King Charles III could delay a biography on his mother Queen Elizabeth II’s reign to avoid having the period of his own divorce scrutinized, a royal expert suggested.
The British Royal Family has long been the subject of widespread global interest, and eminent historians are routinely appointed to write up an official account of the lives of sovereigns once they have passed.
But Charles might opt to wait sometime before giving the go-ahead for the biography of his mother because of the controversial aspects of his personal history with the late Queen.
In particular, historian Robert Lacey noted the breakdown of his marriage with Princess Diana and the relationship between Elizabeth and his second wife, Queen Camilla, could cause particular issues for his image.
Lacey said: “Any serious book has to examine the more difficult aspects of the King’s relationship with his mother. That’s why I wonder whether it can possibly be published in his lifetime.
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“The years of real crisis in the Queen’s reign revolved around the breakup of King Charles’s marriage to Diana.”
Speaking with The Telegraph, he added: “There is the testimony of a private secretary that the Queen told Charles she wanted ‘nothing to do’ with Camilla – whom she described as ‘that wicked woman’ – and that Prince Charles himself was close to tears over this.
“I can’t see any way that the candid verdicts on Prince Charles among some very senior figures in the palace and No 10 during the monarchy’s dark days of the 1990s can possibly be published during his reign.”
The late Queen experienced a series of difficult moments within the private sphere between the 1980s and the 1990s, namely the end of the marriages of three of her four children.
Charles and Diana, whose relationship had been under question for years, officially separated in 1992 after years of clear tension and they would later engage in a brutal tit-for-tat public skirmish now known as the War of the Waleses.
Prince Andrew and Sarah, Duchess of York called it quits the same year – later dubbed the late Queen’s Annus Horribilis because of a sequence of devastating blows to the monarchy, including a fire at her beloved Windsor Castle.
And 1992 also marked the year in which Princess Anne and her first husband, Captain Mark Philips, officially divorced after separating nearly four years earlier. She remarried Sir Timothy Laurence within months.
But other aspects of the late Queen’s life could also cause the British Royal Family some distress, namely her uncle Edward VIII’s close bond with several Nazi party officials and her uncle-in-law Lord Mountbatten’s sexual preferences.
The King could also wait to commission his mother’s biography to a younger historian – potentially breaking with royal tradition once more and opting for a female academic.
Royal biographer Andrew Lownie said: “Traditionally the official lives have gone to an established and establishment historian who understands the constraints within which he – until now it has always been a him – must work.
“I suspect ‘soundings’, though quite with whom is a mystery, will be taken and there is a good chance that for the first time a female royal biographer will be chosen, certainly for Queen Elizabeth ll.”
Lownie added: “Whoever is chosen is guaranteed a bestseller though subject to some ‘oversight.'”
