29 February, 2024

Delivered in association with Sean Coughlan Welcome to Royal Watch. It’s been an uneasy and sometimes difficult week for the royals. The start of this year more broadly has been a tough time for them, haunted by health worries and now an unexplained “personal matter” that saw Prince William missing a significant event. Prince Harry, meanwhile, lost a court challenge over his security arrangements. Plus, animal rights campaigners have bought some of the King’s pigeons. And, did you know King Charles has a pair of shoes from the bottom of the sea? Dark clouds over Windsor What is going on in the palaces? Prince William’s unexpected withdrawal from his godfather’s memorial service - because of a “personal matter” - added to a sense of uncertainty that seems to have hung like a dark cloud over the royals for the past couple of months. There were soothing messages from palace sources, saying there was no cause for alarm and not to read too much into this sudden absence from the memorial in Windsor for King Constantine of Greece. There were also reassurances that Prince William’s wife, Catherine, was continuing to do well in her recovery after surgery. William was due to give a reading and already lives in Windsor, so pulling out of a leading role at an important event was always going to get the rumour mill rolling. One of the last times William and Kate were seen together in public came in November during the state visit of the South Korean president. Image: Reuters That doesn’t mean listening to the multitude of howling-at-the-Moon conspiracy theories on social media. But it does create a nervousness about what’s going to happen next. The royals seem to be a little spooked. There’s a fragility at the moment. They look collectively older and frailer. And it didn’t help their cause to have Prince Andrew leading the way to the memorial service. Adding to the gloom was the news of the death of Thomas Kingston, aged 45, who was married to Lady Gabriella Windsor, the daughter of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances in the death of Thomas Kingston and no-one else involved. Credit: Reuters Nonetheless, while continuing with his cancer treatment, King Charles put out a strong message on Ukraine this week. He issued a rallying call for the international community to maintain its support for the country. Even if not attending public events, he will keep making his virtual presence felt. • Prince William pulls out of memorial service • King says Ukraine facing ‘indescribable The deep roots of Harry’s security battle Prince Harry lost his legal case with the government on Wednesday, over security arrangements when he’s in the UK. He won’t get the same automatic police protection available to him when he was a working royal. This long-running dispute can be traced all the way back to the thundery circumstances of his stepping back from royal duties and moving to the US. Harry was happier last time he visited the High Court, winning compensation from Mirror Group newspapers over phone hacking allegations. Image: Reuters. When I started covering this royal patch for the BBC, I remember being told by a palace official, while walking down the stairs in Buckingham Palace, that there was an unambiguous rule of “no half-in and half-out royals”. I hadn’t realised then how much this would keep repeating as a factor in stories about Prince Harry. But at the moment both Prince Harry and Meghan have continued to have their own self-defined public roles - for example, both sending out charity videos in the past week. It’s left a sense of their roles feeling vague and like they could change in the future. • Harry loses court challenge over security protection Flown the coop The royals have kept pigeons at the Royal Sandringham Estate for 150 years. But the King’s loft is under scrutiny by an animal welfare group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta). The group has written to him saying he should not have any links to pigeon racing, arguing it’s cruel. It says it bought three of the royal pigeons at auction earlier this year, and put them in a sanctuary in Wales. The Royal Pigeon Racing Association rejects any suggestion of cruelty and says the welfare of the birds is a priority. Pigeons on display at the annual British Homing World Show of the Year in January, where Peta says it bought the birds. Image: Shutterstock. Regular Royal Watch readers will note this isn’t the first time Peta have complained about animal welfare across the royal estate, after January’s campaign to end the use of bearskin hats by the King’s Guard. Either way, it’s another row winging towards the palace and a microcosm of the difficulty for the royals of being unifying figures when people have such different views. Old soles The King is known for wearing clothes that can be decades old - patched, repaired and recycled. But the King’s oldest item of clothing, in terms of the material used, must surely be a pair of shoes made from leather from an 18th Century shipwreck. A Danish ship, sunk off Plymouth in the 1780s, was discovered by divers in the 1970s. The wreck was searched and found to contain rolls of Russian reindeer leather. The hills and trees of the Plymouth Sound were among the last sights for the Metta Catharina before it sank, carrying the precious reindeer hide. Image: Getty. It was in remarkably good condition and as the site of the wreck was in the Duchy of Cornwall, the then-Prince Charles was given a pair of shoes made from this ancient leather. According to royal sources, he still has the historic brogues but hasn’t worn them recently. If we have any tanners, tailors, glovers, girdlers, saddlers or cobblers among our readers, do let us know how much a pair of shoes made from 200-year-old reindeer hide might cost.