Vanity Fair The Royals

Vanity Fair has long covered the royal courts of Europe. In the magazine’s earliest issues (during its first American incarnation, as the Jazz Age began), the editors ran monthly features on monarchs and their country estates, their lavish weddings, their palace intrigues. Needless to say, there were a few missteps along the way. In October 1913, Vanity Fair predicted that nine-year-old Alexei, the hemophilia-stricken son of Russia’s czar, Nicholas II, would “some day rule over one hundred and fifty million people.” (Five years later, in the bloody aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the heir to the House of Romanov would die in a cellar after being shot with his family.) In January 1914, the editors spoke glowingly of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who, in order to marry the Duchess of Hohenberg,…

There are two film clips of the abdication which are still haunting to watch for the drama of that world-gripping crisis. The first is of the Duke of Windsor, recently demoted from King Edward VIII, with Wallis on the day of their wedding. Their entourage consists of a few loyal cour tiers but no members of his family. The couple stands almost motionless for some minutes so that one of the guests, seemingly inept with a camera, can take a snap. They look vulnerable, pathetic, and cheerful. The Duke now possesses what he lost his crown for, a picture of his marriage to “the woman I love,” the square-jawed, unprepossessing, twice-divorced Wallis Simpson. It’s a Shakespearean moment of royal exile, aptly taking place on French soil. It powerfully communicates what…

It was, in 1947, that rarest of unions: a royal love match. But though the dashing Prince Philip of Greece and the 21-year-old heiress to Britain’s throne were clearly smitten as they began a life and family together, trouble lay ahead as “Lilibet” became “Her Majesty”—and the new Duke of Edinburgh chafed at his consort role. In an adaptation from her biography, timed to the monarch’s Diamond Jubilee, SALLY BEDELL SMITH described the dynastic struggle that rocked Queen Elizabeth II’s marriage and the difficult choices she was forced to make There was a whole battalion of lively young men,” recalled Lady Anne Glenconner, whose family were friends and neighbors of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Sandringham, their estate in Norfolk. But Princess Elizabeth, the heiress presumptive to the…

On February 19, 1948, Duff Cooper, the former British ambassador to France and a noted appraiser of women, went with his wife, Lady Diana, to a luncheon at Buckingham Palace with the King, Queen, and their two daughters, the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose (as Margaret was then called). Afterward he wrote in his diary, “We enjoyed it enormously. Conversation never flagged and was really amusing. Margaret Rose is a most attractive girl—lovely skin, lovely eyes, lovely mouth, very sure of herself and full of humour.” He added presciently, “She might get into trouble before she’s finished.” It was not long before she did. The Princess, then 17, was already in love with one of her father’s courtiers, a love that would blaze across headlines and almost cause a constitutional…

When the Prince and Princess of Wales arrive in Washington next month, they step into intense curiosity about the state of their marriage. Magazines and newspapers in every capital crackle with backstairs backchat about the princess’s autocratic ways. She has banished all his old friends. She has made him give up shooting. She throws slippers at him when she can’t get his attention. She spends all his money on clothes. She forces him to live on poached eggs and spinach. She keeps sacking his staff. Certainly 40 members of their household have resigned, including his private secretary, Edward Adeane, whose family had served the monarchy since Queen Victoria. The debonair Prince of Wales, His Royal Highness, Duke of Cornwall, heir to the throne, is, it seems, pussy-whipped from here to…

One day she was dressed in sober gray, the next in dazzlingly happy pink. Since the announcement of the end of her marriage on December 9, 1992, Diana, Princess of Wales, has been visibly reborn. There is a new bounce in her step, a cheekier smile on her face, a new gleam in those flirtatious blue eyes. Prime Minister John Major’s dramatic announcement in the House of Commons ended more than five years of lies, deceptions, and pent-up suffering. At long last the sham was over. For Diana it was a moment of triumph. For Charles it was a crushing defeat, which could eventually cost him the throne. At this low point in the history of the House of Windsor, Diana is the new Britannia, who very much rules the…