In September 2022, just weeks after Queen Elizabeth II passed away, Denmark’s Queen Margrethe decided that her own royal house needed some upkeep. She announced, seemingly out of nowhere, that she was stripping the royal titles and styles away from four of her grandchildren. The four kids were Prince Joachim’s children, the children of Margrethe’s second son, “the spare.” Joachim and his second wife Marie were incredibly hurt by the queen’s decision, and they gave tearful interviews questioning the wisdom of removing royal titles. Margrethe ended up apologizing to Joachim but she didn’t change her mind. In 2023, Joachim and Marie moved from France to America, where Joachim now works as some kind of government/military attaché with the Danish embassy. It felt and looked like a permanent exile for the Danish spare. Well, here’s further confirmation of that – Joachim will attend this weekend’s abdication event, but his wife and children aren’t coming.

Prince Joachim of Denmark will attend the abdication of his mother Queen Margrethe without his wife and children.

Queen Margrethe’s second son and his wife, Princess Marie, relocated to the United States last year with two of their children nine months after the monarch stripped Prince Joachim’s four kids of their royal titles, and Hello! has reported that Prince Joachim will attend her abdication day events on Sunday solo.

“Prince Joachim will be there, but the children go to school, there is no special reason,” a palace spokesperson told the outlet. The rep added that Princess Marie will stay in Washington, D.C., where they now live, and that Prince Joachim will leave Denmark the next day.

Prince Joachim is a father of four, and shares his two eldest sons, Count Nikolai, 24, and Count Felix, 21, with his first wife Alexandra. They divorced in 2005 after a decade of marriage, and Joachim remarried in 2008. He and Marie went on to welcome a son and daughter — Count Henrik, 13, and Countess Athena, 11.

[From People]

It’s very “Prince Harry attending his father’s coronation.” Meghan didn’t go, neither did Archie or Lili. Granted, in Denmark, they’re not doing some big coronation or anything involving pomp or fuss. The whole thing will be done in a bureaucratic way, with Margethe signing a document and then (presumably) King Frederik X signing something or some kind of proclamation being made by the prime minister. It would be interesting to hear if Princess Marie or Joachim’s children were even invited. Anyway, “the children go to school, there is no special reason” is very frosty. There are still a lot of hurt feelings for the way everything went down.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.

The ink was barely dry on King Charles’s throne lease agreement when Prince William began openly briefing Roya Nikkhah about HIS coronation plans. Seriously, it started just a few days after Charles’s coronation, with the Times publishing a lengthy piece about how: William was too lazy to involve himself in the planning of Charles’s coronation; William will demand a smaller coronation than his father; William is too lazy to actually begin planning for his accession; William has rejected every attempt to have an investiture as Prince of Wales. Seriously, Charles wanted William and Kate to go to Wales and have some kind of pomp-heavy investiture service. But William refuses to learn Welsh and he also doesn’t give a sh-t about Wales, so no PoW investiture for Willy. I bring all of this up because the Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle column had this interesting note:

William and Kate will be studying Queen Margrethe of Denmark’s abdication, with the future King noting how the transfer to Frederik X involves little other than the signing of papers, the changing of royal standards and a proclamation.

For William, keen to downsize his own coronation, the relative simplicity may be appealing.

Kate, meanwhile, is said to be delighted that Crown Princess Mary is becoming Queen. She spent a lot of time in conversation with Mary at Royal Ascot when she visited in 2016.

They exchanged numbers. Will her low-key elevation help Kate to pick up tips for her own no-fuss crowning?

[From The Daily Mail]

The thing is, Denmark’s whole abdication/non-coronation thing will probably be TOO lowkey for most people. There won’t be anything but paper-signing and a proclamation from the prime minister. While I think British people would welcome less pomp and a more streamlined and modern coronation, they probably don’t want a ceremony which could have been an email. This is William’s problem too – I don’t think he actually has his finger on the pulse of the nation, and he doesn’t actually want to do any of the arcane setpiece events associated with the monarchy. The idea that Will and Kate’s coronation, whenever it happens, would be like Denmark’s, is enough to really upset all of those old-guard monarchists. Also: it’s sort of crazy that the “no PoW investiture” issue wasn’t a bigger story.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Jay-Z & James McAvoy attended the Book of Clarence premiere. [GFY]
Tom Cruise is officially in business with Warner Bros. [LaineyGossip]
People forget that Hunter Biden is a lawyer too. [Pajiba]
What does Gen Z do for fun? [Buzzfeed]
Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s stylist is doing an amazing job! [Tom & Lorenzo]
Prince Harry’s Spare, one year later. [JustJared]
Photos from Vanity Fair’s Globes party. [Socialite Life]
Selena Gomez is leaving social media for a while (probably a day). [Hollywood Life]
Rest in peace, Fruit Stripe Gum. [Seriously OMG]
The hot guys of the Governors Awards. [RCFA]

