Jess Cagle: The royals were so different when I was a kid. You know, I found them absolutely fascinating. I mean, I was a gay kid growing up in the middle of Texas. So of course I was drawn to the glamor and I was just caught up in the wow. They live in those big houses and it seemed fascinating to me. 

Erin Vanderhoof: That is Jess Cagle, former Editor in Chief of _People Magazine._ Growing up in a small town in Texas, the royals seemed larger than life. The fashion, the palaces, the glitz and glamor, it seemed way more like a fairytale than reality, but over the years Jess began to notice a shift in how the royals were being portrayed. Less of that pomp and pageantry and a lot more raunch and scandal. 

Jess Cagle: There's something satisfying to people when they see that these impossibly glamorous people have the same problems that we do. That their lives are really no better than ours. There's a lot of schadenfreude involved, but I think that over the past couple of decades the media has changed. So the media serves us more and more.

Katie Nicholl: The royal's relationship with the media has a long and complicated history. While the saying goes, all press is good press, the Windsors know all too well that isn't necessarily the case. 

Reporter [Archival Audio]: The last day of their tour and the Duke and Duchess were back in front of the press. Prince Harry believes is waging a campaign against his wife. 

Princess Diana [Archival Audio]: When I started my public life 12 years ago, I understood the media might be interested in what I did, but I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become. 

Prince William [Archival Audio]: She was failed, not just by a road reporter, but by leaders of the BBC who looks the other way, rather than asking the tough questions. 

Katie Nicholl: In this episode, we'll speak with former Editor in Chief of _People Magazine_, Jess Cagle, Media Scholar, Laura Clancy, and Royal Historian and biographer, Andrew Lownie, about the intricate relationship between the royals and the press. 

Erin Vanderhoof: With Princess Diana's former Private Secretary, Patrick Jephson and Writer and Cultural Critic, Shon Faye, we'll explore the rise of the tabloids and the 24 hour news cycle. And look at how social media has changed the way we report on the royals and upset the careful balance between exposure and privacy. 

Katie Nicholl: We'll investigate how William and Harry have tried to readjust the balance back in their favor after the press's obsession with their mother and we'll consider if a series of missteps in the carefully crafted sit down interview is exactly why the Queen has never given one. I'm Katie Nicholl. 

Erin Vanderhoof: And I'm Erin Vanderhoff. From _Vanity Fair_ this is_ Dynasty:_ _the Windsors._ 

Katie Nicholl: Episode seven, "Clash of the Titans: The Global Press vs. the Crown." 

Erin Vanderhoof: So Katie, how did you get involved in covering the royals? 

Katie Nicholl: Well, I suppose, Erin, as with all good things in life, completely by accident. I'd always wanted to be a journalist, but I wanted to be a war correspondent, not a royal one. I cut my teeth as a show business reporter on the Mail on Sunday, uh, which was pretty cool because I spent years just going to parties. And it was actually at one of those parties that I ended up bumping into Prince Harry, who was meant to be studying for his A levels at the time. But instead, of course being Harry, he was out drinking and having fun, which immediately endeared me to him. And he actually invited me to come and have a drink with him and his inner circle. So I guess I got this fascinating snapshot of his life, and that lit the touchpaper for my career as a royal correspondent. 

Erin Vanderhoof: He opened the door to a secret world.

Katie Nicholl: Yeah, I know. How much do you reckon he regrets doing that now? 

Erin Vanderhoof: Well, I've learned from my years doing this, that it is really just unlike most other journalism assignments. 

Katie Nicholl: You're right it is completely different to any other beat. And I think that for a couple of reasons, actually. You're covering a family. Not many people in that family. So it's very, very intensive. It's not like covering show business where you have lots of celebrities you can write about. You've also got to find your own stories. People are usually unwilling to talk to you. Certainly nothing is delivered on a silver platter. It's fiercely competitive and I always remember being told by one editor, you are only as good as your last scoop, last byline. So there's a pressure. You don't want to get things wrong. You just don't want to have egg on your face. And I think it's tough because often you are reliant on sources who can't be named. So you're constantly walking this tightrope between wanting to break these great stories, which of course get coverage around the world. They get picked up, but also not wanting to fall out with the palace, with the royals themselves. So it's, um, it's a balancing act shall we say. 

