Aug. 16, 2026

Meta Ordered to Pay $942 Million and Harry Responds, Cookie Queens Loses to a Cat Video, Andrew Could Still Get a Royal Funeral

Show Notes
Transcript

HARRY CALLS THE $942 MILLION META RULING A TURNING POINT, COOKIE QUEENS LOSES TO CAT VIDEOS, AND ANDREW MAY STILL BE OWED A ROYAL FUNERAL

Mark Francis on a week that kept pricing people — and the prices rarely matched the birthrights. A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay an additional $567 million, bringing its total to $942 million, and Harry said the bar has moved. Days earlier, the Sussexes' first theatrical feature opened to $327,797 and finished behind a cat-video compilation. Andrew, stripped of his titles, is still eighth in line and still, on paper, eligible for a ceremonial funeral. Kate is crowned the monarchy's greatest asset. And a 1947 wedding-present yacht wins its class at Cowes.

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Palace Intrigue is a daily British royal family podcast covering King Charles, Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton and the House of Windsor. New episodes every day. Follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Part of the Caloroga Shark Media network.

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Ah Calorogus Shark Media. Hello and welcome to Palace Weekly.

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I'm your host, Amark Francis. It has been a week

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in which Britain worked out roughly what it might cost

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to bury a man who has lost almost everything. Discovered

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that the monarchy's single greatest asset is someone who married

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in rather than being born to it. Watched Harry and

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Meghan's new documentary lose at the box office to a

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compilation of cat videos, and stripped a knighthood from a

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convicted rapist. Four unrelated stories, one question humming underneath all

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of them in this family, what is the difference between

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being born royal and being worth something? Because this was

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a week that kept pricing people, and the prices did

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not always match the birthrights. Let's get into it. We

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begin with a man who inherited everything and earned this

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week precisely. Andrew was backing the news on two fronts,

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neither flattering. In the criminal case of a man accused

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of threatening him near Sandringham, his witness statement was read

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in court. He described walking his dogs, spotting a car

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he assumed held photographers, and then a man in a

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ballet klav who he said realized who I was, and

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began to sprint after my vehicle. Genuinely alarming if true.

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But the detail that lingered was on the other side

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of the dock. The defendant, homeless living in a travel lodge,

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who couldn't even enter the court room because it brought

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his dog, Indian, had nowhere to leave him. His lawyer

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gainly offered that she couldn't give character evidence for the dog,

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but could confirm he was very well behaved. Somewhere in

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the gap between a former prince who cannot walk his

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own estate unbothered and a homeless man who cannot set

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his dog down for an hour, there is a whole

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essay about modern Britain. We'll leave it there. The second

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front was stranger, and it's where the week's real question surfaced.

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It emerged that the plans for Andrew's eventual funeral have

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never been updated, meaning a man stripped of his titles

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and reduced to private citizenship could still, in theory, receive

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a full royal ceremonial send off, potentially causing the public

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something in the region of eleven million dollars once security

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and policing are accounted. Richard Fitzwilliams called the idea preposterous.

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But the sharpest cut came from Emily Watkins in the

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Eye Paper, who put her finger on exactly the thing.

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A ceremonial funeral is a mark of national respect, reserved

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for those at the supposed apex of society, and the

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fact that Andrew is still in line for one proves

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his disgrace was only ever skin deep. Royal status, she wrote,

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is something you are born into rather than earn, which

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is precisely what makes it so infuriating an odious individual

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granted the utmost honour just because of who his parents were.

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That same logic is why he remains absurdly eighth in

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line to the throne, ahead of a scenario floated this

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week in which if a young King George, if it

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needed a regent and Harry were unavailable, the next call

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would be to Andrew mount Batton Windsor Removing him isn't

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a simple palace decision. It would require every Commonwealth realm

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to pass the same amendment and exercise. No one has

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the appetite for, so he stays by default, a man

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who has earned nothing and cannot be moved. Jenny Bond

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spoke for many in suggesting the whole line be dramatically shortened,

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calling it preposterous that Andrew is still eighth while the

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hard working Duke of Edinburgh keeps sliding down to make

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room for newborns, Speaking of which Andrew and Sarah were

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reported to be quietly hoping the arrival of Eugenie's third child,

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a daughter born in Lisbon, might be their foot back

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in the door with the firm. Eugenie, per the same reporting,

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has other ideas. She'd like her parents to know their grandchild,

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but not to use the baby as a prop in

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a rehabilitation campaign, and the most they can expect is

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quiet grand parent time behind closed doors. Sarah meanwhile, is

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reportedly weighing a tell Netflix documentary and still hasn't collected

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what one source cheerfully called her junk from Royal Lodge,

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old furniture, clothes and unsold copies of her own books.

