Towards the end of 2014, there was a major kerfuffle in Prince Charles’ press office. Various former press officers, who used to work for Charles, had told their stories to the BBC and Radio Times. There was a documentary called Reinventing the Royals, all about how Charles had remade his image following Princess Diana’s death, and how he had gotten the British public to accept Camilla as his wife (and eventual Queen). The documentary was supposed to air months ago, but it was pulled after Charles’ people raised a stink. But the documentary ended up airing last night on the BBC. So what did we learn? The Daily Beast has a lengthy article about it – go here to read. Some highlights:

*Charles’ office always painted Diana in a negative light, before and after her death: Charles’ consigliere Mark Bolland is accused of helping to write a book that described Princess Diana as a serial adulterer with mental health issues, as well as sanctioning a story that would run in the News of the World claiming Prince Harry had taken drugs, in exchange for an editorial praising Charles’ fabricated reaction to the revelation.

*Charles sold out William: Charles and his press office gave vivid details about William’s first meeting (he was 16) with Camilla to The Sun. The reporter who wrote the story told the BBC: “We got all the details, her [Camilla] drinking the gin and tonic, her having a sneaky [cigarette] beforehand because she was nervous and everything else… So all the detail came to us and was, if you like, absolutely kosher. Apart from Camilla and William telling us, you couldn’t have got it from a better source…It was Mark Bolland.”

*Prince William hated his dad’s press officers: “He [William] didn’t like being used by anybody and he felt, from what I remember, that he was being used by his father’s staff,” said Richard Kay, royal correspondent for the Daily Mail, from 1986 to 2007. “I’m sure he was. I think it explained a lot about what happened in subsequent years when he decided to break away from his father’s people.”

*Charles’ press officer sold out Harry: Bolland had “done a deal” with the News of the World over the drug revelations despite Harry’s outright rejection of a raft of claims made by Rupert Murdoch’s former newspaper. The one thing he couldn’t deny was that he had ever smoked marijuana… Harry had felt trapped by Bolland’s alleged arrangement in which the palace agreed not to contest the drug allegations if the editorial flagged up the way Prince Charles had supposedly responded by taking his youngest son to a drug treatment center as a warning. In fact, the coincidental royal rehab visit had taken place months earlier. “Harry knew he’d done the wrong thing, he felt very bad about it, he felt he’d let people down, but I think he was quite angry that stuff had not happened in the way it had been said.”

*Mark Bolland must go: Whatever the truth about Charles’ direct involvement in the apparently nefarious briefings going on in his name, the rest of the royal family knew perfectly well that it was his staff planting all these stories in the press. And yet Bolland retained his lofty position. By 2002, the growing sense of frustration had come to the boil, the rest of the family was sick of being collateral damage in Prince Charles’ black ops…. it was the Queen’s intervention that heralded the end of Charles’ right-hand man. “The Queen is quite marvelous in all kinds of ways, but she’s quite ruthless when she needs to be. It seems to me she decided ‘Enough’s enough.’”

[From The Daily Beast]

I think this goes a ways towards explaining why William is so squirrelly with the press, and perhaps why he prefers the Middletons to his own family… although I would argue that the Middletons leak as much information about William as Charles’ office. Charles sounds ruthless, and like he hires ruthless people. But I also think that at the heart of all of this is one simple fact. William and Charles are a lot alike in general, and in one particular way: they are terrible at public relations and media management on their own. Their instincts are always terrible. They surround themselves with smarter media-savvy people to do their dirty work, to mixed results. And both William and Charles will throw anyone under the bus to make themselves look good. Like father, like son.

These are pics of Charles and Camilla celebrating the Chinese New Year in London yesterday.

Photos courtesy of WENN.