Erin Vanderhoof: It's interesting that you said you originally wanted to be a war correspondent because when we spoke to media scholar, Laura Clancy, she actually compared that job to being a royal correspondent. Not in terms of substance, but in terms of how media organizations carve out an entire beat for royal reporting.

Laura Clancy: If you think of a foreign correspondent or a war correspondent, actually to have a royal correspondent kind of privileges royal news at the same level. And I think in one really important way in which that is done is through this balance between visibility and invisibility.

Katie Nicholl: It is definitely a job that requires a bit of choreography. And well before I came to this line of work, there were longstanding agreements between the press and the palace that made this song and dance, as it were, work. Where the royals could remain in the public eye whilst preserving their privacy. To a degree. Here's Laurel Clancy again. 

Laura Clancy: So things like the Pressure Cooker agreement, which is where particular royals, will invite particular journalists on, for example, family holidays. They'll be asked to take couple of photos, and then there'll be asked to leave and leave the royals alone. 

Erin Vanderhoof: About that Pressure Cooker agreement. Back when William and Harry were teenagers, there was an unwritten pact between the family and the press. The deal was that the press more or less agreed to leave the boys alone while they were at school, so long as they were allowed to cover a handful of pre-approved events. Like William's 18th birthday at Eton.

Katie Nicholl: Yeah, that's right. And for the most part, Erin, it worked. The press got a certain amount of access and the royal family got to enjoy some semblance of a private life. And it continued that way for some time, but there was a loophole. Here's historian Andrew Lownie.

Andrew Lownie: That only works if you're inside the tent, in terms of the news organizations who are a part of that system. It's the people outside. It's the tabloids. It's the freelancers. It's the paparazzi who break those rules. Now it's pretty much open house. 

Erin Vanderhoof: And because they're outside of the system, it's not so much breaking the rules as much as it is ignoring them or not being let in on them in the first place. Around this time, we also saw the move to a 24/7 news cycle. How did that alter the job of a royal correspondent? 

Katie Nicholl: Well, it did change it because, quite simply, there was more pressure to deliver more stories. I mean, Erin, at that time I was working for the _Mail on Sunday_ newspaper. Can you imagine trying to keep a scoop that you might get Monday or Tuesday until the end of the week? It was really tough, but I've also seen a big shift in the way that news gets picked up and sort of re manufactured. And I think it's often how stories are interpreted by other online news outlets. So for example, I've had stories published in _Vanity Fair_, which have accurate source reporting, proper fact checking. No problem with the palace when I run it. But, that story then gets picked up by a tabloid or another publication, and by the time the story pops up on my Google alerts, it's completely different from the one I wrote. 

Erin Vanderhoof: That actually reminds me of one of the first times we had that experience while we were working together. You had a source who, very reasonably, in a very measured way, completely unsurprisingly said that when Meghan was pregnant with their son, Archie, she and Harry had decided they wanted to raise their baby without gender stereotypes in a quote unquote fluid way. Which essentially meant that they weren't going to paint the nursery blue, but instead were going for a neutral gray. And they weren't going to fill it with toy trucks, but somebody latched onto the word fluid and all of a sudden other outlets were running with a story saying that they were going to raise their child gender fluid. And I think the word that got associated with that in there somewhere was "they-by." 

Katie Nicholl: Oh, Erin, yeah. I mean, that was an extreme example of a story being picked up and getting turned into something else entirely. All for the sake of a headline grabbing front page. But the problem is this appetite for more royal stories ultimately it's a case of quantity over quality. And this is one of the things that really winds Meghan and Harry up. That it's all click-bait. 

Erin Vanderhoof: And the palace has a tight rope to walk with this too and you can see it in their response. Some interest is necessary, but too much can be a curse.

Katie Nicholl: January the 9th, 2007. It's Kate Middleton's 25th birthday. A day that should have been a cause for celebration, but frankly it became a bit of a nightmare. 

Erin Vanderhoof: Ever since Kate had graduated from St. Andrew's and news about her relationship with Prince William had gone public, she had become a paparazzi favorite. Was Kate going to be the future Queen of England? That was the question everyone, especially the press, was dying to know the answer to. 

