King Charles III once gave his brother, Prince Andrew, a gesture that landed “like a dagger in his heart”, a royal expert has said.
The Duke of York, 63, has recently been propelled back into the public eye following the announcement that his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, is receiving treatment for skin cancer.
But, unlike some of his other relatives, he has not participated in official royal duties, having been stripped of his duties and many of his honours.
He stepped back in the wake of a “dressing down” from his brother, then titled Prince Charles, following a disastrous BBC Newsnight interview in November 2019 and was stripped of his honours in 2022.
What many Britons may not know, though, is that he was once notably sidelined before, most notably nearly a decade before in 2012.
The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee that year saw the family gather for celebrations at Buckingham Palace, including the classic family appearance on the Palace balcony.
But Prince Andrew and his daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, were excluded from the traditional debut, as were Princess Anne, Prince Edward and their children.
Speaking about the exclusion in 2016, Daily Mail royal correspondent Richard Kay suggested the decision hit Prince Andrew especially hard.
He said the royal was left feeling like he had a “dagger in his heart”, as he was also not invited to an additional celebration at Westminster Hall.
Mr Kay said: “For Andrew, being excluded from the balcony — he was also not invited to the livery companies’ celebration lunch for the Queen at Westminster Hall — was, said one of his friends, ‘like a dagger to his heart’.
“But this was a dramatic statement of intent by Charles, who long ago decided that when he is King the Royal Family would be ‘slimmed down’.
“Andrew was furious, Edward dismayed, while Anne, the hardest-working royal, remember, knew that as the only woman in the Queen’s family, she would always have a role.”
“The Queen was uncertain about the plan at first, recalling how, ten years earlier, at her Golden Jubilee, the family had filled the balcony and the public loved it.
“Reluctantly, the Queen accepted Charles’s view that the changes were necessary because the mood of the public was for what one courtier describes as an ‘economy monarchy’.”
In 2017, royal author Katie Nicholl wrote in her book ‘Harry: Life, Loss and Love’ that the exclusion would never have gone ahead if Prince Philip – who was sick and absent from celebrations – was in attendance.
