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Ah Calorogus Shark Media. Hello and welcome to Palace Weekly.
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I am your host, Mark Francis. It's been a week
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in which the board finally moved. The King's most powerful adviser,
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the man Prince Harry, once nicknamed the Wasp, announced he
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is leaving. Britain acquired its fourth Prime Minister of the Rain,
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Harry's long War where the Daily Mail was handed at
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number and the number has eight figures in it, and
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King Charles opened the Commonwealth Games by stepping out of
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a doctor who tardis, because if you're going to reassert
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control over your own rain, you may as well do
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it with a time machine. For weeks, this story has
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been all weather and no movement, everyone perpetually furious, nothing
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actually changing. This week things changed. So the question to
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hold on to is a simple one. When the pieces
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finally move, which way are they going? Let's get into it.
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We begin with the single most consequential thing that happened
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all week, and almost nobody outside royal circles will have
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heard his name. Sir Clive Orderton is stepping down. He
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has been Principal Private Secretary to the King and Queen
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and for practical purposes, the most influential official of the
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entire reign, and he will leave the role next year
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around his sixtieth birthday, staying on afterward in what he
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called a less formal capacity for the rest of his life.
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Read his CV and you understand the weight of it.
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He first worked for Charles's Prince of Wales, became Principal
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Private Secretary in twenty fifteen, and stood at the King's
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side through the death of Queen Elizabeth, the accession, the coronation,
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the cancer diagnosis, the Sussex departure, and the long Andrew saga.
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If a difficult decision was made at the Palace in
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the last decade, Orderton was usually in the room. You
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may also know him by another name, and Spare Harry
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appeared to christen him the Wasp, describing a courtier who
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was charming, arrogant, a ball of the jazzy energy, outwardly deferential,
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but capable if crossed, of delivering such a sting that
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you'd cry in confusion. Sir Clive has never responded to
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the nickname, which is rather the point of being good
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at his job. The Palace called it a planned retirement
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with a long, tidy handover in twenty twenty seven. Others
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read the tea leaves differently. Dan Wooton on The Megan
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Kelly Show called the retirement line rubbish. There A reason,
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he argued, is that Alderton was trying to stop Harry
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and Meghan returning and was doing his damnedness to try
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and save King Charles from himself. The Royalist offered the
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mirror image from the Harry friendly camp. Charles is reasserting
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his authority and reclaiming the throne, and that lines up
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rather neatly with the theory we sat with last week.
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The recovered king gifted time by a medicine, taking back
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control of his own family. Whether Alderton is a casualty
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of that shift or simply a fifty nine year old
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who would like his weekends back, The most powerful hawk
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in the King's court is on his way out, and
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the timing writes its own story. Meanwhile, the constitutional furniture
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rearranged itself with almost no fuss. Andrew Burnham kissed hands
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as Charles's fourth Prime minister in barely three years. Photographed
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with the King in the rarely seen Chinese dining room,
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all white dragons and dragon legged tables, the faces rotate,
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the monarch remains the fixed point, and in a much
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sharper reminder that a world exists beyond the soap opera,
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Iran's Revolutionary Guard named the British monarchy directly. In a
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warning tied to reports that American bombers had flown from
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the array of Fairford. Buckingham Palace declaimed to comment, which
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was the correct and only response. The King himself cancer
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and all kept up a genuinely full diary. The Palace
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confirmed a steep visit to Spain as being planned for
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twenty twenty seven, the first since Queen Elizabeth was hosted
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by King Juan Carlos back in nineteen eighty eight, and
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in Glasgow, Charles and Camilla opened the twenty third Commonwealth
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Games by emerging, I promise I'm not making this up
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from the doctor who tardis to cheers inside the hydro
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arena as part of his sequence that whisked viewers passed
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Edinburgh Castle, locke Ness an inevitably bow Moral. He then
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delivered a rather lovely speech about the baton relay, carrying
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a message to clear plastic from the oceans, and declared
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the Games open. The Daleks mercifully stay at home. It
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is a strange and slightly wonderful thing that the most
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reliably dignified figure in this entire story is also the
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one most willing to climb out of a police box
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on live television. More palace in just a moment. Now
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on to money, because this week money was the water
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everyone was swimming in. Harry's crusade finally got its price tag.