Katie Nicholl: Well by 2007, William and Kate had been dating for six years. And so when her 25th birthday came around, the press were convinced that William was going to pop the question. Of course they were wrong, but the rumors were enough to send the media into a full on frenzy. 

Erin Vanderhoof: So that morning, when Kate stepped out of her Chelsea apartment, dozens of photographers were waiting outside hoping to snap a photo of her with a supposed ring on her finger. A swarm of cameras was clicking and flashing as she walked down the street, just trying to make her way to her car.

Katie Nicholl: I was told that Kate was really quite upset by that whole experience, and understandably so. William was furious.

Erin Vanderhoof: I mean, imagine you're celebrating your milestone birthday and you wake up and you're going outside and your apartment is mobbed. You can hardly get to work. You can hardly go about your day. Everybody in the media is convinced that this thing about you is true. That you're going to get engaged, but you have no idea if it's a leak from somebody who knows about a surprise that you don't know about it, or if it's just completely made up. It would drive anyone crazy. 

Katie Nicholl: Absolutely, Erin, and the fact that Kate was a royal girlfriend at the time meant she didn't have any protection officers to help her through that mob of photographers. She didn't have palace aids or a media team that she could call up for help. She was dealing with all of this as a private citizen. 

Erin Vanderhoof: And shortly after this incident, Prince William actually did something which up to that point was quite rare. 

Katie Nicholl: Yes. He had his spokesman issue a statement on his behalf, which stated that he was "very unhappy at the paparazzi harassment of his girlfriend." And the statement went on to say that Prince William wants more than anything for it to stop. "Ms. Middleton should, like any other private individual, be able to go about to everyday business without this kind of intrusion." And the statement concluded that the situation was proving unbearable for all those concerned. Now the paparazzi did back off a bit after that statement, but a few weeks later William and Kate actually split up, so was the media to blame? 

Erin Vanderhoof: It's interesting because William really doesn't criticize or intervene with the press that often. It seems like he has to be pushed pretty far, but I think the escalation around Kate's 25th birthday was a moment that made him go enough is enough. Partially because it just like changed the future between them. 

Katie Nicholl: Yeah, I agree. And I think there were also echoes of the past for William. And in fact, it wasn't just him who thought the press had gone too far. There were a number of MPs in parliament who felt that the Press Complaints Commission, which is the independent regulatory body that responded to complaints about the press, hadn't moved quickly enough to protect Kate during this time. 

Erin Vanderhoof: As William and Harry got older, I think they both became increasingly concerned and paranoid about just how personal the stories we're getting. Harry in particular was concerned about his groups of friends being photographed out on the town, or reporters turning up on the doorsteps of girls he was just rumored to be dating. Private information that they'd only told one or two people would make it to the tabloids. Later, they would find out that that paranoia was justified. They had actually had their voicemails hacked multiple times. 

Katie Nicholl: Yes, this was one of the phone hacking scandals that led to the closure of the news the world back in 2011. 

Erin Vanderhoof: Here's former Prime Minister, David Cameron addressing the house of commons at that time.

David Cameron [Archival Audio]: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to make a statement. In recent days, the whole country has been shocked by the revelations of the phone hacking scandal. What this country and this house has to confront is an episode that is frankly disgraceful.... 

Katie Nicholl: It was a watershed moment that changed the media landscape and the already strained relationship between the royals and the press, which was now at an all time low. But it wouldn't be the last time the royals took legal action against the media. A year later in 2012, William and Kate took action against a French magazine after they printed pictures of Kate sunbathing topless while on a private holiday in the South of France. Now to make matters worse, the cover story dropped while William and Kate were on an important overseas tour to Malaysia, and William and Kate successfully sued _Closer Magazine,_ who were fined a hundred thousand euros by a French court. Here's Andrew Lownie again. 

Andrew Lownie: I think there's always this tension between public duty and private pleasure in the royal family. And of course, this is where the problems begin. 

Erin Vanderhoof: So this was the landscape when one Ms. Meghan Markle entered the scene. The royals had fought to reclaim a public private divide in the press with an impressive degree of success. But for Meghan that divide that the palace press office depended on really never had existed for her. She was an American actress who had already been shaping her image, and she had a social media presence and a blog that reporters could go to if they want us to glean details about her. 

