Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey is the latest in a string of royal scandals to hit the mainstream press.
Sure, being a prince or a princess may sound like a fairytale, but as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have demonstrated, the reality is far more complicated.
From cheating scandals to attempted kidnappings, the Royal Family has had its fair share of drama. Just take a gander through these 12 examples...
1. King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson
The romance between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson led to the King of England relinquishing his throne in 1936.
After ruling for less than a year, Edward VIII became the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne. He did so after the British government, the Church of England, and the public condemned his decision to marry the American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. The government even went so far as to say that the entire cabinet would resign if the pair wed.
Edward finally abdicated, which led to his younger brother — Queen Elizabeth's father — being crowned King George VI.
The star-crossed lovers were married in 1937, after which they were exiled to France, and told they could only return if they had the monarch's permission, according to Vogue. To ensure that the former king behaved, the government threatened to cut off financial support if he was thought to be stepping out of line.
Simpson was unsurprisingly unhappy with this arrangement. As her 1986 obituary in the New York Times reports, she once said: "For 24 years my husband has been punished, like a small boy who gets a spanking every day of his life for a small transgression."
2. Princess Margaret's forbidden relationship
The Queen's fun-loving younger sister, Princess Margaret, once had a highly publicised affair with Peter Townsend, the equerry to King George VI.
Per Vanity Fair, Margaret met Townsend when she was just a teenager. He was not only 15-years older, but also divorced. The pair are thought to have become close following the death of her father.
For the Queen, who had just ascended to the throne, the parallels between Margaret and her disgraced uncle was undeniable, and the public also seemed disapproving. Per a 1953 report in the BBC, when news of the affair broke, the British media denounced the notion of Margaret marrying Townsend as "quite unthinkable".
The Queen then made it clear that if Margaret went through with the wedding, she'd lose her royal privileges and her financial support. Margaret ultimately chose the crown over love, issuing a public statement that read: "I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Capt. Peter Townsend. Mindful of the Church's teaching that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before any others."
Townsend was then assigned to a post in Brussels.
3. The attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne
After attending a charity event in 1974, a 23-year-old Princess Anne was returning to Buckingham Palace when her car was forced to stop on the Mall by a man driving a Ford Focus, per Tatler.
Ian Ball, who was wielding two guns, got out of his vehicle, and started firing the weapons, claiming that he would kidnap the princess and hold her for a £2 million ransom.
A passerby named Ronnie Russell helped Anne escape unscathed. But the ensuing kerfuffle resulted in her personal police officer, her chauffer, a journalist, and a police officer being shot while they attempted to intervene. Luckily, they all survived.
Once arrested, Ball pleaded guilty to attempted murder and kidnapping. He was sent to the psychiatric hospital, Broadmoor, under the Mental Health Act.
4. The Buckingham Palace intruder
While Buckingham Palace is one of the most high-security residences in the UK, Michael Fagan was able to break into the Queen's home — not once, but twice.
He first gained entry in June of 1982, when he climbed up a drainpipe, according to The Independent. He hid after startling a housemaid, and then claims to have wandered the halls of the palace, viewing royal paintings and sitting on a throne, before drinking wine, and sneaking out again.
A month later, he managed to re-enter the palace. This time, he chanced on the Queen's bedroom, and woke her up. She was able to call for help.
Fagan, who is pictured below, was not charged with trespassing as it was a civil offence rather than a criminal one. In fact, the only thing he was remanded for was theft — over stealing some wine — but this was dropped when he was committed for psychiatric evaluation.
He was later released in January of 1983.
5. Lord Mountbatten's assassination
In what was a shock to the royal family and the wider world, Lord Mountbatten was assassinated by the IRA on August 27th, 1979.
Mountbatten — who was serving as a mentor to Prince Charles at the time — was Queen Victoria's great-grandson and the second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. He was on his fishing boat off the coast of northwest Ireland when a radio-controlled bomb, which was planted under the boat, detonated fifteen minutes after setting sail, per History.
