9 scandals that ROCKED the Royal Family in the last century

For all their pomp and grandeur, the Royal Family has been plagued with scandal for centuries, with the last 100 years taking the cake as the most eventful for the pedigreed clan with torrid affairs and incessant family drama marring the years.

From rumoured affairs, failed marriages, conspiracy theories, and families splitting, the British royals have seen their fair share of turmoil, and here’s a list of some of the biggest scandals they’ve faced in the past 100 years.

King Edward gives up crown for love

King Edward VIII, the late Queen Elizabeth’s uncle, famously abdicated the crown for love in 1936, ultimately making way for Elizabeth to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

The King fell in love with divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. After the Church of England and the government forbade him from marrying her while King, Edward gave up his coveted throne to his brother George, Elizabeth’s father.

He reigned as King for less than a year.

Princess Margaret’s love for love

After Elizabeth became Queen in 1952 after the death of her father King George, her younger sister Princess Margaret proved to be one of the biggest thorns in her side during the early years of her reign.

With her lively and unconventionally vivacious personality, Margaret was a stark departure from her serious sister. Her affairs around the court were famous, especially her tryst with Peter Townsend, a married man 15 years her senior, with two children, who left his wife for her.

The Queen famously denied Margaret the permission to marry Peter, a divorcee, and she later went on to marry Antony Armstrong-Jones, the Lord Snowdon. Much to the royal family’s dismay, the marriage was marred with affairs, both from the husband and wife’s side. Photos of Margaret with a gardener, Roddy Llewellyn were also leaked before Armstrong-Jones and her decided to separate in 1976.

Annus Horriblis

After a few quite years, with the usual affair scandals here and there, 1992 proved to be a particularly scandalous year for the family, especially Queen Elizabeth, who dubbed it ‘Annus Horriblis’, or ‘horrible year’.

Three of her children’s marriage were headed for divorce; Prince Charles and Diana, Princess Anne and Mark Philips, and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

At the same time, horrifically private conversations were leaking, tabloids were working overtime to spread chaos, a fire broke out at the Queen’s beloved Windsor Castle, and tax payer’s complaints about funding the royals were also gaining speed.

Alas, the year passed and so did all the problems with it, with the family emerging unscathed.

Charles and Diana’s divorce

After years of separation, categorized by shocking claims, interviews, admissions to affairs, and whatnot, Prince Charles and Lady Diana were officially divorced by 1996, in what became the biggest media circus in British history.

The couple came under even more media scrutiny, with Diana dealing with media at a level probably never seen before or after; photographers and press would scramble to get the best scoop about the two.

It is said that at one point, info about Diana’s relationship with Dodi al Fayed was so highly sought after in tabloid circles that photos of the couple, taken by photog Mario Brenna reportedly sold for £1.7 million to $2.1 million!

Princess Diana’s fatal crash

With the kind of frenzy Diana and Dodi’s relationship ignited, imagine the world’s reaction when both were killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

From widespread mourning across the world, there was also backlash against the media circus around Diana that ultimately was blamed for the crash; the couple was being chased by paps when their car crashed.

Conspiracy theories also took form, especially seeing the royal family’s initial reaction; there was public backlash when the family refused to lower the flag to half-mast at Buckingham Palace as per royal protocol. The royal standard is never lowered as it is the sovereign’s flag. It was lowered to half-mast once the Queen left the Palace for Diana’s funeral. She also later ruled that all flags at royal residences be lowered to half-mast.

Prince Harry’s wild antics

After Diana’s passing, her youngest son Prince Harry seemed to struggle the most. As the face of the new generation of royals alongside his brother Prince William, Harry gave the family a tough time in his youth.

In 2002, he was taken to a rehab by father Charles after it was found that he was smoking marijuana. By 2005, he made headlines again after he attended a Halloween party in a Nazi costume. In the following years, he would tussle with paps outside pubs and clubs in drunken stupors with his mates, and by 2012, TMZ even published a naked photo of his from a trip to Las Vegas.

Prince Andrew’s sex abuse scandal

In 2019, amid the Me Too movement, Prince Andrew was caught up in a whirlwind of shocking allegations that ultimately left him as a disgraced royal pariah.

After his name popped up in investigations linked to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew sat down for an interview with BBC to clear his name. It backfired immensely, as photos of Andrew and Epstein surfaced, and a woman named Virginia Giuffre came forward with claims that Andrew had sexually abused her and was paid to spend time with him by Epstein.

Andrew later settled the Giuffre case out of court, and by 2022, Prince Andrew was stripped of his royal patronages and military titles by his mother, Queen Elizabeth.

Prince William’s English Rose scandal

The same year as Andrew’s downfall, Prince William also found himself in hot water as rumours about an alleged affair with Rose Hanbury, wife Kate Middleton’s wife, started doing the rounds.

Many claims were made, stemming from an alleged fall out between Kate and Rose, first reported by In Touch. While William and the royal family remained mum, Rose denied the rumours through her lawyers.

While the chatter may have died down, it regularly raises its head on social media from time to time; most notably, the same rumours gained speed in early 2024 amid Kate’s absence from the public eye owing to her health struggles.

The Sussex Split

In what has been the biggest blow to the monarchy in recent memory, Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle broke away from the royal family in 2020.

The couple relocated to the US, where they now live with their two kids, Archie and Lilibet, but the split triggered a storm around the young royals that is yet to settle down.

Since stepping away, Harry and Meghan took aim at the royals in TV interviews and book releases, making shocking claims like racism within the family against Meghan and their son Archie, and even allegations that William physically assaulted Harry!

Prince Harry has also remained embroiled in legal battles in the UK since then; he sued multiple tabloids and also took the Home Office to court after they stripped his special royal security privileges.