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Lawyers for Associated Newspapers say their bill has climbed past
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thirty four million pounds, and they're asking the judge to
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award costs on an indemnity basis, which recovers more than
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the standard approach. The claimant's insurance runs to roughly sixteen
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point two million. If the judge goes on the indemnity route,
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that cover could fall short by million, leaving Harry and
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his fellow claimants personally on the hook. Closer put Harry's
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own share somewhere around twenty five million dollars, and all
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that talk of Elton John riding to the rescue dismissed
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by his own camp as ungrounded. Harry, a source said,
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is far too proud to ask friends for handouts, and
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they simply have to take out a loan, A prince
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applying for a loan. The sentence alone tells you the
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direction of travel. And it wasn't only Harry counting pennies
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beggins as Ever, Brand saw its website traffic for roughly
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forty six percent between January and June. A CBC investigation
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found Harry's visits to Canada generated the highest security costs
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of any internationally protected visitor over five years, and the
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Royal Collection's trust income collapsed from nearly fourteen million pounds
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to three and a half as the post coronation tourism
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boom finally exhaled. Everyone King and Duke alike is watching
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the meter, which brings us to the week's most enjoyable reversal.
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Last week, deed Crown mocked the tabloids for their one
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permitted adjective, William forever and always furious. This week, the
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irritation appears to be running the other way entirely. Tina
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Brown reports that Charles is currently less annoyed with the
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prodigal Harry than with his elder son. The arithmetic is unkind.
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Charles carried out engagements on one hundred and seventy five
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days this past year, while managing cancer treatment, whereas William
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took five confirmed family holidays in seven months and returned
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to a first week back consisting of a rugby mansion,
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a walk through a museum garden, and Harry's donation of
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one point one million pounds to children in need cannily
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raised the question of what exactly the Prince of Wales
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is doing with twenty three million a year. The furious
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air it turns out maybe one his father is quietly
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furious with Harry himself spent the week being of all
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things liked. He turned up at the time one hundred
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sports gala in New York, told the room his father
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is doing great and called sport medicine. He bickered with
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James Cordon about whether it's footballs, and the reconciliation drumbeat
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kept steady time. Charles's once again offered him a room
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at Buckingham Palace, this time for September's Well Child Awards,
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and Harry dithered too long to accept. Last time, Ingrid
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Seward framed it as a chance for Harry to show
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his father he knows how to behave. There was even
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a trial balloon floated and promptly popped about an overseas
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roll possibly Australia, possibly Governor General in the spirit of
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the Duke of Windsor decamping to the Bahamas. The Palace
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gently noted that the King does not actually get to
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hand out that job and is not about to reinvent
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the monarchy for one family member. Not everyone in the
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family is charmed, and the caution is worth logging. Camilla,
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by several accounts, supports the King's reunion with Harry because
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she loves the King, but hasn't forgotten a word of
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what was said about her, and reportedly suspects Harry could
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turn on the family the moment things don't go his way.
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Her priority, one source put it, is not letting Charles
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be blindsided twice, and William, we are assured, remains immovable,
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reportedly telling Keith that under no circumstance answers should she
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extend so much as an olive branch to his brother.
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So the door Charles's holding open is being watched warily
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from both sides of it more palatine. The moment, now
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to the soap opera, which ran at its usual volume,
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began's guest turn on Masterchefstrada arrived trailing in tiny tempest
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her team and reportedly asked producers not to use the
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word royalty, and a judge duly used it in the introduction.
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The episode then drew one point six million viewers, the
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show's best Sunday and weeks, so the threatened boycott went
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the way of most threatened boycotts. Along the way, we
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learned that Archie and Lilabet eat Brussels sprouts, that Meghan
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considers food a love language, that Harry phoned in a
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FaceTime cameo which some viewers found charming and others found staged.
