Was the Queen forced to intervene in a family squabble between her son and grandson when Prince Charles purposely snubbed the family of Prince William’s wife?
That’s the claim being made in Tom Bower’s new unauthorized biography of the Prince of Wales, Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles, after excerpts from the book appeared on Saturday in Britain’s Daily Mail.
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The book paints a portrait of a “pampered, petulant and self-pitying prince,” according to the Mail headline, and one of the book’s anecdotes claims that Charles became miffed when William and Kate decided to spend Christmas with her parents instead of him.
According to People, the book claims that Charles felt “usurped” by the Middletons, and felt “isolated” from his grandchildren, Princess Charlotte, 2, and Prince George, 4.
As a result, Bower writes that some of the Queen’s courtiers allegedly “decided to ignore Carole Middleton on social occasions” after ascertaining Charles’ alleged fears of being overshadowed by the Middletons.
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This left William “infuriated,” claims Bower, so he “consulted with his grandmother.” As a result, the Queen allegedly countered “the hurtful snubs against Carole” with an invitation to drive her around the Balmoral grounds, with a camera crew to document the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Bower claims that Charles was not happy when he realized that the popularity of William and Kate far eclipsed his own.
“Charles saw Kate and William as the new stars and feared he’d be in trouble,” Robert Higdon, the chief executive of Charles’ charity foundation in America, told Bower.
