PROLOGUE: Then and Now ....................................................................................................... 4 SECTION 1: Who Owns Diana? Delusion and Control ........................................................ 14 SECTION 2: Velvet and Steel: The Diana Touch ................................................................... 43 SECTION 3: Your Majesty ........................................................................................................ 69 SECTION 4: Your Next Majesties ............................................................................................ 86 SECTION 5: Ich Dien ............................................................................................................... 139 SECTION 6: Your Royal Highnesses ..................................................................................... 150 Please note, all articles were commissioned by the titles shown; some were abridged for length, though not for content; a (very) few were spiked before publication. [Cover Photo: Tim Ockenden, Press Association] Page | 2 Patrick is a consultant, journalist, broadcaster and new york times and london sunday times bestselling author, based in Washington DC. His byline has appeared in every major UK newspaper and international titles as varied as People magazine, Paris Match, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the National Catholic Reporter. He is a published authority on corporate and personal branding, addressing conference audiences worldwide as well as events at the US State Department, the American University and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He also writes, presents and advises on factual and drama programs, appearing on every major US network as well as British and international platforms. Patrick owes much of his practical communications experience to Princess Diana, who chose him to be her equerry and only private secretary/chief of staff. He served the Princess for eight years, responsible for every aspect of her public life, charitable initiatives, and private organization. He travelled with her to five continents, working with government officials up to head of state. Under relentless media scrutiny, his tenure covered the period of Princess Diana’s greatest popularity as well as the constitutional controversy of her separation from Prince Charles. In recognition of his service, HM Queen Elizabeth II appointed him a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order. Patrick was born and raised in Ireland and holds a Masters degree in Political Science from Cambridge University. As an officer in the British Navy he served all over the world before being selected for royal duty. A naturalized US citizen based in Washington DC, he is founding partner in the specialist communications consultancy JephsonBeaman LLC (WWW.JEPHSONBEAMAN.COM). Page | 3 2001: In a tabloid sting operation in a london hotel, a daughter-in- law to the queen has been exposed using her royal links to leverage a business deal; in an ill-judged attempt to distract the media, a palace press officer inadvertently ignites a blaze of unfounded speculation about the couples’ sexuality… Page | 4 Patrick Jephson, who was a courtier for eight years, urges the Royal Family to ignore their unscrupulous media manipulators and to begin real reform before it’s too late At about this stage in a royal crisis, the internal press briefings start to become easier. The winces are outnumbered by the sighs of relief. A few tentative, self-congratulatory thoughts are permitted. The ship of monarchy has ridden out another storm in a tea cup. Supporters of the royal status quo, which is still most of us, will be tempted to share the relief. What a lot of fuss about nothing… Except that this time the sheer disproportion of the countess’s offence and the political reaction sounds an ominous warning that royal advisors will surely not want to ignore as they put away the Wessex file. A Westminster-style register of interests, which has been proposed by Labour MPs, is perhaps the most damaging piece of the fallout from the Dorchester incident. Ostensibly reasonable, it’s hard to reject with any conviction and it appeals to the resentful serf element that has been such a vocal part of the recent media feeding frenzy. It’s the most damaging because it will give us the right to pry into things that many of us feel are none of our business. We will pry anyway, of course, but it still won’t feel right. And it will only add legitimate outrage to the mixture of anger and despair that we must assume is being felt by the inhabitants of the various royal residences (yes, they have feelings too). It won’t even offer much protection against future such… um… misjudgements by the “minor royals”. Nor will the investigation by the lord chamberlain, which we’re assured will provide guidelines for any of them who feel the need to dabble in commerce. As it happens, such guidelines – or a version of them – already exist. A slim volume is available to the small number of officials who advise senior royalty, presumably the product of previous embarrassments such as the excruciating attempt by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to sell tat on American television. Which reminds us that this is not a new problem. As I recall, the advice is hardly delphic, amounting roughly to an exhortation not to do anything that might bring the monarchy into disrepute. And really, that says it all. It’s certainly all you can say to a group of people whose raison d’etre is to be above the rules invented for the hoi polloi. Page | 5 That way, the magic has a chance to survive, if we want it to. It certainly won’t survive the resentful scrutiny of a register of interests, even if such a document could ever be accurately drawn up. This begs a few questions. Self-regulation is the only sort of regulation that will ever work with people who are above common reproach. But how can it be applied if the only sanction – the threat of incurring the Queen’s displeasure – is ineffective? Rules must now be invented, not because the management has pre-empted the problem and is now applying stern correction, but because an enterprising tabloid reporter pretended to be a foreign businessman. Half a dozen words of majestic displeasure would perhaps have done more to reassure loyal subjects than the lengthy explanation that was put out as the Queen’s response. Let the spin doctors with whom Her Majesty is now so expensively equipped fill in the supporting stuff about “breaking new ground in this day and age”, if they really must. We want to believe that we have a Queen who will put the fear of God into any relative who even thinks of exploiting their kinship. The Queen has formidable disciplinary powers over family matters, but the perception of her authority is being dissipated by spin. So we are stuck with the justice of the media lynch mob: vulgar, impertinent, demoralising and depressingly effective. So what price the magic now? The Queen’s generation has witnessed the rapid fading of imperial red from the atlas of the world. Even when Tony Blair went to Fettes, she still reigned over vast swathes of Africa, the Caribbean and Asia, not to mention the Old Commonwealth. In my years in the household I often wandered through our great palaces, wondering at the survival of our essentially Victorian monarchy in the face of such irreversible national decline. Quaint, certainly, and enjoyable too, in a Ruritanian sort of way. But no more guaranteed a future than the Queen’s birthday celebrations on St. Helena. But wait a minute. Haven’t the papers been daily reminding us that the Queen’s heir is the dynamic force for change that emerges from the Wessex wreck like a beacon of hope? Indeed they have, thanks to the assiduous efforts of the Prince of Wales’s own image- management consultants. But it’s not hope that their work illuminates. It’s despair. Page | 6 Internecine warfare has been part of our court life ever since we invented royalty. Usually it stays safely behind palace walls. Its emergence into the public consciousness at this critical point is highly significant and deeply worrying to loyal obervers. It has reached a point where no realistic reading of today’s royal stories is complete without wondering which opposing teams of royal spin doctors are responsible for which damaging headlines. Unfortunately, it seems that the spin alchemists have only the poiticians’ code of ethics. No more should be expected of them. Which would be okay if their royal employers had the best politicians’ wisdom and moral self-assurance to redress the imbalance. But not all of them do. Instead they seem bewitched by the siren voices of their unscrupulous media manipulators. Not only is the royal ship now heading for the rocks, but the officers are squabbling on the bridge and paying the pushier passengers to have a go at the helm. I hate to say it, but the Prince of Wales is not a reformer. He is not even a moderniser. He’s a tinkerer, and a self-indulgent one at that. His well-publicised desire to jettison the “minor royals” sometimes looks like a handy way to bag the remaining deckchairs for himself. The minor royals are not the heart of the problem, however they might irritate their elders’ media advisers. At the core of our royal family’s dilemma is their tendency – which we have allowed them – to treat the truth as an optional extra. In his marriage, the Prince of Wales had the best real safeguard of the monarchy’s future. The marriage’s failure is a sharp reminder of royalty’s human frailty. So is its understandable vulnerability to soothing PR overtures. But our instinctive sympathy struggles with what has followed. For example, I’m sure Sophie got this right [taped in the sting] a lot of people don’t want Camilla to be queen. But she won’t be queen, say the prince’s apologists. By which they mean she won’t have that title. If you believe that removes her from our national shop window, then you are misinformed about how power is really brokered in the royal hothouse.