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The Yorks endure downward as ever and expensively, or palas

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in just a moment. If Andrew is the case study

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in inherited status that cannot be revoked, Harry and Meghan

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spent the week as the case study in earned status

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that refuses to arrive. The headline number was Brutal Cookie Queens.

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The Girl Scouts documentary, they produced in their first theatrical feature,

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opened to about three hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars

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across four hundred and forty six screens, good for fifteenth

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place and memorably behind Cat Video Fest, a seventy minute

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compilation of Internet cat videos. One analyst noted the film

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should have opened during actual Girl Scout Cookie season, when

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the whole thing might have felt relevant and couldn't resist

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the obvious. That's the way the cookie crumbles. It joins

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a run. The Polo documentary with Love Magan not renewed.

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Two podcasts quietly discontinued that the critics were only too

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happy to tally, and tally they did because the money

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told its own story. The Royal Foundation of the Prince

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and Princess of Wales reported income of nearly twenty million

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pounds this year, forty four percent of it from American donors.

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William's Earth Shot Prize brought in another twenty three million. Archwell,

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by contrast, reported under two million, down from over four

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the year before. The organizations aren't really comparable and the

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reporting ears differ, and yet the shape of it was

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impossible to miss, and nobody missed it, one camp attracting

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serious money, the other shedding it. Then came the referendum

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on Megan herself, conducted at full volume. Kevin O'Sullivan pronounced

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that brand Megan is nothing without Harry Lee Cohen said

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the only thing she deserved was permanent exile. Sarah Vine

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diagnosed weapons grade entitlement, and Martha Stewart more gently observed

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that going from actress to princess to homemaking guru doesn't

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sort of follow, to which Megan's camp reportedly responded by

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having the dinner party host ring people to insist. Martha

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was confused. Tom Sykes correctly called that an unforced error

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and offered the Late Queen's foreword Governing Philosophy as the

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advice Megan keeps declining to take. Never complain, never explain.

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But here is where the fairness demands a hard turned.

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Because the week also contained the best argument that this

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couple could still be worth something, and almost nobody amplified it.

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A New Mexico judge ordered Matter to pay five hundred

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and sixty seven million and overhaul its protections for young

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users and Harry, who has made online child safety a

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genuine cause, issued a statement calling it a turning point.

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For years, he said, they'd argue that Big Tex harm

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to children was a choice, not a glitch. And this

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is what accountability looks like. That is substantive, credible, on

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brand advocacy, the kind that once made people think the

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Sussexes might matter enormously. It got a fraction of the

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courage of a togaish gown Meghan war to a gala

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in Canada, an evening that instead generated a viral debate

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over whether Harry had leaned over to tell her to

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sit down while she danced to Adam Levine and a

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genuinely charming moment where Harry spotting a group of bagpipers

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deadpand so where are mine? So did the quietly lovely

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story resurface this week of how the couple adopted me,

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a beagle rescued from a testing lab breeding facility. Harry

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insisted they couldn't leave until they found her favorite stuffed

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fox to bring home, real human and utterly drowned out

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underneath the noise. The actual dilemma is a family one. Harry,

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reportedly homesick, wants Archie and Lullabeth to keep a meaningful

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connection to Britain. He's even floated a British day school,

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while Megan is fireless keen, one source noting that education

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is just the symptom and the real argument is over

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where home actually is. There's talk of a Christmas return,

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talk of some kind of statement acknowledging the pain of

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the last five years without retracting a word of it,

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and less romantically, Harry's US immigration file back in court,

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with the State Department identifying three hundred and seven documents

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and promptly withholding the eighteen it deemed relevant. Earned belonging,

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it turns out, is complicated in both directions, more palacing

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just the moment now. Two people this week decided had

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earned their place, starting fittingly with the one whom married

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into it. This was another edition of what we affectionately

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called the Kate is Wonderful genre, with commentators lining up

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to call the Princess of Wales the monarchy's greatest asset,

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It's cornerstone, the woman whose face makes the Kings light up.

