The Rules All Royals Must Obey When They Get Divorced

Yes, ideally no one would be having affairs, but history’s shown that royals and infidelity frequently mix. Princess Margaret reportedly romanced many men while still married to Lord Antony Armstrong-Jones, including her youngest child’s godfather. The British establishment was furious when the news came out, and she got called all sorts of names.

Prince Charles went through a similar experience. In 1994 he was questioned on TV by Jonathan Dimbleby about whether or not he’d been faithful to Diana. At first Charles tried to deny he’d had an affair, but eventually he admitted that he’d kept his vows only “until [the marriage] became irretrievably broken down.”

The fear of bringing the family into disrepute hangs heavy whenever a royal gets divorced. If there was any infidelity involved, the media will always find out, and there will probably be all sorts of gossip thrown into the mix as well. So, tell your public what you’ve been doing, and they might go easier on you.

There’s a lot of money involved when royals get divorced. And if you play your cards right, you might be able to walk away with enough to set you up for life. Diana managed to wrangle more than $22 million once she split from Prince Charles, and she even had continued use of royal aircraft. Being mom to a royal heir helped there, of course.

The Duchess of York, whom you know as Sarah Ferguson or “Fergie,” got a very different cash settlement when she divorced. It was a sum of around $840,000, really not much at all by royal standards. But she was much less popular than Diana both among the public and within the royal family. Many of them didn’t like her at all.

It took years before Charles and Diana officially signed the paperwork to divorce. Why? Well, the royal family prefers feuding couples to wait around for a bit just in case they decide to get back together. Many would probably say that isn’t a great idea, since it only allows resentment to build.

Diana certainly thought that was the case. “My husband and I had to keep everything together because we didn’t want to disappoint the public,” she told the BBC. “And yet obviously there was a lot of anxiety going on within our four walls.” This keeping-up-appearances only led to heartache.

This might be starting to change a bit, though. In 2020 news broke that Peter Philips, grandson to the Queen, had split from his wife Autumn the previous year. By 2021 they were officially divorced. A spokesperson said that the pair had “resolved matters amicably” but they would be making no further statements about it.

Ever wonder why Diana was still called “Princess of Wales” after divorcing Prince Charles? Well, it wasn’t just a name that the media stuck with, it was still her title even post-split. And she would have still been entitled to be called “Her Royal Highness” – the Queen didn’t mind – if Prince Charles hadn’t taken that from her.

Diana was reportedly devastated at losing the “HRH.” Paul Burrell, her ex-butler who wrote the 2001 book A Royal Duty, has stated that the young Prince William attempted to comfort her. When she was crying over her lost title, William said to her, “Don’t worry, Mummy. I will give it back to you one day when I am king.”

Tragically, of course, that’ll never happen. But things might also have been different if Diana had gone on to marry again. In that case, she would have lost the “princess” title as well. Sarah Ferguson will also lose her “duchess” title should she ever remarry, and notably she hasn’t done so yet.

Just ask Camilla Parker-Bowles about this one. She was Prince Charles’ mistress while he was still married to Diana – and she was married, too. After Diana’s death people came to utterly loathe Camilla, blaming her for the breakup of the royal relationship. Some accounts have claimed that furious Brits even hurled bread at her when she ventured outside.

Charles had to quickly organize a PR campaign in support of the woman he wanted to be his wife. Slowly, Camilla’s image was softened, helped by the fact that she came off as polite and stoic when faced with widespread animosity. And gradually, her and Charles’ past transgressions seemed to fade from the public’s memory.

So by the time Camilla wed Charles in 2005, the hate had died down. She gained the title Duchess of Cornwall upon tying the knot. But public opinion may play a role in what title she gets once Charles is king. Surveys indicate that people don’t want to refer to her as “queen” and would prefer she be called “princess consort” instead.

As we’ve heard, you might well still get to keep some of the perks of being a royal even after you divorce your prince or princess. Really, though, popularity and PR plays a big role here. The Queen allowed Diana to keep a lot of her benefits, including her Kensington Palace home, because the public loved her so much.

In contrast, Fergie actually turned down the benefits. She told Harper’s Bazaar in 2011, “When I met with Her Majesty about it, she asked, ‘What do you require, Sarah?’ and I said, ‘Your friendship,’ which I think amazed her because everyone said I would demand a big settlement. But I wanted to be able to say, ‘Her Majesty is my friend’ – not fight her nor have lawyers saying, ‘Look, she is greedy.’”

But Mark Phillips, the ex-husband of Princess Anne, wasn’t so lucky. Granted, he did get a nice house – with stables and horses to boot – but reportedly the couple fought fiercely over who got to keep their extremely expensive wedding presents. When divorcing a member of the royal family, maybe sometimes you just gotta let things go.

