Princess Charlotte could receive rare ‘Princess Royal’ title

Now while we're talking about auctions, apparently photos of a young King Edward VIII are being auctioned this week. But what's so special about them? Well fascinating, I mean people love going down sort of a trip down memory lane and Edward VIII, you remember the king that abdicated. Pictures have come from 1919. Look at these images taken from a girlfriend at the time, Freda Dudley Ward, when he was just Prince of Wales. Now this lot has been put up for about three thousand dollars. I think they're going to go for an awful lot more than that, because when you look at royal history, it's very, very rare that lots come up like this. And the fact that Edward VIII, who was then Prince of Wales, became king after his father George V died, fascinating insight into royal history. And when these sort of pieces come up, they're very, very rare to find. So I'll be keeping a watchful eye on this. Maybe even we'll see William and Kate down there going through the lots, you never know. And there was a great piece in Tatler this week about the history of the princess royal title. Now can you tell us what's this about and who's likely to get it next? Well a fascinating insight again into what sort of will be at play with royal titles. And a princess royal title is one of those that is bestowed upon a woman of the royal family. Fascinatingly there's only been eight since 1642, can you believe. Of course Princess Anne has held it since 1987. And I think that if Princess Charlotte is going to have a front and centre role in the royal family, which of course we do think she is. We've seen her on royal engagements keeping her brothers in check. If you remember at the late Queen's Platinum Jubilee, the coronation telling Louis to behave himself or where Prince George should bow and so forth. I think she's going to have a real central role within the royal family. And with that comes a great responsibility. Will she be doing royal engagements? I think we're going to see the children do a lot more in the years to come. But you know she's only a young girl. But this title is something that I see for her for her future. And it will be an important step in her royal life I think. Now we've spoken a lot this year about the slimmed down royal family and how few working royals there are left with a greater workload. Now we understand the King had encouraged William and Kate to take a greater role. However this week there was this odd report about this causing issue and potential jealousy from the King. Is this the case or is this just muckraking? Well it's interesting you know when these topics come up about the sort of jealousy within the royal household. Is there sort of a positioning for getting the best roles? That was certainly sort of Harry and Meghan's undoing wasn't it? They were trying to work on issues and causes that members of the royal family almost sort of sidelined for themselves. Now I think that it's much more of a team effort in this in these day and age because there's not there's not a lot of them. We saw Princess Anne recently in an interview saying you know there's not there's not many of us left because of the slimmed down monarchy. I mean there's seven out of the eleven working royals are over the age of 70. But what does it mean for William and Kate? Certainly I think that we would have expected to see more from William and Kate whether that was international travel, foreign tours. We haven't seen them on a foreign tour since this March of 2022. And I think they were kind of restricted in what the King was doing and as we come to the end of this transitional year we've seen the sort of King come out of his shell really. We've seen the trips to Germany and France go off fantastically well. But let's see 2024 is going to be a big year for the royals. I think that William and Kate will have an awful lot more to do. Maybe they'll find try and find their groove. We've seen them on a few more engagements recently. So maybe not so much jealousy but maybe trying to try to spread their wings a little bit I think. I think that's a much better way to look at it. Now occasionally we do raise Prince Andrew although he's not in the media too much. There always just seems a bit of news and a bit of long-running saga about his living arrangements. What's the update? Well you're right. I mean a man who is sort of persona non grata sort of put out to exile but he is always at the front and centre of royal business behind the scenes and that is because he's still jostling for position. Can you believe it? I mean he was sort of put out to pasture owing to his disgraceful BBC Newsnight interview. The relationship exposed with the late paedophile Geoffrey Epstein and so despite saying that he'd done nothing wrong and paying Virginia Dufresne about 15 million dollars to not have a court case come to fruition he's still trying to sort of try and find a role for himself within the royal family and that includes where he's going to live. Now the king if you remember said that he didn't necessarily want him to live in royal lodge anymore. It's a 30 bedroom 30 room mansion on the royal estate. He can ill afford to keep a roof over his head there. Whether William and Kate will end up living there is another story. However I found out this week that he's sort of been given a stay of execution by the king. The king has said listen you can stay there if you can afford the bills. Now about three million dollars are needed of renovations at the property. Who knows whether he will be able to afford that. Apparently Fergie is going to lend him some of the money from her book deals but as you said this is a saga that is going to keep running and running and running. Whether the king does eventually get to evict him remains to be seen but it's something that you know Andrew as Andrew being Andrew I think putting himself front and centre once more. Now one last thing I want to talk to you about is royal correspondent Nicholas Whitchell is retiring. Understand him and the king aren't on the greatest of terms. Now I know as a journalist you're not meant to make yourself the story but you are a royal editor. How hard is it for you to walk that line between reporting objectively on the royals and maintaining enough of a relationship with the palace? Well listen first and foremost Nicholas Whitchell I've worked with him for a few years now and always been a great source of inspiration. He's been doing the job for 47 years. He's decided to retire age 70. Of course he became infamous throughout the land. In 2005 he was referred to as that awful man. Can't stand him. The then Prince of Wales said when he was doing a photo call with his two boys and I think that obviously something that Nick had said or done had irked the king at that date. I think there was a bit of an issue about the children being photographed the day before. However he's always been a consummate professional. It's someone I've looked up to and as you say walking the line of doing your job properly reporting on the royal family while still maintaining a relationship is something that we have to contend with. It's something that you know the political journos, the crime journos all have to contend with. But it's been a privilege of my career to work with Nick as well and I think we all wish him well on his retirement. Absolutely love it. Russell Myers thank you so much for your time. Thanks so much my pleasure.