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But the more interesting thread was why Tina Brown once

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noted that where Diana married at twenty as a child bride,

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Kate arrived at twenty nine road tested years of press attention,

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the indignity of waiting Katie, and one telling moment when

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the Queen invited her to Sandringham for Christmas in two

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thousand and six and Kate declined on the grounds that

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she'd come when she had a ring to prove it.

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Catherine Meyer, meanwhile, argues that Kate's real genius is image making,

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dresses cut to echo the thirties and forties, situating her

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in a historical continuum, following the late Queen's model of

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letting images do the talking rather than saying too much.

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Whatever you make of it, it's a role built through

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discipline than birth, precisely the kind of earned quiet power

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that Katy Nichol this week described Kate and Camilla as

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wielding behind the throne. The pair deep Crown ranked at

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the very top of the family. Last month, her husband

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spent the week being defended on the same terms. Amid

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the usual tabloid weather Closer reported William furious over Harry's

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possible palace stay, sources claiming Charles privately thinks his air

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too hot, tempered and in need of growing up, and

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some genuinely silly talk of abdication that doing this show

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twice a day, we can assure you, is wildly overcooked.

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Several commentators made the serious case that William is simply

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reinventing what the job is. Not four hundred handshakes a year,

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they argue, but ten projects with measurable outcomes. The air

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is strategist rather than ribbon cutter. Charles the Custodian William

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the CEO. You can dislike the corporate framing, and some do,

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pointing out the taxpayer foots the bill, but it is

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at least an argument that the future king intends to

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earn his keep rather than merely inherited. Even Princess Anne

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reportedly weighed in, warning William that now is not the

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time to make enemies lest his reign prove as difficult

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as his father's, and Charles the best news of the

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week quietly delivered. His working schedule has returned close to

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pre cancer levels, the fridays once kept clear for rest

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now filling back up. His doctors reportedly very pleased. He

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marked fifty years of the King's Trust, the charity he

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founded in nineteen seventy six with his Royal Navy severance pay,

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which is to say with money he'd earned, and in

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the one corner of the system that genuinely does treat

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status as revocable. He formally stripped honors from ten people

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this year, among them a convicted rapist and a rugby

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captain who admitted domestic abuse. The institution quietly affirming that

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some things, once dishonored can be taken back if only

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one imagines Emily Watkins muttering the same, were truer funerals

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for proof that even the earned royals aren't above the law.

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We also learned this week the back in two thousand

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and two, palace officials quietly inspected the cells beneath Slough

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Magistrate's Court just in case Princess Anne was sent down

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over her dog's conduct. She wasn't that the accommodations of

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former Press Secretary noted Drily were basic, which brings us

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at last to the people earning it. Far from the cameras.

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James Earl of Wessex, eighteen years old and sixteenth in line,

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spent his summer driving tractors on the Sandrinhammer state and

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a state worker, marveling that it doesn't matter how rich

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you are. A good work ethic learned young never hurts.

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His sister Louise quietly began her post university life, and

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in Belgium, a twenty year old Prince third in line

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launched a techno career under an invented name, because being

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far enough down the list means you're free to build

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something of your own. This week even served up a

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jester to make the points out loud. Count Binface, the

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satirical candidate who campaigns with a black bin over here

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head currently running against Nigel Farage, used a podcast appearance

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to argue the Royals should hand over Buckingham Palace to

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help solve the housing crisis on the grounds that they've

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plenty of other homes in don't much like the palace anyway.

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It's a joke. It's also buried in the bin the

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same question. The whole week kept asking what exactly is

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all this worth and to whom? But the truest image

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of the week floated in on the water Blue Bottle,

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the little racing yacht given to Elizabeth and Phillip as

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a wedding present. The one Philip sailed off the Isle

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of Wight in nineteen fifty seven with an eight year

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old Prince Charles aboard was restored and put back into competition,

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and this week, nearly seventy years on, it won its

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class at the Cow's. The boat inherited nothing. It was built,

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sail retired, lovingly, rebuilt, and sent back out to earn

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its place again, and it did. In a week spent

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arguing over who deserves what by accident of birth, the

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most royal thing that happened was an old boat made

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worthy the hard way, crossing the line first. Everything else,

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as always, is noise, and they have it. If you'd

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your support immensely. And Mark Francis my thanks to John McDermott.

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This is Palace Weekly. Good terms

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