Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
The royal family
Original poster

Palace courtier controlling Queen?

116 replies

Bugeyedowl · 18/01/2023 13:14

Did anyone find the part in the book where Harry tries to talk to the Queen on the phone a bit sinister?

He says her voice sounded 'strange' and she said she suddenly wasn't available to see him despite telling him earlier that she was. Apparently "that was what Bee told her". Then he asks her "is he there in the room with you?" She doesn't reply.

Was the Queen being shifty or was Bee telling her what to say? What was going on there? Was the Bee controlling the Queen? It seems the Palace courtiers have a lot of control over the family... Why/how would they have so much power over actual royals? Sounds almost like a hostage situation!Confused

OP posts:
RiktheButler · 18/01/2023 13:15

Seriously, stop taking everything Hary says as Gospel.

WileECoyoteMeepMeep · 18/01/2023 13:16

She was a very strong woman.
I don’t imagine her being controlled at all.

YouJustDoYou · 18/01/2023 13:18

No one with any ounce of brains would trust a word of "recollection" that man-child claims to have, what with the sheer amount of proven lies that's come from him.

Yesthatismychildsigh · 18/01/2023 13:18

I haven’t read the book, but I’ve thought before that ‘the men in grey suits’ we’re very conveniently blamed for doing the queens (and others) dirty work.

SirChenjins · 18/01/2023 13:19

Maybe she and Bee were too busy laughing and rolling their eyes at him for the Queen to respond?

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 18/01/2023 13:22

Perhaps her voice was funny because she was making up an excuse not to see him on the fly and she was trying not to giggle a the suggestions for avoiding it that Bee (presumably her private secretary) was mouthing at her across the room.

Sounds almost like a hostage situation! 🙄

QueenSmartypants · 18/01/2023 13:22

Can't comment on that, but...

Courtiers have always been in covert positions of power, throughout history. Harry talks about the backstabbing nature of Palace life, well he's right. It has ever been so, foolish and naive to think that just because it's the 21stC it'll be any different. Come on - we've all worked with people like that, you think it's going to be any less around the sovereign?

I found it interesting a few months ago when courtiers said that royals are discouraged from talking to each other directly and instead encouraged to go through their staff, to ensure everything hangs together logistically. Must be a bloody nightmare for family relationships and the potential for every communication to be skewed someway by Palace politics is huge. Harry alludes to this in one of his more astute moment in the book, in fact part of his problem with William seems to be that they swore they'd operate differently but William still goes through his people.

In Williams defence, i can understand how incredibly difficult it must be to change the culture once you're immersed in it - and of course, all the courtiers (staff) will be working to influence that things don't change because it isn't in their interests to do so.

All sounds very Humprey in Yes Minister to me.

BigotSpigot · 18/01/2023 13:22

Who knows but It is very easy for Harry to blame the couriers, rather than believe that his grandmother, seemingly a very capable woman with agency, was perhaps guarded or even disappointed with him.

There seems to be a hierarchy of blame: the Queen, not much, Charles, somewhat, and William, a great deal... and this also aligns with the power structure (and who kept the purse strings) at the point the book was written.

The book is fascinating, but whether it is a truthful depiction of reality is impossible to say... and even Harry says something along the lines of this is his truth and not actual fact.

TheStrangeCoven · 18/01/2023 13:23

Oh I see, it was the bee 🐝What the queen really wanted was Harry and Meghan to take over her firm, not stuffy Charles or bold boring Willy.

One word: deluded

BethDuttonsTwin · 18/01/2023 13:23

As kindly as possibly, I think Harry is an excitable, rather immature man who has - with the encouragement of his wife - embraced the culture of victimhood wholeheartedly. I think he has been pandered to his entire life and now reports incidents and interactions, which didn’t have his preferred outcomes, as having occurred as he would like them to have happened rather than how they actually did. I don’t know why anyone believes anything he says tbh.

Fluffymule · 18/01/2023 13:26

A somewhat patronising and insulting depiction of the late Queen surely?

To describe her as feeble and easily controlled and manipulated when all accounts confirm her to be as sharp, capable and steering the ship until her last days.

ArnoldBee · 18/01/2023 13:26

It reminds me of Elizabeth I, William Cecil and Mary Queen of Scots.

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 18/01/2023 13:28

A somewhat patronising and insulting depiction of the late Queen surely?

Yup, but much easier to depict his late GM as passive and easily controlled rather than admit that a) she wasn't just concerned about the family but the monarchy and balancing the needs of the two and b) that she was probably fed up to the back teeth with him by this stage.

babsanderson · 18/01/2023 13:29

QueenSmartypants · 18/01/2023 13:22

Can't comment on that, but...

Courtiers have always been in covert positions of power, throughout history. Harry talks about the backstabbing nature of Palace life, well he's right. It has ever been so, foolish and naive to think that just because it's the 21stC it'll be any different. Come on - we've all worked with people like that, you think it's going to be any less around the sovereign?

