00:08:01.439
supporters counted, precisely because careful planning works. The irony, as ever,
136
00:08:01.560 --> 00:08:03.959
is that we only know about it because a scenic
137
00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:12.360
photo turned up on Instagram more pals in just a moment. Meanwhile,
138
00:08:12.360 --> 00:08:15.519
the actual King was in Scotland, being quietly the most
139
00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:19.360
powerful person in the story. Charles opened his summer at
140
00:08:19.399 --> 00:08:22.600
the my Highland Games in a kilt, congratulated a tug
141
00:08:22.639 --> 00:08:25.920
of wartem made up of local fire fighters, shared a
142
00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:28.680
dram with Lord Thurso, and planted the King's rose in
143
00:08:28.720 --> 00:08:32.879
the castle gardens, the sort of unshowy continuity as Grandmother
144
00:08:32.919 --> 00:08:37.000
built the place around. He also had a genuinely affecting moment.
145
00:08:37.399 --> 00:08:39.720
Hosting a mountain rescue team, he spoke about the nineteen
146
00:08:39.799 --> 00:08:43.159
eighty eight Clusters avalanche that killed his close friend Hugh
147
00:08:43.200 --> 00:08:46.799
Lindsey and very nearly killed him. It was a close thing,
148
00:08:46.879 --> 00:08:50.360
he said, still vivid nearly four decades on, and we
149
00:08:50.440 --> 00:08:53.279
learned in the week's most charming footnote that when Charles
150
00:08:53.320 --> 00:08:56.039
was a boy at Gordonston, Prince Philip had a twelfth
151
00:08:56.080 --> 00:09:00.360
century stone font hauled five hundred miles north so the
152
00:09:00.399 --> 00:09:04.120
future king could have it near him at school, a
153
00:09:04.159 --> 00:09:08.679
font quite literally fit for a king. At the Commonwealth Games, meanwhile,
154
00:09:08.679 --> 00:09:11.879
he was photographed as he increasingly is, wearing a friendship
155
00:09:11.879 --> 00:09:15.679
bracelet reportedly made by Princess Charlotte, the most powerful man
156
00:09:15.679 --> 00:09:20.679
in the family, brist wrapped in his granddaughter's beads. There
157
00:09:20.799 --> 00:09:23.519
was admittedly one small piece of collateral damage from that
158
00:09:23.639 --> 00:09:26.720
game's opening. Charles and Camilla made their grand entrance out
159
00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:30.000
of a Doctor Who Tardise and Radar noted. The cameo
160
00:09:30.120 --> 00:09:33.320
landed at an awkward moment for the BBC, which is
161
00:09:33.440 --> 00:09:37.519
reportedly wrestling with the show's future. No announced successor to
162
00:09:37.559 --> 00:09:40.919
its latest Doctor A Christmas special said to be shelved
163
00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:46.039
Disney declining to renew A celebratory moment for a flagship
164
00:09:46.120 --> 00:09:50.639
franchise turned into an inadvertent reminder that the franchise is
165
00:09:50.759 --> 00:09:54.759
in some trouble. Indeed, Crown, ever helpful, suggested Harry would
166
00:09:54.759 --> 00:09:59.440
make a good Doctor. He's not entirely wrong for Andrew.
167
00:09:59.480 --> 00:10:02.360
The grind continues in its usual direction He is now
168
00:10:02.360 --> 00:10:06.279
expected to testify by videolink in December in the trial
169
00:10:06.279 --> 00:10:09.159
of the man accused of threatening him. He received a
170
00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:13.279
bow moral invitation from his brother, with the exquisitely humiliating
171
00:10:13.360 --> 00:10:16.320
condition that he arrived only after Charles and Camilla have
172
00:10:16.399 --> 00:10:19.919
already left, and across the Atlantic members of the US
173
00:10:19.960 --> 00:10:22.919
House Oversight Committee kept pressing for him to cooperate with
174
00:10:22.960 --> 00:10:27.159
the Epstein investigation. Sarah at least may have caught a break.
175
00:10:27.240 --> 00:10:30.000
The death of her old flame, Paddy McNally, reportedly worth
176
00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:34.080
six hundred million pounds, has prompted speculation she could finally
177
00:10:34.120 --> 00:10:38.840
be financially secure, with one commentator marveling she's had more
178
00:10:38.879 --> 00:10:42.799
comebacks than Frank Sinatra, though the past kept its grip
179
00:10:42.919 --> 00:10:47.879
even so. Newly surfaced emails reported by the Eyepaper suggests
180
00:10:47.919 --> 00:10:52.320
Epstein once assembled her private correspondence to pressure her after
181
00:10:52.399 --> 00:10:55.840
she publicly condemned him in what her own representative at
182
00:10:55.879 --> 00:10:59.840
the time called something that could be construed as attempted blackmail.
