Why was Prince Edward accused of demeaning the monarchy?
What does he have to say about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's move to California?
And just how involved in the royal family is he? Keep watching to find out!
Prince Edward is the youngest of Queen Elizabeth's children,
and was born 16 years after his oldest brother, Prince Charles. Third in line to the crown when
he was born, Prince Edward's childhood was, of course, privileged and unique.
After graduating from Cambridge, he followed father and older brother's military footsteps
and joined the Royal Marines in September 1983. The men in the British royal family
have traditionally served in the military.
But after 4 months of training in the Royal Marines, Prince Edward knew that the military
wasn't the right career path for him, and decided to leave rather than finish the year-long commando
training. On January 12th, 1987, Buckingham Palace released a formal announcement that said:
"Prince Edward has decided to resign from the Marines. Edward leaves the Marines with
great regret but has concluded that he does not wish to make the service his long-term career."
Prince Edward got a lot of flack in the press for not finishing his training,
but the Associated Press reported at the time that a poll had concluded that 81% of British people
felt for Edward and believed he should do what was right for his own life.
After stepping down from the Royal Marines, Prince Edward pivoted and started building
a career in the entertainment industry. He had always loved the performing arts,
and participated in plays in college, so deciding to pursue this was a natural fit. However,
his first foray as a producer didn't exactly go as planned.
"It's a Knockout" was a popular BBC competition game show
in which two different teams dressed up in silly costumes and played games
against each other. Prince Edward had the idea to include the royal family
in a special edition of the program, "It's A Royal Knockout," to raise money for charity.
Prince Edward, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Sarah Ferguson each coached a different
team of celebrities. The teams competed against each other and raised money for
four different charities. In total, the event raised 1.5 million pounds,
and 18 million people watched, according to The Independent.
"I only hope that you've enjoyed yourselves. Have you?"
While that sounds like a massive success, the press
was not kind. The Independent had some harsh words about the show, writing:
"The young royals inadvertently mocked the real
costumes and ceremonies of their own House of Windsor."
The public was not used to seeing the royal family goof around, even if it was for a good cause,
and the consensus was that the show had demeaned the monarchy.
Recovering from the bad press from "It's A Royal Knockout," Prince Edward decided to
take an entry level job at a production company so he could learn from the ground up. In 1988,
he was hired as a production assistant with Andrew Lloyd Webber's theater company,
Really Useful. According to the BBC, as a production assistant,
he did small, menial jobs around the office, which included making tea.
This wasn't the first time that Prince Edward had met and worked with Andrew
Lloyd Webber. Two years earlier in 1986, he commissioned a short musical called
"Cricket" from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice as a birthday present for the Queen.
It was performed at Windsor Castle, and featured an impressive cast
and crew of theater artists. The show has only been performed twice
since then — although Webber did adapt several songs from the musical into his other work.
Prince Edward spent two years working at Really Useful,
and then left to form his own theater production company with a few friends.
But the theater business proved difficult, and the company closed in debt. So, in 1993, Prince Edward
decided to pivot into television, and founded Ardent Productions, according to the Guardian.
Ardent Productions did not have a specific production focus.
Instead, they produced everything from soap operas to documentaries. The most
successful project that Ardent made was a documentary about Edward the 8th, the former
king of England who abdicated the crown in 1938. That film, "Edward on Edward,"
sold worldwide and was quite popular in the United States. Ardent Productions continued
to produce a wide variety of television shows and specials throughout the 1990s.
Not only was 1993 a pivotal year in Prince Edward's professional life, but it was also
fundamental in his personal life — he met and began dating his future wife, Sophie Rhys -Jones.
While Prince Edward was a professional and not a working member of the royal family, he did have
some philanthropic royal duties, which included the Prince Edward Summer Challenge for charity.
The challenge was to play Prince Edward's favorite sport, real tennis, for as long as possible.
At the time, Rhys-Jones was working as a young public relations professional, and was helping
out with a promotional shoot for the event. She stepped in to pose with Prince Edward for
pictures during the shoot, and the couple quickly hit it off. They started dating soon after.
Of course, there was a media frenzy when the press discovered that Sophie and Prince
Edward were dating. In December of that year, Prince Edward sent a formal letter
to the press begging for their privacy. According to the New York Times, he wrote:
"I am taking this unusual step of writing to you directly in the hope of stopping your reporters
and photographers from destroying that part of my life that I am entitled to regard as private,
and more importantly Sophie's life. [...] Please will you call an end to
your harassment of both Sophie and me and allow us to try to carry on our lives as normal."
"We've been subjected to massive intrusion and all the rest of it
and we all deal with it in different ways."
Prince Edward proposed to Sophie in December 1998, after the couple had been together
for 5 years. Acknowledging that the couple had been together for a long time, Judy Parkinson,
author of "Edward and Sophie: A Royal Wedding" recounted that Prince Edward had said,
"It's impossible to understand why it has taken me this long,
but I don't think it would have been right before, and I don't think she would have said yes."
