The royals - Kitty Kelley [235]
Four months after the Palace denied that Andrew had AIDS, he resigned from the navy. He said that as a single father he needed to spend more time with his children. Others suggested the Lieutenant Commander was resigning after seventeen years because he was not qualified for promotion to commander. The navy quickly issued a statement saying that Andrew was a “highly competent and reliable officer.”
Traditionally, military service validates male members of the royal family as manly and patriotic. The thirty-four-year-old Duke of York had served in the Royal Navy like his father, a decorated navy veteran of World War II, and his grandfather Prince Albert, who took part in the Battle of Jutland in World War I and later became King George VI. Andrew had distinguished himself as a helicopter pilot during battle in the Falklands. With his resignation from the military, no longer was a prince of royal blood serving in Her Majesty’s forces.
His younger brother, Edward, had joined the marines, but after ninety days in uniform, he quit. His resignation disturbed his family greatly. His mother implored him to reconsider, saying he would no longer be allowed to wear a military uniform on ceremonial occasions. His sister, Anne, feared that he would be branded a quitter and a weakling. But Edward, then twenty-two years old, said he could not continue with the tough commando training. His father, honorary Captain General of the Royal Marines, shouted at him to pull himself together to spare the royal family embarrassment. The young Prince broke down and cried for hours. But the next day he resigned his commission. The headline in the New York Post: “The Weeping Wimp of Windsor.”
Prince Philip wrote to the marine Commandant, expressing his dissatisfaction. “This is naturally very disappointing,” he wrote, “but I can’t help feeling that the blaze of publicity did not make things any easier for him. I think he now has to face a very difficult problem of readjustment.”
When Philip’s personal letter was published in a newspaper, the Queen sued the paper and won damages, but by then the country knew of the father’s dashed hopes for his son. A comedian on British television announced: “Rumors abound that Prince Philip fathered an unwanted son who has threatened to embarrass him ever since. [Long pause.] His name is Edward.”
When the young Prince decided to become an actor and joined Andrew Lloyd Webber’s acting company, he was further ridiculed. Columnist Taki complained in the Spectator that Edward “is paid out of the public purse to pursue a theatrical career and assorted bachelors.” The hint of the Prince’s homosexuality, previously only whispered, was now hinted at in print. The press snidely characterized him as “the Queen’s youngest son, a confirmed bachelor.” The sexual innuendo became a japing bit of film dialogue in the Australian movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, when one transvestite asks another transvestite:
“Can the child of an old queen turn out all right?”
“Well, look at Prince Charles.”
“Yes, but there’s still a question about Prince Edward.”
Whether an outrageous slur or a sly truth telling, the insinuation of homosexuality was treated as fact. When Prince William enrolled at Eton, the headmaster censored an article in the school magazine that claimed the royal family was “full of homosexuals.” He said he did not want to upset the student Prince. But the insinuation resurfaced in The New Yorker, where novelist Julian Barnes wrote of “the seemingly unmarriageable Edward.” In a lecture at the Smithsonian, historian David Cannadine opined: “The Queen is worried that Edward is not divorced. She thinks he’s not normal.” Writer Christopher Hitchens said in an interview, “Gay friends of mine refer to Prince Edward as Dishcloth Doris. ‘Skirts down,’ they’ll shout, ‘here comes Dishcloth Doris.’ ” Gore Vidal later corrected Hitchens. “He’s not Dishcloth Doris,” said Vidal. “He’s Dockyard Doris.” When gossipist Nigel Dempster wrote in the Daily Mail that Edward