Queen ‘frustrated’ by Charles, feels he won't live up to her sense of duty: 'She's more affectionate to Andrew'
A royal expert has revealed in a new documentary on the British royal family that Queen Elizabeth II is "constantly frustrated with Prince Charles" who will "never live up to her sense of duty".
During the Channel 4 documentary 'Queen Elizabeth: Love, Honour and Crown', which aired on Sunday, March 21, Clive Irving, the author of the new biography 'The Last Queen', said that the monarch believes that no members of the royal family have truly "measured up" to her enduring sense of duty. In fact, Prince William was the only royal who fully appreciated the monarch's "very dedicated sense of duty". The expert said, "All those around the Queen never measure up to that at any point. Her own family has not measured up to that. Charles never measures up to that."
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The Queen has "never really understood" her eldest son Charles, heir to the throne, and is "puzzled by him", the expert added, saying that the queen preferred Prince Andrew, 61, to his older brother. "To this day, she's more openly affectionate to Andrew and more forgiving toward Andrew than she is towards Charles," Irving said.
Meanwhile, Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, called Charles "the polar opposite to younger brother Andrew". "He's [Andrew] noisy, bumptious, very charming, when he wants to be. He can be arrogant and rude; he has some characteristics of his own father," she said. Andrew followed the footsteps of his father, Prince Philip when it came to active service in the Navy, including piloting helicopters on missions during the Falklands War, which ensured he had returned "like a war hero, his mother was proud".
Charles and Andrew, being the first and second in line to the throne at that time, represented "everything the monarchy could be," Seward said. The Duke of York is currently on the eighth spot in the list of succession for the throne behind Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, the son of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
The Channel 4 documentary released weeks after the bombshell interview of Harry and Meghan. It claims to be an "in-depth examination of several dramatic conflicts between Crown and Family during the Queen's long reign" which began with Queen and Prince Philip's early romance in the mid-Forties.
Oprah Winfrey, who conducted the explosive CBS interview, has received a lot of flak from royal experts after claiming that the Queen may have "silenced" the Duchess of Sussex. Meghan hinted that royal officials insisted on being in the same room as her when she spoke to Oprah over the phone after the TV personality called her to have an interview a few years back. Meghan recalled how she wasn't allowed to talk to the TV star "personally" and that there "had to be people sitting there."
Oprah noted that she had reached out to Meghan at the start of 2018 to ask for an interview shortly before her wedding to Prince Harry. However, the former actress turned the TV host down, saying it wasn't "the right time".
"I remember that conversation very well," Meghan told Oprah, three years into her marriage. "I wasn't even allowed to have that conversation with you personally, right. There had to be people sitting there." Oprah then asked Meghan why she had turned her down three years ago but agreed to do an interview now. "We're on the other side of a lot of life experience that's happened," the former royal responded. "And also that we have the ability to make our own choices in a way that I couldn't have said yes to you then. That wasn't my choice to make."
"So as an adult who lived a really independent life to then go into this construct that's different than I think what people imagine it to be, it's really liberating to be able to have the right and the privilege in some ways to be able to say yes," Meghan added, before noting she was glad she could finally "speak for herself". "Were you silent or were you silenced?" Oprah asked Meghan, prodding her about the apparent division between the former actress and the royal family and she said that it was the latter.