The royals bent on destroying the royals?

The royal family — once revered as The Firm, untouchable, unshakable and utterly unified — has in recent years been weakened by crises from within that have shattered that gilded image and left its reputation deeply bruised.

Now, it looks like a family at war with itself. After Diana’s tragic death in a car crash in 1997, the first cracks became a chasm. In March 2021, just months after stepping back as senior working royals, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sat down with American TV icon Oprah Winfrey and detonated a bombshell.

In that explosive tell-all, the Sussexes accused the institution of cold indifference and revealed deeply troubling conversations about Archie’s skin colour.

Rather than healing the rift, the Duke of Sussex doubled down. His 2023 memoir Spare, the fastest-selling non-fiction book in British history, laid bare everything.

In it, Harry penned about his alleged physical altercation with Prince William, his frosty and fractured dynamic with Queen Camilla and the crushing emotional toll of life inside the Palace.

Meghan also refused to stay silent. From her revealing interview with The Cut to the couple’s global Netflix series Harry & Meghan, she framed their exit not as a departure, but as a desperate fight for survival against a system that failed to protect her.

Then came the Yorks. Andrew’s catastrophic 2019 Newsnight interview about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein led to his effective exile from royal duties, stripping the monarchy of its moral authority.

Once again, Sarah Ferguson and Andrew found themselves in the headlines, facing intense scrutiny over their past links to Epstein, with reports of correspondence resurfacing.

Recently, the King was forced to make a decisive decision to strip the former couple of their royal titles and other patronages and to ask them to leave the luxurious Royal Lodge at Windsor as pressure mounted.

From Oprah to Spare, from Maidwell to Newsnight, each book, each interview, each bombshell has chipped away at the mystique.This is no longer a story of outsiders attacking the Crown.

More recently, Princess Diana’s brother Charles Spencer shattered his family’s code of silence once again with his new book, "Swan Song: Diana My Sister."

In it, he revealed untold stories about how senior royals reacted after Diana's tragic death in a Paris car crash in 1997, and about his sister's struggle to find true love while serving her people with grace and humanity.