He was not the only casualty in the attack: also killed were 15-year-old Paul Maxwell, 14-year-old Nicholas Knatchbull, and Doreen, Dowager Lady Brabourne.
Provisional IRA member, Thomas McMahon was found guilty of the attack, and sentenced to life in prison. He was released just 19-years into his sentence as part of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
6. The love triangle between Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Camilla
What was believed to be a fairytale romance devolved into a media frenzy when the public discovered that the marriage between Princess Diana and Prince Charles was deeply unhappy.
According to Town and Country, Prince Charles had been in love with his former girlfriend, Camilla Parker-Bowles, throughout the marriage, and the pair had started an affair in 1986.
There was no going back in 1993, when an embarrassing phone call between Charles and Camilla was leaked to a British newspaper. As The Express reports, Charles jokingly told Camilla that things would be easier if he could just "live inside your trousers". Camilla then responds, "What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers?" to which Charles replies, "Or, God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck! My luck to be chucked down a lavatory and go on and on forever swirling round on the top, never going down."
The People's Princess had a similar scandal just a month earlier, when transcripts of her call with James Gibley were also leaked. In the 23-minute call, he repeatedly tells Diana that he loves her, and calls her by the nickname "Squidgy".
In 1992, Diana and Charles officially announced their separation, and their divorce was finalised in August of 1996. Charles went on to marry Camilla in 2005.
7. Princess Diana's tell-all interview
Following her separation from Prince Charles, Princess Diana set down in 1995 for an explosive tell-all Panorama interview with BBC journalist, Martin Bashir.
In the interview, she discussed her unhappy marriage to Charles, which resulted in the oft-quoted line: "Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."
She also touched on her affair with James Hewitt, as well as her experiences of bulimia and self-harm, which she claimed were related to the pressures of royal life, and the lack of support she had received.
8. Princess Diana's death
Tragically, just two years later, a 36-year-old Diana passed away on the 31st August, 1997.
She died from the injuries she sustained in a car crash in Paris, after her vehicle was involved in a high-speed paparazzi chase. Her partner, Dodi Fayed, and the driver of the vehicle, were also pronounced dead at the scene.
Diana's death triggered an unprecedented outpouring of grief in England and beyond, with her funeral being watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people.
10. Prince Andrew's involvement with Jeffrey Epstein
Following the accusations that Prince Andrew had been involved with the late, convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, the royal conducted a heavily criticised interview with BBC Newsnight's Emily Maitlis.
He denied accusations that he had sexual relations with, or even met, one of Epstein's alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre. However, he had been pictured alongside Giuffre in a photo that was believed to be from March of 2001.
Prince Andrew also said that he didn't regret his friendship with Epstein, and he bizarrely claimed that he was unable to sweat after being shot in the Falklands War. This came after it was discovered that he had flown on Epstein's private plane at least four times.
As the public's incredulity grew, Andrew announced that he would be stepping away from royal duties for "the foreseeable future" in November of 2019.
11. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry 'step back' from being senior royals
In January of 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced their intention to step back from senior royal duties.
"After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution," they wrote in a statement. "We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen."
They also said that they would be splitting their time between the UK and California, in a bid to become financially independent. The event was quickly dubbed "Megxit" in the press, and spawned various memes and even merchandise.
12. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's Oprah interview
In March, Meghan and Harry's explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey aired. In it, they alleged that a lack of support from the royal family drove them out of the UK.
Meghan also claimed that she "didn't want to be alive anymore" as she struggled to adjust to her new life as a senior royal. More disturbingly, she went on to say that after she tried to seek help for her mental health, "the firm" blocked her out of fear of how it would look.
The couple also made allegations of racism, saying that concerns were raised with Harry about the skin colour of a then-unborn Archie. The former actress claimed: "In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time, so we have in tandem the conversation of, 'You won’t be given security, not gonna be given a title' and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born."
The two-hour CBS interview was watched by 17 million in the US and a further 11.4 million in the UK.
The Palace issued a statement on March 10th, which read, "The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.
"The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much-loved family members."