Katie Nicholl: Yes, I mean, you could pretty much track her accession to Hollywood. But I think wasn't helped by the fact that her family, particularly her father, had given a lot of interviews to the press where they were sharing private details about Meghan and her childhood with the whole world. Because she was so publicly accessible in that way it had almost become open season for the press to prod and poke and investigate a bit further. 

Erin Vanderhoof: What do you think that the royals stand to lose when the mystique has gone or compromised? 

Katie Nicholl: Well, Erin, I think the mystique is really important because if you lift the lid on the magic, there's nothing left to want to know. You've let the genie out of the bottle. And the Queen has been really careful, I think, to keep that sense of mystique about the monarchy. She's actually only opened up on camera once. And that was to Edward Mirzoeff for the documentary, _Elizabeth R_ back in 1992. 

Queen Elizabeth II [Archival Audio]: I didn't have an apprenticeship. My father died much too young and so it was all a very sudden kind of taking on and making the best job you can. It's a question of maturing and into something that ones got used to doing and accepting the fact that here you are, and it's your fate. 

Katie Nicholl: Now I spoke to Edward Mirzoeff for my new book, _The New Royals_, which is about the Queen's legacy and the future of the monarchy, and he described the experience of sitting with the Queen at Buckingham Palace as one of the most extraordinary things he'd ever done in his career. And I think it was quite simply because you don't get to hear the Queen's views on anything. So what he had on tape was so fascinating because it gave an insight into the real Queen. We don't know what makes her tick, and this is what makes her such an enigma and therefore, so fascinating. Very few people have had a real insight into her life, but there have been moments. Oddly enough one of those moments came in 2003. When the _Daily Mirror_ journalists, Ryan Perry, managed to get into Buckingham Palace by posing as a footman. Here's Channel Five reporting.

Reporter [Archival Audio]: When the palace phoned, the barmaid apparently on the phone yells out to the pub. "Does anyone know this Ryan Perry bloke?" And a regular who's sitting at the bar said, "Ooh, I know him. I know that Ryan Perry. Oh I know him, he's a good bloke." And on that basis, the personnel of the royal household employed him.

Katie Nicholl: It was quite a story and he went on to reveal to the world through the front pages of his newspaper, that the Queen had her breakfast cereal in, shock horror, tupperware. 

Erin Vanderhoof: I mean, that's kind of a mundane fact. You know, knowing that the Queen had her cereal out of tupperware. 

Katie Nicholl: Yes, Erin, but now it's fine for all of us to have our cereal out of tupperware, and actually the point is the devil is always in the detail. And you know, that did rattle the palace. The Queen took legal action against the _Daily Mirror_, which was extremely rare for her. And there was a settlement reach where the newspaper agreed to pay the Queen around $40,000 in legal fees and agreed not to publish any more articles or photographs about Perry's time at the palace. So there weren't any shock horror revelations. I think it was more the fact that the press got to see the royal family in a way that they had never done before. 

Andrew Lownie: The Queen, you know, she has very carefully not let the mystique fall. 

Katie Nicholl: Andrew Lownie again.

Andrew Lownie: This is the problem with the younger generation. The more access that you give to the press, the less mystique there is, the more you have to explain and justify. The more ordinary you become.

Erin Vanderhoof: But I'm not sure that the modern royals really had too much of a choice in the matter. In the old days, they were really cloistered from normal society. And there's even a story in Jonathan Dimbleby's biography of Prince Charles, where the palace actually thought it was inappropriate for the Prince to change for swimming in the regular school bathrooms when he was a kid. This idea that they are set apart from the rest of us by their bloodline just doesn't fly anymore. They have to be representative of all the people in the nation and being somewhat relatable is how they've adapted to that change. 

Katie Nicholl: Yes. I think we've definitely seen that particularly over the past couple of years with the pandemic and also with the Cambridge children. It's why we see William dropping them off at a restaurant for a friend's birthday party or playing tennis together at their local sports club. It might be a very posh sports club, but it makes the family seem more relatable.

Erin Vanderhoof: But no matter how hard they try, they can never really be regular can they? Jess Cagle can see one reason why the press loves to air all their dirty laundry.

Jess Cagle: Scandal in the royal family is just completely unavoidable because, I don't want to sound mean, but these are like an incredibly fucked up bunch of people. And how could they not be? 

