Tom Quinn - Scandals of the Royal Palaces: An Intimate Memoir of Royals Behaving Badly

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

H enry F ielding

G eorge Orwell once said that the British love a really good murder, whether in their novels or their Sunday papers. He might also have said that the only thing the British love more than a good murder is a really good scandal, and best of all are the political and sexual scandals that emanate from Britains royal palaces.

Of course, the kiss and tell story is now a commonplace, but scandal itself isnt a recent phenomenon. It has a long history; one tied up with power and position, especially royal power and royal position; a history that includes scandals in such high places so damaging Edward and Mrs Simpsons relationship, for example that when they do blow up, they become lodged in the collective consciousness never to be forgotten.

But dozens of other royal scandals have been covered up or viii suppressed to some degree by an establishment that is famous for its determination to keep royal secrets, well, secret.

This book is the first in-depth look at the outrageous behaviour of not just the royals themselves but also palace officials, courtiers, household servants and hangers-on. Covering existing royal palaces in some depth as well as taking a briefer look at scandals linked to long-vanished royal residences such as Whitehall, Nonsuch and Kings Langley, Scandals of the Royal Palaces also includes new information on well-known and not-so-well-known scandals, including those that have only recently been revealed in detail through the release of previously secret official papers.

Political, social, financial and sexual scandals have been linked to Britains royal palaces for centuries from Edward II potentially being killed because of his attraction to men to drug-fuelled and lesbian queens, perjurers, liars, thieves and even Nazi sympathisers, the royal residences have seen it all.

The behaviour of todays royals seems perpetually to threaten scandal; three of HRH Queen Elizabeths children are divorced following adulterous affairs and one was the friend of a notorious paedophile. Meanwhile, the two sons of the Prince of Wales himself no stranger to scandal have publicly fallen out with the press and with each other.

As this book will show, scandal and the royal family have always been strange and not-so-strange bedfellows, and key to the sometimes extraordinary scandals the royals have become involved in are the palaces in which they live. Free to move between some of the most luxurious homes in England Windsor ix Castle, Kensington Palace, Balmoral and Buckingham Palace, to name but four and living in a world of excessive deference and financial security, members of the royal family find it impossible to resist the lure of flattery and personal power. Since they are often unhappy in their gilded cages it is perhaps no wonder that down the ages royal men and women have used their position and influence to get what they want whether that be sex, drugs or money while hoping to maintain their reputations as moral leaders.

Readers may ask, why a book about royal scandals, many of which are already well known? First, new information is always becoming available. Second, interpretations and our understanding of the past change as society changes. We are far more accepting of same-sex relationships today, for example, than we ever were in the past. We are also far less deferential to the royal family. Even fifty years ago biographers of members of the royal family tended to gloss over their subjects sexual peccadilloes.

Few today would think it a good thing always to suppress the misdeeds of royal individuals just because they happen to be royal. The sense that we are all equal is far stronger now than it was historically when the sole aim of the establishment was to protect the reputation of public figures by whatever means necessary. Where biographers and historians in the past felt their role was to uphold the dignity of members of the royal family by suppressing anything deemed to be damaging to their reputations, we now see that a warts-and-all picture is far more accurate and interesting.

The truth is that we have come a long way so far, indeed, x that in 2018 the royal family happily announced the marriage between Ivar Mountbatten, a cousin of the Queen, and his partner James Coyle. Perhaps what makes this even more extraordinary and further evidence of just how far we have come in our attitudes and values is that Ivars former wife, Penny Mountbatten, gave her ex-husband away.

The world is a healthier place since the death of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Ivars ancestor, who spent his life concealing from the public and his friends his promiscuous taste for young men; a taste he was happy to indulge to an extraordinary degree safe in the knowledge that no newspaper would ever print anything he did not like.

We live in an age of far greater freedom; freedom to discuss the lives, loves and indiscretions of the most famous family in the world, a family whose members as we will see have intrigued and embarrassed, outraged and entranced us for centuries.