Denmark’s Queen Margrethe announced her abdication on New Year’s Eve. The abdication isn’t official until January 14th, this Sunday, when Margrethe will sign the abdication document and her son will become King Frederik. Many of us have wondered when Frederik and Mary learned of Margrethe’s decision, especially since just a few weeks prior to the NYE announcement, they had been looking miserable in Australia and there were rumors of significant marital discord. Many people believe that the marital discord was a factor in why Margrethe decided to step down when she did. But when did she tell her sons? When did Mary know that she would be queen sooner rather than later?

It appears as though Queen Margrethe of Denmark’s abdication news came as a surprise not only to the world but to her sons, Crown Prince Frederik and Prince Joachim, too. According to Danish newspaper Berlingske, Frederik and Joachim found out about his mother’s plans to abdicate the throne on Dec. 28 — just three days before her official announcement.

Prince Joachim, who lives in Washington, DC, with his family after announcing plans to move across the pond in March 2023, is expected to return to Denmark for his brother’s accession. Joachim and his family made the transatlantic move after Queen Margrethe stripped his four children of their prince and princess titles.

On Sunday, Margrethe is expected to sign a declaration of abdication at Copenhagen’s Christiansborg Palace during a Council of State meeting. After she signs, her son will become King Frederik X, and her daughter-in-law will be Queen Mary.

The new rulers will hold a reception at the palace to mark the occasion, however, there will be no official coronation ceremony as there was for King Charles in May 2023.

[From The NY Post]

So… she did it on December 28th, after Christmas. Mary and Frederik spent several weeks in Australia, with Mary’s family, but they returned to Denmark a few days before Christmas. I wonder how icy they were during all of the royal Christmas stuff and what Margrethe saw between her heir and daughter-in-law. And did it really come as a huge surprise to Fred and Mary, not to mention Joachim? I’m also curious if King Fred will ask Joachim to come back to Denmark to live full time, or if this “living in America” solution is permanent.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

In recent weeks, it’s been really friggin’ cold in the mid-Atlantic and up and down the East Coast. We all got a lot of rain, freezing rain and snow over the weekend and again on Tuesday, and temperatures have gone below freezing as soon as evening falls. So why did Blake Lively and Taylor Swift step out in New York last night without any coats, scarves or gloves? Blake looks especially underdressed, while Taylor at least looks seasonally appropriate, although I bet she wished she wore a coat.

Taylor and Blake were out last night at Lucille Pizza for a “private party.” That’s what Backgrid says, although other outlets say that Taylor and Blake went to Lucali. Maybe they went to multiple locations. They were apparently joined by Jack Antonoff and Zoe Kravitz and some other friends.

Going back to Taylor’s ensemble – she’s wearing a lot of green, snake-themed clothes lately because she’s previewing Reputation (Taylor’s Version). She’s rerecorded her 2017 album and it will likely be released in the coming months. Her Eras Tour picks up internationally next month as well. Anyway, that’s why she’s doing the snake looks – Reputation is heavy on the snake imagery. Taylor’s boots in these photos are the “Jimmy Choo Snake Boots” and they retail for $2450. Also: the crushed velvet and the cut of Tay’s dress is SO 1990s.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

February will be the two-year anniversary of Prince Andrew settling out of court with Virginia Giuffre. Her civil case against Andrew would have proceeded to trial, and Andrew’s lawyers quickly made the deal with Giuffre as soon as the judge refused to toss the case out. Reportedly, the settlement was eight figures, anywhere between $11-16 million. There might have been a one-year gag order attached, but overall, Virginia was able to negotiate from a place of real strength. It was the same when she got a settlement from Jeffrey Epstein in 2009 (for $500K plus something undisclosed in legal documents) and a settlement from Ghislaine Maxwell in 2017 for an undisclosed amount of money. Virginia has spent decades trying to get justice for herself and Epstein’s other victims, and her journey through the legal bureaucracy is a huge part of the newly unsealed Epstein files. Now we also know that Epstein initially paid the then-teenaged Virginia to sleep with Prince Andrew.

Virginia Giuffre claimed that she was paid thousands of dollars by convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew, according to court documents unsealed in New York City on Tuesday.

Giuffre made the allegation during a videotaped January 2016 deposition in Florida court as part of a lawsuit against former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz. She spoke as a non-party in a lawsuit filed against Dershowitz, Epstein’s former attorney, by her lawyers Bradley J. Edwards and Paul G. Cassell.

