Royal family faces fresh backlash

The royal family's trouble does not seem to end anytime soon as the Firm has been dragged into the n-word race row after dozens of references to the term were found in official documents, according to a new report.

The royal family is in under fire once again as a catalogue published by the Royal Collection Trust (RCT), which showcases a selection of jewels owned by the Royal Collection, contained around 40 uses of racial terms.

The document, which is titled Ancient and Modern Gems and Jewels, was published by Royal Collection Enterprises Limited back in 2008.

It has reportedly remained on its website since then and was only removed on Thursday. In the investigation, which was launched by the Independent, racial slurs were found when describing artefacts. 

It showed that the terms had been used to describe people of African descent who appear on the jewels and gems.

One brooch's description, in the catalogue, read: "Head of a n***o in three-quarter profile to the right, with a drop-pearl earring. This type of a n***o’s head is found on several sixteenth-century cameos." 

Another item showed a white person who, according to the report, posed features which were "not n*****d".

It comes after a racial slur was found in the government documents. After having been visible on the Government's own website since 2015, the term was also found in a report made by the Met Office and in work used by the Department for Work and Pensions guidance. 

The revelations prompted UK's prime minister Rishi Sunak’s official spokesperson to denounce the word as “inappropriate and offensive”.

The royal family also found itself under fire over racial issues last year when Ngozi Fulani, founder of the charity Sistah Space, alleged that she was asked by Lady Susan Hussey - the late Queen's lady-in-waiting - where she "really came" from during a reception at Buckingham Palace.

Previously, Prince Harry's wife Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, the first person of mixed ethnicity to marry into the royal family, claimed in 2021 that an unnamed royal, not the late Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh, had asked the Duke how dark their son’s skin tone might be, before the couple's eldest child Prince Archie was born.