Royal family drama threatening to derail the Queen's Platinum Jubilee | 60 Minutes Australia

anyone who's toiled away on one practically 24 7 job for 70 years without complaint surely deserves a hearty pat on the back but in the lead up to her platinum jubilee what queen elizabeth doesn't deserve is what she's getting and that's members of her own family stealing her limelight her grandson harry and his wife megan can't seem to stop sharing with the world how disgruntled they are while her son andrew well the less said about him the better it guarantees the celebration of the queen's milestone will be unforgettable but not necessarily for the right reasons london is getting some spit and polish a spruce up for a very special occasion in a little over two weeks time official celebrations marking queen elizabeth's 70 years on the throne begin it should be a party like no other after all no other monarch has achieved such longevity in the top job but behind palace walls the house of windsor is in turmoil you have on the one hand what should be a lead up to a queen's platinum jubilee where the family is absolutely united but at the same time you've got these boiling dramas sort of stage right that could blow up at any moment and has left them in a kind of fragile place no one knows the drama and dysfunction of the royal family better than tina brown as the former editor of tatler vanity fair and the new yorker magazines as well as the author of the acclaimed diana chronicles the palace has been her beat for more than 40 years she's lunched with diana had dinners with charles and curtsied for the queen she's also now written a new book the palace papers it doesn't hold back in its critique of the modern royals to penetrate the royal code of silence is extremely difficult i don't have to tell you that you say you interviewed about 120 people for this book but what was the most toxic topic that you've ever tried to get information from behind the palace walls within the house of windsor the harry megan thing is is very raw and although some want to speak about it if reluctantly there are others that just feel the topic is so destructive and explosive that they really don't want to talk about it and they're still worried because it's still in play largely they're still worried because it's become a very volatile situation um what they have seen is that harry has not just had his say once he's going to keep having his say i have no regrets it's it's incredibly sad but i have no regrets at all because now i'm in the in a place where i feel as though i should have been four years ago there's a fear about trust there's a lot of mistrust right now in the royal family [Applause] a lack of trust is not the ideal starting point for a friendly family reunion and it's clearly fueling tensions we welcome my incredible husband prince harry the duke of sussex while the duke and duchess of sussex will return to london for the jubilee celebrations god i've missed you all they've been banned from joining the queen on the balcony at buckingham palace see the duchess of sussex there again on the balcony it's a brutal snub for harry and megan who these days seem almost addicted to centre stage what is the current state of the relationship between william and harry tina are they talking a little bit a lot are they still arguing do they talk at all there's very little communication between harry and william right now uh very little unfortunately the wounds of the oprah interview were deep and then of course you know harry's kept it up since you know he keeps on you know throwing bombs actually i mean his announcement that he's going to do his own truth-telling memoir really has rattled the family tremendously because it's sort of hanging over them now they don't know what he's going to say and they're very nervous about what it says and they have every reason to be nervous because over the last couple of years harry has shown what an angry young man he is i myself was trapped as well i didn't she felt trapped you were trapped yeah i didn't see a way out trapped within the system like the rest of my family are my father and my brother they are trapped they don't get to leave about the only royal harry seems to have time for these days is the queen oh really please boom where you came home to the uk you saw your grandmother how was that it was great it was really nice to see her be able to see her in some element of privacy was was was nice how did it feel being back it was just so nice to see her you know she's on she's ungrateful we always she's always got a great sense of humor with me and i'm just making sure that she's you know protected and got the right people that actually went over like a lead balloon uh with his family because i mean they feel that they've been there for her they are the people with her and he wasn't for the last two years he's been in montecito he's a strange mix isn't he on the one hand he has this pathological hatred of the press on the other hand he's quite happy to use them to seal the entertainment deals to do the headline interviews to promote his book but certainly a paradox that the man who kept saying that all he wanted was privacy now can't seem to stop talking and i think that that is baffling to his family in fact one of the things i heard constantly you know from within the royal family uh people they said like we don't recognize harry we don't understand you know why he's doing this just don't understand it and it is kind of baffling it's almost as if suddenly liberated from [Music] you know all the constraints that he's been in he just simply wants to just blabber everything that's on his mind it's i think very destructive tina brown's sources tell her the fear in the palace is that there's a lot of his mother in prince harry and that his trip home will be used as an opportunity to continue his campaign of chaos in some ways i mean harry's taken up the legacy of diana it seems to kind of lob these grenades at unexpected moments that has everybody completely off of form yeah i have no doubt that my mum would be incredibly proud of me i'm living the life that she wanted to live for herself it's a tragedy i think that he's gone so off about his family his emotions rule harry's head there's no doubt about it and there's a deep resentment in harry for everything that he's been through in the past and unfortunately in recent years it's it's really seems to become then inner directed you know towards his his family particularly his father which is actually very sad i think for charles who i think did try to do his best you know in his in his own way as a single parent worth sparing a thought for prince charles troubled and scandal-ridden for much of his own life but now consumed with never-ending family dramas trying to understand the wants of his renegade son providing support for his increasingly frail mother and managing the ongoing embarrassment of his brother who refuses to butt out of royal life prince andrew obviously didn't get the email that he was supposed to stay on the sidelines what is that is that complete arrogance or is it stupidity stupidity um andrew has always been a dim bulb and something of an oaf let's face it it's it's going to be a problem andrew has been cancelled essentially i mean you couldn't be more cancelled than andrew right he's been told you're done but where do you stash a a 61 year old healthy man who has no desire to be stashed anywhere and who's going to keep trying to push himself