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Both camps, as ever, were catered to. Meghan also made
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her first public appearance in Munths at a LA screening
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of Cookie Queen's, a documentary she and Harry produced about
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girl Scouts in their Cookie season. She used it to
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share a lion. Harry apparently tells her on hard days
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that he flew helicopters for ten years and even in
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the storm above the storm, the sun is always shining.
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So genuinely nice sentiment and a reminder that underneath the brand,
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traffic and the boycott arithmetica two people trying to talk
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each other through a rough patch. The louder row was
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an Instagram post, Megan shared a set of summer holiday photographs,
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among them Archie and Lilibet at Althorpe, the Spencer Estate
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where Diana is buried, the family walking an avenue of
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lime trees carrying bouquets. Even sympathizers winced. Tom Sykes captured
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the genre precisely. Some kissed holiday content that pauses briefly
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for then we went to a grave. Piers Morgan made
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the sharper version of the point, asking why a couple
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who left to the world about children's online privacy would
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post their own children to millions. Whether the post was
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ten or attack, He is a taste question and tastes
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questions of the tabloid's favorite cane precisely because they never resolve.
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When broadcast to Mark Donlan went further and speculated that
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the Sussex children would one day make life a misery
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for their cousins. The Sussex's spokesperson broke along silence to
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call it disgusting to cast two small children as future antagonists,
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and on that narrow point, they are hard to argue with.
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The quieter degradations continued for Andrew. He was not invited
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to the family's Bowmorl gathering. The City of London is
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now drafting the legislation specifically to allow it to strip
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his freedom of the city, and a new Disney documentary
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revisited the murder conviction of his ex wife's former dresser
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under the cheerful title The Duchess and the Killer. Sarah,
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for her part, is reportedly chopping a tell all documentary
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of her own, one production source predicting it could be
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as sensational and as embarrassing to the family as the
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Sussex's own opera Sit Down The Yorks Endure Downward. The
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King in between all the pieces moving had a couple
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of small human moments worth keeping. At the Sandringham Flower Show,
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he was pestered by a persistent fly, Camilla was handed
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citronella repellent for her trouble, and when a well wisher
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his own age told him he was looking good, Charles
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laughed and replied, it gets much harder, doesn't it. And
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in Cambridge he padded into Europe's first purpose built eco
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mosque in a pair of grain knitted socks, joking to
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a group of school children that he hoped he hadn't
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ruined their holidays by dragging them in before praising the
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building as a remarkable example of integrated faith activity. A
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monarch in his socks blessing a mosque is a quietly
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radical image and a direct continuation of the faith story
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we've been tracking these last few weeks. And then quietly
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came the realist thing anyone said all week. Visiting a
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cancer hospital in Manchester, Kate spoke about her own treatment,
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how she lost the ability to read or focus and
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turned instead to coloring, which she described as a way
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of playing and losing yourself, something that didn't require a
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finished product. You have to support yourself, she told the patients,
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Alongside all the things you can't control. Your body changes
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physically and emotionally, and it puts everything in perspective and
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you hold onto what's important. No unnamed source, no spin,
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no frame, just a woman who was it's been through it,
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telling other people going through it that there is a
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way through, which is in the end, what all this
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movement is actually about. Strip Away the courtier and the
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loan and the Instagram grief and the tartis and the
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story is an old man with cancer working one hundred
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and seventy five days a year moving the pieces while
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he still can't. The advisor eased out, the sun offered
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a room. The door held open a careful inch, because
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the only clock in this whole songa that genuinely ticks,
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is his. Everything else, as always is weather. And there
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you have it. If you'd like to email us or
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addresses the Palace intrig at gmail dot com. If you're
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on Spotify, leave us a comment. If you're on Apple,
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hit that button up there that says listen uninterrupted and
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get this show commercial free for just five bucks a month.
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We really appreciate your support. By Mark Francis my thanks
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to John McDermott. This is Pallace Weekly. Good terms