Tabloid newspapers love royal divorces, and they especially love it when all the juicy details start coming out. So they had an absolute field day in 1993 when a very, very explicit phone conversation between Charles and Camilla was leaked to the press. Both participants must have cringed, but there was little they could do about it.

The publication of the phone call had all sorts of ramifications. Commentators in the media asked their readers if they really wanted Charles to take the throne after hearing what he got up to with his mistress. Diana reportedly loved this and laughed no end at the public mockery of Charles had to ensure.

Such is the infamy of that phone call that it probably won’t ever be featured on The Crown, despite the show usually going for all the royal drama possible. In 2020 historian Hugo Vickers told the HuffPost website that depicting even a hint of the conversation “might reduce their viewing numbers.”

In a lot of divorces, the mother or grandmother won’t get involved. But not so if you’re a royal and that figure is also the ruler of a whole country. So if you’re married to a descendent of the Queen, she’ll absolutely be involved in any divorce that may take place, whether or not you want it.

The Queen was even technically involved in a non-royal divorce when Group Captain Peter Townsend, a divorced man, fell in love with her sister Princess Margaret. The Queen had to give permission for them to marry, but her position as head of the Church of England led her to refuse. By the time the rules on remarriage were amended, Margaret and Peter had split.

It’s safe to say that the Queen hates divorce. In 1992 three of her kids split from their spouses, and it was clearly a tough time for her. But the Queen was still involved. It was her who outright told Charles and Diana to divorce once it became obvious that their marriage could never be salvaged. The constant scandals that beset the couple were making the royal family look increasingly bad in the press.

Queen Victoria ruled her children’s’ love lives with an iron fist. She refused to let her daughter, also named Victoria, divorce her husband even though she desperately wanted to. It would have been too much of a scandal, and reputation was simply valued above happiness. Only after Queen Victoria passed away was her daughter able to free herself.

Thankfully, times have changed. The current Queen couldn’t prevent a family member from getting divorced these days. But there’s a possibility that without the Queen’s influence, Diana and Charles might have split much sooner. Diana said that when she went to the Queen for help in the marriage, she was brushed off.

It’s no surprise that Diana was devastated over losing her title, as this meant a big change in her status. Strict rules are in place to govern how those with royal titles are treated. When she had a title, other royals curtsied to Diana – but when she forfeited it in the divorce, she had to curtsy to them.

This mightn’t have been so bad – after all, Kate Middleton still curtsies to certain princesses even though she’s the mother of the future king. But under this protocol, Diana also had to curtsy to her own young kids. For someone who wanted their sons to have a normal life, this must have been very hard.

When Charles and Camilla married in 2005, the Queen was reportedly unsure whether to be present at the ceremony. She didn’t want to be seen to be encouraging remarriage after divorce, given that she is the head of the Church of England. Someone described as a “friend” let slip to the media what the Queen had said about the matter.

Apparently, the Queen had said of the wedding, “I am not able to go. I do not feel that my position permits it.” This wasn’t a snub against Prince Charles, the friend explained, but because “the Queen feels she has to put her role with the Church before her role as a mother.”

But the Queen did actually attend the religious service later on that day, and apparently she also threw a big party at Windsor Castle to celebrate the couple’s marriage. The British media also reported that she announced at the party that Charles and Camilla “have come through and I’m very proud and wish them well.” So it seems the day passed without scandal.

It goes without saying that divorces can be tough on young kids. So royal divorces, which involve all the eyes of the world being on you, can perhaps be even harder. And Prince Harry has actually spoken out about how his parents’ very public divorce affected him. It wasn’t easy, with Harry and William being shunted between their mother and father constantly.

These days, royals are careful to consider the impact a divorce might have on the kids. When Peter Phillips and his wife Autumn divorced in 2021, their representative said, “Both Peter and Autumn are pleased to have resolved matters amicably with the children firmly at the forefront of those thoughts and decisions. Peter and Autumn have requested privacy and consideration for their children as the family adapts to a new chapter in their lives.”

Obviously, privacy’s hard to come by in the royal family, but there’s always a support system of family members who can help shield the children. Though the Queen has no legal custody of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she can still protect them from media intrusion. And she did this for William and Harry after Diana died.

Even if you really want to get a divorce, you don’t want the public to know that. Any statements released by the couple in question have to be contrite, calm, and above all regretful that things didn’t work out. Hiring a spokesperson to help with this is an absolute must.

For example, when Princess Margaret’s son David got divorced in 2021, a representative informed the media, “The Earl and Countess of Snowdon have amicably agreed that their marriage has come to an end and that they shall be divorced. They ask that the press respect their privacy and that of their family.”