I found it interesting a few months ago when courtiers said that royals are discouraged from talking to each other directly and instead encouraged to go through their staff, to ensure everything hangs together logistically. Must be a bloody nightmare for family relationships and the potential for every communication to be skewed someway by Palace politics is huge. Harry alludes to this in one of his more astute moment in the book, in fact part of his problem with William seems to be that they swore they'd operate differently but William still goes through his people.

In Williams defence, i can understand how incredibly difficult it must be to change the culture once you're immersed in it - and of course, all the courtiers (staff) will be working to influence that things don't change because it isn't in their interests to do so.

All sounds very Humprey in Yes Minister to me.

Agreed.

Butitsnotfunnyisititsserious · 18/01/2023 13:30

If you honestly believe everything Harry has written is true, you're very naive. I highly doubt anyone controlled the queen. Tbh why on earth would she want to meet him with how he behaved.

babsanderson · 18/01/2023 13:30

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain I do not know what is true. But by this time the Queen was very elderly, frail and pretty ill.

QueenSmartypants · 18/01/2023 13:30

Fluffymule · 18/01/2023 13:26

A somewhat patronising and insulting depiction of the late Queen surely?

To describe her as feeble and easily controlled and manipulated when all accounts confirm her to be as sharp, capable and steering the ship until her last days.

I suspect the truth is that she was always sharp, capable, clear in her mind and decisive. The information she had to work on, and the way it was presented, is only as good as those giving it to her, so it's possible she based on her decisions on flawed information. However, where the crown was concerned she always put it's security first and she was absolutely right in the decisions she made about them being either all in or all out.

Hbh17 · 18/01/2023 13:30

He can't face up to the fact that his grandmother (quite rightly) sometimes took decisions that he didn't like. So he has to blame other people. There has never been anything written that suggested that The Queen was not fully competent and responsible for her own decisions.

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 18/01/2023 13:31

babsanderson · 18/01/2023 13:30

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain I do not know what is true. But by this time the Queen was very elderly, frail and pretty ill.

Still working two days before she died, though. And looking pretty happy to be doing so.

wordler · 18/01/2023 13:32

Also we don’t know how long the Queen had known about the cancer diagnosis but once you’re in your 90s you know you don’t have long left - I think she probably wanted as quiet and trouble free life as possible at that point and not be the referee between Harry and his father for the rest of her final days.

babsanderson · 18/01/2023 13:34

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain She stood up for a photo and to greet someone. She had obviously had an IV of some kind removed and looked very frail.

Mamm4574 · 18/01/2023 13:39

Whatever you believe about Harry's book, it seems pretty clear that things were not as smooth as they appeared. The family is unsurprisingly much more dysfunctional on the inside that the image they project.

So isn't it possible that the image of the Queen may just be an image? I know there are many, many accounts of how lovely, funny and capable she is, but we don't know anything about her relationships with the courtiers or how those relationships changed as she got older.

GoingtotheWinchester · 18/01/2023 13:39

@wordler she had cancer?? Missed that completely!

Original poster
Bugeyedowl · 18/01/2023 13:39

QueenSmartypants · 18/01/2023 13:22

Can't comment on that, but...

Courtiers have always been in covert positions of power, throughout history. Harry talks about the backstabbing nature of Palace life, well he's right. It has ever been so, foolish and naive to think that just because it's the 21stC it'll be any different. Come on - we've all worked with people like that, you think it's going to be any less around the sovereign?

I found it interesting a few months ago when courtiers said that royals are discouraged from talking to each other directly and instead encouraged to go through their staff, to ensure everything hangs together logistically. Must be a bloody nightmare for family relationships and the potential for every communication to be skewed someway by Palace politics is huge. Harry alludes to this in one of his more astute moment in the book, in fact part of his problem with William seems to be that they swore they'd operate differently but William still goes through his people.

In Williams defence, i can understand how incredibly difficult it must be to change the culture once you're immersed in it - and of course, all the courtiers (staff) will be working to influence that things don't change because it isn't in their interests to do so.

All sounds very Humprey in Yes Minister to me.

Agree. It's very strange to me, and contributes to this cold, dysfunctional family dynamic. They can't relate to each other as a family but as rivals to each other's public image. The courtiers have a LOT to answer to I think, but we'll never know how it really works.

OP posts:
MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 18/01/2023 13:41

babsanderson · 18/01/2023 13:34

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain She stood up for a photo and to greet someone. She had obviously had an IV of some kind removed and looked very frail.

That still doesn't imply she's being controlled by whoever Bee is.

PH IMO can't believe that HM might just have been fed up with the whole thing, had washed her hands of it and was leaving it for the PoW to deal with when he became king - because PH was her favourite grandchild who was trying to protect her, why wouldn't she want to talk to him? so he makes it all about her not having agency and being controlled. Perhaps she was being a bit wary about what she said to him, as well.

And I find it plausible that she wasn't sure what her engagements were. By that stage IIRC they were being organised about how well she felt on the day.