Despite the royal family’s admiration for tradition, Prince William is likely to scrap a lot of the long-standing formalities once he becomes monarch, claimed former Buckingham Palace butler Grant Harrold.
In his book “The Royal Butler,” Harrold also revealed that Prince William and Princess Kate live with a butler, and their three children – George, Charlotte and Louis – are also likely to follow the same ways.
Harrold was the butler of King Charles between 2004 and 2011.
‘Reset button’
In his book, which will be released on September 23, Grant Harrold said that the modern monarch, Prince William, will use his reign to press a “reset button” and reduce the family’s central figures.
“The reality is, when [William and Princess Kate’s children] George, Charlotte and Louis become of age and start getting involved, the monarchy will be the Prince and Princess of Wales and their three children only,” he said.
He also noted that the monarchy will get more fragile as the years go on, “and it’s changing”. “It’s become more of a celebrity thing than a historical firm. Harry was the first celebrity royal,” Harrold, 47, said.
‘They do stuff themselves’
Unlike his predecessors, Prince William’s family believes in doing their work themself.
The former butler said that William and Kate have lived without a butler for many years, and he thinks that the Wales family, their three kids, will also continue to do the same.
“I wanted to butler, to look after [William and Kate], and they didn’t want any of it,” Harrold said. “They wanted to do stuff themselves. They were carrying their own stuff, doing their own washing up, their own cooking.”
“They are very much still like that. [William] is very hands-on. To this day, I’m the only one that has ever done any butlering for him,” he added.
William and Harry ‘were inseparable’
Saddened by the falling out of the two brothers who once loved each other dearly, Grant Harrold said, “The two of them were not just the best of friends, they were inseparable.”
He shared that at Highgrove, King Charles’ private residence, they were always together. “They were walking together, in the pub together, on motorbikes together. Very rarely did they do stuff separately.”
However, Harrold said, he believes “something bigger happened” between Harry and William.
“I was genuinely shocked when they fell out,” he said. “There must be something deeper going on that we’re not being told.”
In his memoir Spare, Harry takes various digs at his brother William and accuses him of physically attacking him, knocking him to the floor, and breaking a dog bowl in 2019. In the book, Harry calls William his “beloved brother and arch-nemesis.”
The brothers were still on good terms when Harry and Meghan Markle married in 2018.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.livemint.com ’