And when Peter and Autumn Phillips split up in 2020, they described their actions in similar terms. Their rep said, “They had reached the conclusion that this was the best course of action for their two children and ongoing friendship. The decision to divorce and share custody came about after many months of discussions and although sad, is an amicable one.” And most likely we’ll never know if it really wasn’t.

There’s a long history behind the royal family’s discomfort with divorce. The monarch isn’t just the ruler of the United Kingdom, you see, but the leader of the Church of England as well. And the Church very much disapproves of divorce. So when the Queen’s uncle fell in love with a divorced woman, disaster ensued.

When King Edward VIII stated his desire to marry Wallis Simpson, alarm bells rang. She’d been divorced twice already and so was deemed to be an unsuitable royal wife. But Edward VIII wasn’t having it, and he abdicated the throne to be with her. This incident hung over the royal family for decades.

The Church of England lifted its ban on remarrying come 2002, but it was still controversial. When Charles married Camilla in 2005, he did so in a civil service instead of having a big church wedding. By the time Meghan Markle, also a divorcee, came into the picture things had loosened up a bit – but the British media still loudly compared her to Wallis Simpson. They’re clearly still not over what happened all those years ago! It was pretty scandalous, mind you.

In the fall of 1936, the U.K. was in the grip of an acute constitutional crisis reaching right to the top of society. Edward had only been on the throne since January. But even before he had been crowned, there were those that foresaw the possibility of disaster overtaking Edward during his reign. Notable among those who had predicted a calamitous future was his own father, George V.

Keith Middlemas and John Barnes quoted George’s opinion of his son in their 1969 Baldwin: A Biography. Stanley Baldwin was prime minister when Edward succeeded to the throne. Speaking about Edward, George apparently declared, “After I am dead the boy will ruin himself in 12 months." And this prophecy proved to be uncannily accurate.

George’s beef with his own son and successor was mainly triggered by Edward’s disreputable behavior. Remember, Edward was the great-grandson of Queen Victoria and had indeed been born while she still reigned over the British Empire. Of course, even today, Victoria is remembered for her high moral standards and it seems those were shared by George. But Edward was apparently oblivious to this.

Indeed, the Prince had a reputation as a hopeless philanderer and had a string of mistresses. It was true that the British press could be counted on in those days to keep a lid on Edward’s shenanigans. However, his father George V, Prime Minister Baldwin and Edward’s private secretary, Alan Lascelles, were all deeply concerned by his behavior.

Indeed Lascelles, who was Edward’s private secretary for eight years, had his own withering views about Edward before he became king. Lascelles diaries were published in 2006 and one entry described his thoughts about Edward’s psyche. “For some hereditary or physiological reason his normal mental development stopped dead when he reached adolescence,” Lascelles asserted.

In 1917, for example, in between visits to the front Edward found time to conduct an affair with a Frenchwoman, Marguerite Alibert. At least she wasn’t married, unlike Edward’s next lover, Freda Dudley Ward, who certainly was. Edward took up with Ward in 1918. The Prince’s affairs continued through the 1920s.

In 1930, George V gave his son a house, the splendid Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park, about 25 miles west of London. It seems that this stately pile, or Gothic monstrosity depending on your taste, was an ideally discreet place for Edward to continue his womanizing. The prince wasted no time in pursuit of his passions.

Once ensconced at Fort Belvedere, Prince Edward’s many female visitors included Freda Ward and another married woman, Lady Furness, an American who had been born Thelma Morgan. Thelma was married to the 1st Viscount Furness, Marmaduke. And it was Lady Furness that introduced Edward to another American woman who would dictate the future course of the Prince’s life.

It was in January 1931 when Lady Furness introduced Edward to a good friend of hers, Wallis Simpson. Three years later, Edward ditched Lady Furness while she was away in the U.S. in favor of Simpson. The friendship between the two women apparently wasn’t enough to stop Simpson from ousting Lady Furness from Edward’s affections.

Wallis Simpson, born Bessie Wallis Warfield, was 37 years old when she and Edward are believed to have started their affair in early 1934, just a couple of years younger than the Prince. Simpson was already twice wed when she became Edward’s lover, and was in fact still married to her second husband, Ernest Simpson, an American shipbroker.

It would be May 1937 before Wallis and Ernest divorced. So now the future king of England was intimately entangled to a married divorcee and an American to boot. Still the British press ignored this juicy royal scandal. Rumors were rife among the aristocratic classes and others gleaned information from foreign newspapers they happened across, but most British people were none the wiser.

In fact, this attempt by the U.K. authorities, with the connivance of an apparently supine British press, to hide the truth about Prince Edward’s love life caused a certain amount of puzzled bemusement across the Atlantic. In October 1936, The Milwaukee Journal ran a story headlined “American Newspapers Kept From Londoners.”