183
00:11:00.600 --> 00:11:03.519
The Yorks endure, one of them, possibly upward, the rest
184
00:11:03.559 --> 00:11:07.600
of it never quite let's go, and the William front
185
00:11:07.639 --> 00:11:10.399
stayed precisely where it's been. Heath reported that his private
186
00:11:10.440 --> 00:11:12.679
meetings with his father left him in a terrible mood,
187
00:11:13.080 --> 00:11:16.279
with Kate left to calm him down. Radar reported he
188
00:11:16.360 --> 00:11:19.279
was furious that word, again the only one the tabloids
189
00:11:19.320 --> 00:11:22.200
seemed to own. The Camilla had inserted herself into the
190
00:11:22.240 --> 00:11:25.480
High Grove reunion, convinced it proved she wilds more power
191
00:11:25.519 --> 00:11:28.799
than he does, which, if you've been following Deep Crown's rankings,
192
00:11:29.039 --> 00:11:33.080
isn't paranoia so much as accurate arithmetic. William was also,
193
00:11:33.120 --> 00:11:36.039
as usual, photographed having a perfectly lovely time with his
194
00:11:36.080 --> 00:11:38.799
family at the Velodrome, choking that he and Kate embarrassed
195
00:11:38.799 --> 00:11:42.279
the children quite enough already. Both things, as ever, are
196
00:11:42.320 --> 00:11:46.120
true at once, because that Velodrome day was the real
197
00:11:46.200 --> 00:11:49.759
answer to the week's question. While the adults fought over
198
00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:53.840
Instagram frames and Kurt season, who holds power over whom?
199
00:11:54.360 --> 00:11:57.120
Prince Louis, aged eight, made his debut at a major
200
00:11:57.159 --> 00:11:59.759
sporting event and simply pulled faces at the cycling until
201
00:11:59.759 --> 00:12:02.240
he came the most the love figure of the weekend.
202
00:12:02.879 --> 00:12:06.919
No strategy, no brand, no angle. Kate told her gymnast
203
00:12:06.919 --> 00:12:10.240
that Louis was perfect in his handstand. Louis clarified with
204
00:12:10.279 --> 00:12:13.399
total honesty that Charlotte says I'm not very good. That
205
00:12:13.759 --> 00:12:17.440
is a family, not a narrative. Kate, for what it's worth,
206
00:12:17.519 --> 00:12:20.159
was also named to Britain's Best Dressed by Tattler this week,
207
00:12:20.360 --> 00:12:22.600
reclaiming a title she last held in twenty twenty two.
208
00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:25.799
That kind of soft power that, unlike Megan's, tends to
209
00:12:25.840 --> 00:12:30.039
sell out the dress rather than the punchline. It's worth
210
00:12:30.039 --> 00:12:32.639
remembering the monarchy has always understood that the deepest power
211
00:12:32.679 --> 00:12:36.080
is the quiet, continuous kind the story, rather than the shout.
212
00:12:36.440 --> 00:12:38.840
Nearly three centuries ago, as one lovely piece in the
213
00:12:38.840 --> 00:12:42.440
Conversation reminded us this week, Queen Caroline built a folly
214
00:12:42.519 --> 00:12:46.559
called Merlin's Cave to sell an imported German dynasty to
215
00:12:46.639 --> 00:12:50.320
a skeptical Britain, wrapping the Hanaverians in the legend of
216
00:12:50.399 --> 00:12:54.200
King Arthur. Because Arthur belonged to everyone and no foreign house.
217
00:12:54.840 --> 00:12:57.679
She grasped what the loudest voices this week did not.
218
00:12:58.279 --> 00:13:02.879
The continuity, not spectacle, is what actually endures. And in
219
00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:05.679
the end, the truest and quietest thing that happened all
220
00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:08.600
week was a baby girl born in Lisbon who will
221
00:13:08.639 --> 00:13:11.759
never wear a crown and doesn't need to the line
222
00:13:11.799 --> 00:13:15.080
of succession shifting by one wordlessly the way it always has.
223
00:13:15.720 --> 00:13:18.480
Everyone else spent the week performing power. She just became
224
00:13:18.799 --> 00:13:22.240
fifteenth in line and went to sleep. That, in the end,
225
00:13:22.559 --> 00:13:25.919
is the real machinery. Everything else is always is noise.
226
00:13:26.879 --> 00:13:28.960
And there you have it. If you'd like to email us,
227
00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:31.879
our addresses the Palace intriguert, Gmail, and dot com. If
228
00:13:31.919 --> 00:13:34.799
you're listening on Spotify, leave us a comment. If you're
229
00:13:34.840 --> 00:13:36.639
listening on Apple, hit that button up there that says
230
00:13:36.679 --> 00:13:39.440
listen uninterrupted and get the show commercial free for just
231
00:13:39.519 --> 00:13:43.399
five bucks a month, along with thousands of others from Callaogu,
232
00:13:43.480 --> 00:13:46.600
Shark Media by Mike Francis my thanks to John McDermott.
233
00:13:46.639 --> 00:13:49.440
This is Palace Weekly and Good Times