out onto the public stage he's not going quietly i mean in previous centuries andrew would have been sort of banished to the borders you know and and and locked up in some castle keep but you know you can't do that in the 21st century andrew lives like a stone's throw from mummy you know in windsor great park and he's going to be out there at every turn despite being his mother's favorite child prince andrew has also been banished from the buckingham balcony but as the world saw last month at prince philip's memorial he rarely does what he's told and i think nobody was happy to see him at her side at that service but i'm also told that he pushed his way in that in fact he wasn't supposed to be walking down the aisle with her she was supposed to be handed off at that point to the dean and he was supposed to walk her there but you know when a queen's son you know sort of elbows his way into the shot um no one's going to have a scene in the middle of a memorial service so that's what happened and it was a source of great anxiety and and sorrow to the family and i think i think to everyone actually because it was not as they say a good look it's dangerous actually it's not a good situation and that's not even the half of it the latest word from inside the palace is that prince andrew's sense of entitlement is out of control surely he can't really believe that his image can be resurrected after being best mates with the world's richest pedophile when it comes to prince andrew's privileged life of embarrassing excess we might think we've heard all the grubby details but in her new book the palace papers tina brown reveals even more surprises you relate a story told by an american media executive of andrew calling fergie a big fat cow oh god in front of her is that accurate is he really that mane yes i think that andrew i think that he's a boorish man i think he's a very boorish man is he really the queen's favorite son the queen has a very very soft spot for andrew she has found his contact i i'm sure you know distressing um but you know a mother is a mother and you cannot tell a mother what to feel about our children you know and apparently no one has yet been able to convince andrew that a friendship with jeffrey epstein has consequences surely he can't really believe that his image can be resurrected after being best mates with the world's richest pedophile andrew fully expects to be rehabilitated he yes he he's not even accepted that he's going to uh have to have a quiet few years andrew believes strongly that he can get back and i'm told that this is something that he's obsessed with that uh he believes that this is going to happen that you know over due time he will get back into the mix and of course his mother right now is the best route as he sees it because uh the queen's stature is such that no one is going to say to her you cannot see your son and even though she has no desire now to have him uh you know seen with her on balconies and understands that he knows and wishes for him to not be part of that he can keep pushing his face in when it comes to causing disruption it's almost as if andrew has been taking lessons from harry and megan for the forthcoming celebration of the queen's 70 years on the throne the sussexes find themselves in an unlikely position they're not the stars of the show sitting on the sidelines is not something they're used to and that's got the palace worried you write about the 2018 tour of australia by harry and megan sort of a seminal moment for them when megan thought that the royal family needed her celebrity more than she needed them that was something that that puzzled um the royal sort of household tremendously because their tour of australia was a wild success more successful than kate and williams in terms of the crowds and the adulation she she wanted to be able to talk more about the causes that she cared about it as her as opposed to being a representational figure in the monarchy there was a sense of real disappointment when she came home that somehow she was a star beyond you know anything one scene except for diana really on this tour i guess it was the star power essentially that she felt now was bigger than what she was allowed to do in the monarchy what she does now with all her freedom is anyone's guess but tina has discovered there's something megan can't be accused of causing makes it one of the things that surprised me uh very did very much surprising was that one of his uh close people at the palace said to me you know we always thought that harry would leave we always thought at some point harry would leave because he was so unhappy in the constraints of uh you know the system in megan he met somebody who was dynamic enough and sort of self-directed enough to say we don't need this anymore we can we can be happier than we are now we don't need to do it you're implying harry drove mix it more than megan did at least in the early stages i think they were co-drivers i think there were co-pilots on this i think that megan has been somewhat unfairly targeted as the one who sort of took him away from his family i actually think that that harry wanted out for the family they very much have this mentality of this is just how it is this is how it's meant to be you can't change it but for all her criticism of prince harry's erratic behavior tina hopes his exile isn't forever he does have this habit of rattling them but at the same time there is a desire to have harry back i believe deep down i think that i think they need him actually um i think at this moment um to have harry on the balcony would be an uh a positive thing even after all this even after all that he said even after what he said this is still a family and harry has a great deal to offer that's kind of what the family feel about harry is that he is uh a handful but at the same time he also has a lot of charisma and a big emotional connection with people you've spent a great deal of your professional life writing about the royal family and publishing various revelations over the past 20 odd years what fascinates you about the royal family why have you spent so much time looking at the way they operate my fascination with the family is that this is a family they may be living in castles they may be where they may wear a crown but the fact is they're they're like anybody's family there are you know the the the the the ones who who work out the the miscreants the prodigal sons the the you know the the ones who fall in love with the wrong people i mean this is a family and as such that tension between those two things you know the power of their position and the humanity of who they are it's a very compelling story it's a family drama that this remarkable uh powerful potent institution of monarchy rests upon the frail shoulders of human beings who are like any other family how would you describe the state of the monarchy at the moment fragile hello i'm liz hayes thanks for watching 60 minutes australia subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 minutes on nine now dot com dot iu and the nine now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 2,702,301

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, queen, platinum, jubilee, royal, prince harry, meghan markle, andrew, virginia giuffre, jeffrey epstein, monarchy, united kingdom, england, uk, britain, royalty, kate middleton, prince charles, princess diana, oprah, tina brown

Id: -JQOM1foboc

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2022