The Milwaukee Journal story went on to report that no American newspapers were available anywhere in London. As well as that, four pages had been ripped from Time magazine. And all of that effort was just to hide the fact that Wallis Simpson had launched her divorce suit. It seems the British government was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to preserve the Prince of Wales’ privacy.

In fact earlier in 1936, before that newspaper story was published, Edward’s status had changed radically. No longer was he simply the philandering Prince of Wales. Now he was Edward VIII, King of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.

George V had died on January 20, 1936, his suffering cut short by a doctor who administered a lethal cocktail of cocaine and morphine. Edward duly succeeded to the throne. This changed everything. Although regrettable, the Prince of Wales pursuing an affair with a twice-divorced woman could just about be tolerated by the British establishment.

But such behavior was definitely not acceptable for the man whom was now King Edward VIII, and who was after all the titular head of the Church of England. It’s perhaps difficult for us to understand in these more liberal times just how much of a taboo divorce was in the Britain of the 1930s.

Edward’s parents had deigned to meet Mrs. Simpson on one occasion in 1935 at Buckingham Palace. They did not repeat the experience. And much of the British ruling class was outraged by the relationship. Special Branch, a secretive unit of the London police, shadowed the couple and poked about in their private lives. What precisely they thought they’d find is debatable.

However, it was later claimed that the Special Branch officers had indeed turned up some scurrilous information about Simpson. In 1935, agents are said to have reported that Simpson was engaged in an affair with one Guy Marcus Trundle, apparently a mechanic with the Ford Motor Company. Others have seriously doubted the truth of that allegation.

Bizarre rumors and cruel gossip about the couple were common currency, especially among the British upper classes. Some claimed that Simpson had a sinister sexual hold over Edward. She was said to exercise this control using techniques she’d mastered in a Chinese brothel. But worse than that, it became apparent that Edward was hell-bent on marrying Simpson.

There were others who alleged that the sexual relationship between Simpson and Edward was far from orthodox. One of those was Edward’s official biographer, Philip Ziegler. Speaking to the BBC in 2003 Ziegler said, “There must have been some sort of sadomasochistic relationship...[Edward] relished the contempt and bullying she [Simpson] bestowed on him.”

And people close to George began to give him dire warnings. In his 1961 book The Abdication Lewis Broad quoted from a letter the King’s private secretary, Alec Hardinge, wrote to his master. “The silence in the British Press on the subject of Your Majesty’s friendship with Mrs Simpson is not going to be maintained.”

Hardinge’s letter continued ominously. “Judging by the letters from British subjects living in foreign countries where the Press has been outspoken, the effect will be calamitous,” he wrote. And Hardinge’s words were entirely prescient. The American press reported that Simpson had sued for divorce and that Edward would soon marry her.

On November 16, 1936 George, clearly recognizing how serious the situation had become, invited the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, to Buckingham Palace. At their meeting the King told Baldwin that he had decided to marry Simpson. Baldwin told him that the British people would not accept this union. And, Baldwin declared, “the voice of the people must be heard.”

And finally, the patience of the British press was exhausted. They cast their caution to the winds after a speech by the Bishop of Bradford, Alfred Blunt. Somewhat obliquely he said that the King was in sore need of divine guidance. This was enough for the newspapers, and the Edward and Simpson story was on the next day’s front pages.

Wallis Simpson now fled England for France to escape further press scrutiny. And opprobrium was heaped on her head. Somewhat ungallantly the American Ambassador to Britain, President John F. Kennedy’s father, Joseph, called Simpson a tart. However, judging by the U.S. press, the American public was rather taken with the idea of Simpson as queen.

By contrast, hostility towards Simpson in Britain seemed to snowball. MP Harold Nicolson claimed that the establishment disliked her because she was American, while ordinary people were repelled by her status as a divorcee. According to Zeigler’s 1991 biography of Edward VIII, leading British politician Neville Chamberlain was one of those who had an extremely low opinion of Simpson’s character.

In his biography, Ziegler quoted from Chamberlain’s diary. Chamberlain wrote that Simpson was “an entirely unscrupulous woman who is not in love with the King but is exploiting him for her own purposes. She has already ruined him in money and jewels…” In fact, Chamberlain’s judgment was contradicted by the fact that the couple were to stay together for some 36 years until Edward’s death.

Edward’s abdication had become a certainty. After some wrangling with senior politicians, the King accepted the inevitable. And for all the terrible press that Simpson had attracted, the King was prepared to give up his crown in order to marry the love of his life. On December 10, 1936, Edward signed the papers that stripped him of his kingship.

Edward died in Paris in 1972, aged 77. Wallis Simpson lived on until 1986. Of course, we have a modern parallel when it comes to a member of the British royal family marrying an American divorcee. But it seems highly unlikely that the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will ever result in the sort of scandal and unpopularity that blighted the lives of Edward and Mrs Simpson.