Entertainment
10 Times Royals Were Royal Pains
Many people still hold romantic views on royalty as the interest in Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markel’s recent wedding showed. Although many royals families no longer hold real power they participate in the pomp and circumstance long associated with kings and queens. The British royal family is particularly popular and is covered by the media like they are Hollywood celebrities or reality television stars. Most of the time the royals attend to their duties making frequent public appearances and supporting worthwhile charities. But the Royals are people too and wealth and free time can be a volatile combination that leads to embarrassing headlines. Fights, affairs and ugly divorces are all examples of royals being royal pains.
10. The Frog Prince
When a young woman marries a prince she expects to live in a castle happily ever after. Unfortunately sometimes a princess kisses a frog instead of a prince. This was definitely the case when the young and beautiful Diana married Prince Charles in in July 1981. The ceremony was a glorious occasion marked with all the pomp and circumstance befitting a British royal wedding. The festivities were not to last, however, as Prince Charles continued his persistent affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. Charles and Camilla met at a Polo Match back in 1970. This was before either of them were married, but Camilla soon married and Army officer while Charles served in the Royal Navy. Camilla found herself in an unhappy marriage and she reconnected with the prince. Their affair became an open secret and continued for his entire relationship with the beloved Diana who divorced Charles in 1996. She was tragically killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997. Prince Charles married Camilla in 2005.
9. A Fighter Not A Lover?
The handsome Prince Pierre Rainier Stefano Casiraghi is the son of the Princess of Hanover and 7th in line to the Monegasque throne. His maternal grandmother is the American actress Grace Kelly. The prince is an accomplished athlete, racing both boats and cars around the world. This royal appears to have everything going for him, but even the high and mighty can be laid low. In 2012 Casiraghi was involved in a physical confrontation over a woman that left him with some facial wounds, and presumably wounded pride as well. He the woman in question with another man at an exclusive New York City night club. He was apparently jealous of the other man and things quickly degenerated into violence. Instead of finding himself in the young woman’s arms the prince found himself in a hospital nursing his injuries. A former night club owner named Adam Hock was charged with four counts of assault for his attack on the prince. The prince had reportedly been drinking heavily and hopefully he has rethought his courting techniques.
8. A Princely Sum
Cambodia has had a long and troubled history and things didn’t get any better during the tumultuous reign of Prince Norodom Ranariddh. In 2006 the prince ran afoul of a just passed and controversial monogamy law. His trouble started when his ex-wife accused him of stepping out on her while they were married. Although he was eventually cleared of the adultery charge he was soon in even bigger trouble with the law. Although Ranariddh looks like a kindly old accountant in the above photograph he was sued for embezzling funds to the tune of $3.6 million that were supposed to go to his political party. He was found guilty of fraud, but decided to flee to Malaysia instead of facing Cambodian justice. He was eventually allowed to go back to Cambodia, but he’d decided to stay away from government work the second time around. He claims he was unfairly persecuted, and there is some evidence that he might have been, but it seems that either way he was a royal pain.
7. Sheikhing Things Up
Bad behavior has different meanings in different cultures and apparently in Saudi Arabia it means advocating modern behavior and roles for women. This is a country that only recently agreed to give women the right to drive cars. Princess Basmah Bint Saud took a big hit when she became embroiled in a strange blackmail case. An unidentified man used social media accounts to contact the princess and try to get her to engage in “scandalous behavior” including making sexually suggestive remarks and being photographed without her headscarf. These are hardly behaviors ripe for blackmail, at least in the West. But in a very traditional Muslim country like Saudi Arabia such behavior can have very serious consequences. Eventually the man demanded several hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet, but the princess decided to blow the lid off his blackmail scheme. She believes she was targeted by a dissident group whose goal is to destabilize the Saudi regime. Regardless of who the culprits were, the princess showed they were the ones behaving like royal pains.
6. The Prince And The Paupers
It’s good to be a prince. A case in point is Harry’s wild weekend in Las Vegas in 2012 when for a brief time strip pool became a much discussed topic in America and The United Kingdom. Prince Harry was a young single man with means so you’d have to expect he’d get into at least a little trouble right? But unlike the heir to the Monegasque throne, Harry doesn’t seem to let his partying degenerate into brawling. Maybe the Brits never heard the phrase ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ because leaked photographs of the naked prince being hugged by a seemingly naked young woman soon leaked with the accompanying stories about strip pool. In a classic example of British understatement Buckingham Palace officials responded to the uproar by saying “Prince Harry is on a private holiday and is returning shortly.” Do you think this will work for us commoners if we have too much fun in Vegas? Either way our antics won’t end up as headlines in the international news cycles. prince Harry appears to have outgrown his partying ways and is now a newlywed having tied the knot in lavish royal wedding ceremony with an American named Meghan Markel.