In court documents obtained by PEOPLE, Giuffre was asked if she was “paid 10 to $15,000 by or on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein for having sex with Prince Andrew?” in a time frame identified as 2011.

“Yes, I did receive $15,000. I don’t know what equivalent that is to pounds. I received it in American dollars,” she replied, referring to the difference in British and American currency.

Giuffre was then asked if she paid taxes on the money, and she said no.

[From People]

“Giuffre was then asked if she paid taxes on the money, and she said no.” Imagine trying to nail a human trafficking victim/survivor on tax fraud. And she was probably only 16 or 17 years old at the time she was “paid” to sleep with Prince Andrew. “Where are your W-2s from when you were being internationally trafficked at the age of 15??” Good lord, no wonder Virginia has been able to run circles around so many of these people. Anyway, once again, good for Virginia. She really has spent decades putting it all on the record and fighting these awful people.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

While Princess Anne doesn’t get a lot of attention during her tours and trips, I would imagine most countries, especially commonwealth countries, are welcoming to Anne and her low-drama energy. Anne is currently on the Windsors’ first royal tour of 2024. She arrived in Sri Lanka on Wednesday and she’s flying back to Britain on Friday or Saturday. This is a no-nonsense tour with Anne, her husband Tim and their very small staff. She doesn’t need hours for hair and makeup. Of course not. Just wear a sensible bun and some flats and let’s get to work. Anne’s arrival in Sri Lanka ended up getting headlines because she was photographed carrying her own bags off the plane.

The Princess Royal has been welcomed to Sri Lanka with a dazzling performance by traditional dancers – and in true Princess Anne style, she took it all in her stride by carrying her own bags off her commercial plane. The no-nonsense princess was photographed in a warm jacket, trousers and sensible shoes as she thanked SriLankan Airlines staff before walking off the plane carrying two heavy bags.

Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, her husband, followed, also holding a couple of bags, as the couple began an official three-day visit celebrating the UK’s ties with the Commonwealth country.

The Princess is famously businesslike on her tours, as in everyday life, with a packed schedule of events covering as much ground as possible in each day. She travels with a compact team of staff, known for their organisational skills, and tries to visit as many of her patronages as possible on any overseas visit as well as representing Britain.

The Princess, 73, is now known as the King’s “right-hand woman” thanks to her support for her brother, and her reputation as one of the hardest-working royals in the King’s slimmed-down monarchy. The trip is the Royal family’s first overseas tour of 2024.

The Princess is visiting the country at the request of the Foreign Office and will begin a whistle-stop tour to mark the UK’s bilateral relations with the nation, including a meeting later with Ranil Wickremesinghe, the president, and Maithree Wickremesinghe, the First Lady.

[From The Telegraph]

Anne is 73 years old and she runs circles around William and Kate in every sense. Since QEII passed away, we’ve also seen how much King Charles relies on Anne, that she is his “rock,” possibly more than Camilla. Anyway, I know her thing is being no-nonsense and unfussy, but I would love it if someone could convince her to wear a different style of sunglasses. These are so unflattering. She would look good with some oversized square-framed Jackie O-style sunglasses.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

We barely talked about Emily Blunt at the Golden Globes on Sunday, where she wore an ice-skater-looking McQueen gown and walked the carpet with her husband John Krasinski. Is it just me or does Emily just sort of float through these awards seasons all the time? She gets nominated consistently but never wins anything, so she dutifully shows up all the time and it’s just…whatever. Maybe she’s turning into another Amy Adams, always a nominee and never a winner. Anyway, I know I’m late to this but it’s been all over social media this week. While Emily and John were on the Globes carpet, someone got a video of them where it looked and sounded like John said something about how he couldn’t wait to divorce her.

That’s the debate. Did he say something about “divorce” – as in “I cannot wait to divorce you” – or was it something else entirely? Some people think he was saying something about the weather. Watching it for the tenth time, I think he said something was “the worst,” not “divorce.”

