“I need to be in quite a calm state, and I am not at the moment. I will save it.” William was speaking at Sunday’s BAFTA Awards ceremony about not yet having seen the movie Hamnet, but the timing and the not-so-subtle truth beneath his words, days after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest, were startling.
In an institution like the Royal Family, which has been guarded and shackled by that stiff upper lip mentality for centuries, an admission like this is not clumsy, but rather modern leadership manifest.
It is the start of the unpicking of the arcane knot that has governed the family for generations – the sturgid belief that every scandal will pass if you don’t comment or, better yet, stick your head in the sand and wait for it to blow over. After all, it’s worked in the past … so what’s changed?
Prince William’s comment was more than just a nephew seething at his uncle’s disgrace. It was the radical pivot that the Firm has needed for so many years.
Gone are the days were silence and dignity ruled the way. The unfiltered and unvarnished truth is what’s needed when the family is in the eye of the storm like this, and luckily for us, William knows that.
It was an admission that while the royal show will go on, come hell or high water, the actors at the centre are allowed to feel the pressure.
Having recently admitted that it takes him a long time to understand his feelings, William’s bold move was refreshing. While the days of complete silence may have gone at the start of King Charles’s reign, as he too has made it clear that the law is the victor in Andrew’s sorry saga, the Prince of Wales has taken it a step further.
Yes, his determination to speak out on mental health by giving the public an in-real-time response to how he is dealing with the Royal Family’s biggest scandal in decades is telling, but it goes beyond that.
“Not calm” is quite frankly one of the most honest things a royal has said for years. It ranks right up there with “annus horribilis”, the hallowed phrase his grandmother croaked into a microphone after watching her home, and three of her children’s marriages, burn down. Perhaps there really is something to be said about a brutal dose of honesty from the royals.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.express.co.uk ’