The couple opted for a simpler wedding, by royal standards. They got married in St.
George's Chapel, the venue in Windsor where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle would get married in 2018.
The ceremony took place at 5:00 pm, and the dress code was relaxed, clarifying that the guests did
not need to wear hats. 550 guests attended the ceremony and reception. Rhys-Jones wore a long
sleeved ivory dress designed by Stephanie Shaw, and a diamond tiara lent to her by the Queen.
When he and Sophie Rhys-Jones married, Prince Edward received the official title Earl of Wessex,
and Sophie became Countess of Wessex. This was a bit strange
for two reasons — his brothers had been named Dukes when they married,
and the title Earl of Wessex had been out of use for a little over 900 years.
The explanation for the unusual title was a sentimental and
simple one — Prince Edward was quite close with his father, Prince Philip,
and the palace announced that the plan was for him to eventually inherit the title
of Duke of Edinburgh. According to Vanity Fair, the palace explained at the time:
"The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales have also agreed that the Prince Edward
should be given the Dukedom of Edinburgh in due course,
when the present title now held by the Prince Philip eventually reverts to the Crown."
Prince Philip passed away in 2021, but the title
will not revert to the Crown until Prince Charles becomes king.
Ardent Productions continued to make documentaries and television shows
throughout the 90s and early 2000s, but never had a big hit. The company failed
to ever turn a profit, and in 2002, Prince Edward decided to step down.
Sophie had left her public relations job a year earlier, after a scandal in which
she said several disparaging things about a variety of British politicians and royals
while she was unknowingly recorded by a News of the World reporter pretending to be a sheik.
No longer working professionals, Prince Edward and Sophie then began their careers as working
royals. 2002 was the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee — the 50th anniversary of
her coronation — so there were many public events and ceremonies for them to attend.
Prince Edward began also sponsoring a wide variety of charities and working as a patron
for organizations like the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and the Commonwealth Games Foundation.
Prince Edward and Sophie's first daughter, Louise,
was born on November 8th, 2003. Prince Edward actually missed her birth — he
was on an official royal trip at the time, and Sophie went into labor a month early.
According to the BBC, Louise was only 4 pounds, 9 ounces when she was born,
and she was also born with an eye condition, but fortunately, everything turned out alright.
Prince Edward and Sophie chose not to give the title Her Royal Highness to Louise,
or His Royal Highness to her younger brother James, who joined the family in 2007.
Nevertheless, the siblings' 18th birthdays allow them a second chance
to accept H.R.H. titles from the Queen, and the responsibilities that come with them.
But Edward and Sophie's daughter appears to have simply remained Lady Louise after turning
18 in 2021, and it seems James will follow in his sister's footsteps once he becomes
an adult. Ahead of Louise's birthday, Sophie herself told the Sunday Times that it would be,
quote, "highly unlikely" for her children to ever use His or Her Royal Highness titles.
When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to step down as senior working
royals and move to California, it was the beginning of simmering tensions throughout
the royal family. But, whatever tensions may exist, Prince Edward
has repeatedly spoken about Prince Harry and Meghan's situation with empathy. He told CNN:
"​​We've all been there before. We've all had excessive intrusion and attention in our lives."
"And we've all dealt with it in very different ways. We wish them the very best of luck."
In the same interview, he reacted happily to the news of their daughter Lilibet's birth.
"Fantastic news about the baby. That's great. I hope they'll be very happy in that."
When pressed to speak further about Meghan and Harry in an interview with the BBC,
Edward simply said:
"I stay way out of it. It's much the safest place to be."
Prince Edward was very close with his father Prince Philip, who passed away on April 9th,
2021, at the age of 99. Prince Edward has been heavily involved
in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, which Prince Philip himself founded in 1956.
"You must miss him… yes. Yes."
In a heartfelt interview with CNN, Prince Edward reflected
on the importance of the award and spoke about his late father, saying:
"He will go down as someone who has helped millions of young
adults transform themselves and develop into better people and aware citizens."
"He was the sort of person that, once met never forgotten."
Due to COVID restrictions, only 30 people could
attend Prince Philip's funeral. After the ceremony, Prince Edward told CNN,
"It was an experience that so many other families have had to go through during this past year
or 18 months and so in that sense, it was particularly poignant."
Prince Edward's role as a down-to-earth, reserved spokesman for the royal family
is expected to continue, as there are now only 7 working members of the royal family.
Royal writer and journalist Penny Junor spoke to The Guardian about Prince Edward
and Sophie's future as the potential faces of the British monarchy. She said,
"Edward and Sophie are a very unroyal royal couple. They have no airs and
graces. They are very low key. And they don't have a sense of entitlement. So,
maybe we will see more of them. The public, I think, like them."
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