Like, say what you will about John and Emily and maybe they’re nowhere near the perfect transatlantic couple their fans hope they are, but I seriously doubt that John would be so cruel as to say something about divorce to Emily on the carpet of an awards show in which she was nominated! Like, even if you make the leap to say that they’re splitting up, he wouldn’t do that to her in public. Also: on Tuesday night, Emily went solo to the Governors Awards. No John. I suspect it’s less about “they’re getting a divorce” and more about “John is tired of the awards-season rigamarole.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

People are still talking about how badly Jo Koy bombed as the Golden Globes host on Sunday. One of the most offensive jokes – in an opening monologue full of terrible jokes – was Koy’s comment about Barbie, the most successful movie of 2023: “Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.” The producers cut to Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig’s reaction to that joke and they both looked frozen and bewildered. Margot hasn’t said anything about Koy’s performance, but Greta was asked about it in an interview this week, and she spun it into Barbie’s favor:

“Barbie” director Greta Gerwig isn’t letting Jo Koy’s Golden Globes jokes about the record-breaking film get to her. During an interview with BBC Radio on Wednesday, she gave her stamp of approval to the comedian’s polarizing comparison of “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”

“‘Oppenheimer’ is based on the 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project — and ‘Barbie’ is about a plastic doll with big boobies,” he said during his opening monologue, rubbing some fans the wrong way.

“Well, he’s not wrong,” Gerwig, 40, bluntly stated. “She’s the first doll that was mass-produced with breasts, so he was right on…And you know, I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll. The insight that [Barbie’s creator] Ruth Handler had when she was watching her daughter play with baby dolls, is she realized, ‘My daughter doesn’t want to pretend to be a mother. She wants to pretend to be a grown woman.’”

Of course, she opposed the hundreds of fans who were disgusted by Koy’s “Barbie” jabs. Viewers rushed to social media to express their dismay with his comments during the Golden Globes, labeling them as sexist and claiming they proved the entire point of the “Barbie” movie, which was to highlight women’s struggles in a male-dominated world.

“Saying ‘Oppenheimer’ was based on a great work and dismissing Barbie as a movie based on a doll with big boobs was so aggressively misogynistic in the face of all that Greta Gerwig and Margo Robbie accomplished it just turned me against Jo Koy the rest of the show,” one X user penned after hearing 52-year-old Koy’s opening monologue.

[From Page Six]

Yeah, Koy lost me with that as well, and it was one of the first jokes of his opening monologue! He said it with his whole chest, like he thought everyone in the room would agree with it and laugh because hahaha, isn’t it funny to dismiss women because they have boobs? Greta’s response is fine and the Barbie movie includes that too – that Ruth Handler created Barbie so little girls could dream about becoming astronauts and businesswomen and surfers and presidents. It’s really exhausting that the Barbie movie did this huge thing for the industry and it’s still being dismissed, marginalized and mocked.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Several days ago, Alan Dershowitz decided to stand up for Prince Andrew. Dershowitz claimed that Andrew made a mistake by settling out of court with Virginia Giuffre in 2022, and that Andrew basically only decided to settle because his mother made him. Keep in mind, Andrew and his lawyers believed that they could get Virginia’s civil suit thrown out of court, and when the judge said it could go ahead to trial – and Andrew was looking at taking the stand and having to face cross-examination in an American court – suddenly, Andrew couldn’t settle fast enough. That was supposed to be the end of Andrew – he was supposed to be shuffled off and never heard from again. Instead, he’s been trotted out over and over in the past two years at public events. It’s clear that all of the current royal sturm and drang is nothing but performative BS for the cheap seats. Now a source tells the Times the same thing: King Charles isn’t going to do jacksh-t to Andrew.

The King will not force Prince Andrew to move out of his home on the Windsor estate, an associate of the duke has said, because “blood is thicker than water”.

Reports last week suggested that the King was preparing to put pressure on his brother to move out of his home at Royal Lodge by making him fund his own security needs. However, the associate, who is in regular contact with the duke, said that although some palace officials favoured such an aggressive approach, the King would never authorise it. The source said the duke was uncomfortable with the renewed coverage of his friendship with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, but that the latest disclosures would have no bearing on the duke continuing to live at Royal Lodge.

“The duke has rights like any leaseholder in relation to that property so it’s not like anybody can say, ‘I’ve decided you’re going to move out’, ” the source said. “It’s a very unattractive proposition to withdraw security to kick out your brother and I’m sure the King would never allow that, even if it was suggested to him.”

“The King is somebody with a high level of integrity. There are people in the royal household who would take a more aggressive stance, but in that family, blood is thicker than water.”

The source said that the duke did not expect to return to public life “unless there is a significant turnaround in the public perception of him…If [people believed] he was wrongly accused, I’m not sure that would be enough because of the association with Epstein,” the source said. “The stigma of Epstein would have to wear off.”

[From The Times]

Okay, this is actually Andrew lavishing praise on his brother and publicly reminding Charles that “blood is thicker” and “a man of integrity would never evict his brother!” Please, Charles has no integrity, and he evicted his own “blood” relation, his son. All that being said, the end result will be the same – Charles does nothing but make a lot of noise about “punishing” Andrew and then nothing ever comes of it.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.