5. Wild One
There’s little doubt Princess Stephanie of Monaco grew up with many advantages. As the youngest child of Rainer III and the beautiful Grace Kelly she would have been exposed to the best of everything in education, culture and the arts. But instead of focusing on the finer things in life Stephanie chose to pursue one awful relationship after another. She was impregnated twice by her bodyguard and a third time by an unidentified man. her family was probably hoping these experiences would sober her a bit, but instead a she married circus elephant trainer in 2001. She divorced him after a short-lived marriage and, unable to get the circus life out of her system, she married a second member of the circus. This time it was an acrobat, but regrettably this second marriage also ended in divorce after a short run. Some people have speculated that as the youngest child she played out the stereotypical wild child role often taken on by the youngest. Whatever the truth princess Stephanie seemed to struggle with unhappiness despite her advantages and could no doubt be a royal pain.
4. October Surprise
In the United States Halloween is a pretty big deal with children and adults alike taking part in the spooky festivities on October 31. Saudi Arabia, however, is a traditional Muslim country and strictly forbids most foreign holidays because they are seen as un-Islamic. But royal families can be guilty of may things and unfortunately one of them is blatant hypocrisy. On at least one occasion Prince Faisal held a secret Halloween bash that only select elites could attend. Serious efforts were made to keep the secret party just that, but the young prince should have known better. Saudi subjects and the rest of the world found out about the illicit Halloween party when U.S. diplomatic cables referring to the festivities were released by Wikileaks as part of the group’s infamous document dumps. The October holiday is harmless fun and if the prince wants to take part that great. But what’s ok for him show be ok for his people. This do as I say not as I do mentality has always been one of the problems with monarchies and seems particularly problematic in the age of the Internet and social media where it seems like hardly anything is kept secret for long.
3. You Can Call Me Prince Al
Having the responsibility of being a royal with not real power can be a tough job and they have found many ways to cope with this dilemma. Devoting oneself to philanthropy and other charity work is common, but unfortunately acting like a entitled lay bout and immature playboy is also a too common way of coping. prince Albert is apparently the queen’s favorite child so he is probably a bit of a mama’s boy. he has had several very public affairs embarrassing his wife Princess Fergie and the rest of the royal family. Although Fergie has had her share of escapades as well. Albert’s playboy reputation is perhaps most notable for his somewhat cliched taste for dating only models. But his most infamous encounter involved the music industry. In 2006 he just showed up a rocker Courtney Love’s house seeking some sort of rendezvous with a very confused Ms. Love. He explained afterward that he really just wanted to meet her, but many people remained skeptical of his intentions. The “Courtney Love Incident” almost certainly involved large amounts of alcohol and perhaps other substances on Albert’s part and is a good example of a royal being a royal pain.
2. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Homosexuality is controversial in some places around the world, but in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia it can earn you death sentence. In 2010 prince Saud bin Abdulaziz Nasir al Saud murdered his servant and long-time gay lover Bandar Abdulaziz in a posh hotel in London. The two had been apparently drinking heavily and arguing on Valentine’s Day and the altercation escalated to an altercation that left Bandar beaten to death by the prince. The prince tried to cover up the crime but was arrested and charged with murder. The trial revealed that the prince had long abused his companion. Rather than defend himself against the crime of murder the prince was more concerned with defending himself against the Saudi crime of committing homosexual acts. A British court found him guilty and sentenced him to a long prison term in the United Kingdom. However, in 2013 the prince was returned to Saudi Arabia as part of larger prisoner exchange. He was put under house arrest and has led a very low profile existence since his return home very much as a pariah.
1. Off With Her Head
Henry VIII Ascended the throne of England in 1509 after the death of his father. Henry considered himself a reformer, but he greatly expanded the power of the monarch and named himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England. He would often resort to questionable charges of heresy and treason to squelch dissent among his inner circle and subjects. As a hereditary king Henry was very concerned about leaving a male heir and had run afoul of the church in his attempts to marry women who could provide him with an heir. The king married Anne Boleyn in May 1553, but the marriage did not unfold as everyone hoped it would. After learning that henry had been injured during a competition she miscarried a baby boy. As in his previous marriages Henry kept mistresses and the marriage to Anne suffered. Eventually Henry grew impatient with the whole thing and is believed to have set his wife up. Rumors of adultery, incest with her brothers and even witchcraft were spread around the English Court with very little if any credible evidence to back them up. Henry VIII ordered his wife to be beheaded on 19 May 1536. The king was still in search of a male heir so he married yet again.