Katie Nicholl: That's after the break on _Vanity Fair's Dynasty: the Windsor's_.

Erin Vanderhoof: Throughout the series we've seen some of the ways that William and Harry's experiences inside the monarchy have differed and really led to their distinct and occasionally opposite approaches to royal life. But when it comes to the media, they do have something in common.

Katie Nicholl: Yes, they both dislike and distrust the media and they resent the media intrusion into their private lives. But I also think they both recognize the fact that they can only exist with the oxygen of publicity. They need us as much as we need them. It's a symbiotic and not mutually exclusive relationship.

Erin Vanderhoof: Laura Clancy again. 

Laura Clancy: Media has always been key to royal families. So things like portraits of Henry the Eighth looking really powerful. Coins for medieval monarchs, that was the only way in which people could see their ruler. And if you go to today, actually what's really important nowadays is television, is social media. And I think the monarchy know that they need to be seen, right, in order to be understood and in order to be accepted. 

Katie Nicholl: And I think where William seems to have accepted that the media are always going to be a part of his life, Harry in contrast, has taken a very combative attitude towards them. Saying that he and Meghan will only engage with certain British newspapers and not others. And then since standing down as a working royal, Harry and Meghan have made it their mission to take on the press. Harry suing at least two newspapers for alleged phone hacking, and Meghan successfully sued the _Mail on Sunday_ for breach of copyright over a letter she wrote to her father, Thomas Markle, in what became a very high profile and controversial court case. 

Erin Vanderhoof: William may not be as quick to take legal action, but he has been outspoken when it comes to the press. His most explicit criticism came in May 2021 after the Dyson investigation. For context, it was an independent inquiry into the tactics used by the BBC to secure that explosive 1995 interview with Princess Diana. The report concluded that Martin Bashir deceived his way to accessing the Princess of Wales and that the BBC's response to his deception was quote, woefully ineffective. In response, Prince William released an official statement. 

Prince William [Archival Audio]: It is welcomed that the BBC accepts Lord Dyson's findings in full. It is my view that the deceitful way the interview was obtained substantially influenced what my mother said. It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC's failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia, and isolation that I remember from those final years with her. 

Katie Nicholl: It was a damning condemnation of the national broadcaster. And while the BBC apologized, Bashir admitted to having bank statements fabricated, it did raise the question, would Diana have done the interview had she not been lied to by Bashir? 

Erin Vanderhoof: And remember it was an interview that was just short of earth shattering. In it, Diana spoke about her struggles with mental health and the difficulties in her marriage, specifically alluding to the fact that Prince Charles was still involved with Camilla Parker Bowles. 

Reporter [Archival Audio]: Around 1986, again, according to the biography written by Jonathan Dimbleby about your husband, he says that your husband renewed his relationship with Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles. Were you aware of that? 

Princess Diana [Archival Audio]: Yes, I was, but I wasn't in a position to do anything about it. 

Reporter [Archival Audio]: What evidence did you have that their relationship was continuing even though you were married?

Princess Diana [Archival Audio]: Oh, a woman's instinct is a very good one. 

Reporter [Archival Audio]: Do you think Mrs. Parker Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage? 

Princess Diana [Archival Audio]: Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded. 

Katie Nicholl: That line, it still makes my hair stand on end. This interview was a major moment because it was Diana shattering the myth of the monarchy in so many ways. And ultimately it led to the Queen insisting Charles and Diana get a divorce. It was also Diana showing her real influence and power by using the media. And what's remarkable is that 25 years after her death, she's still having an impact. 

Shon Faye: In my opinion, there has never been someone as famous as Princess Diana, nor will there ever be. The reason why I say nor will they ever be, is because of how the media changed. 

Katie Nicholl: This, Shon Faye. Writer, commentator and cultural critic. 

Shon Faye: To be the most photographed woman in the world was a unique thing because it required the paparazzi culture. It required being followed constantly, and it required the kind of tabloid media coverage. So that's like a different level of singular fame that has never really existed since and hadn't existed before. 

Erin Vanderhoof: It was a kind of fame that really changed how we saw the royal family. 

Katie Nicholl: Absolutely. I mean, Diana, very nearly upturned the institution. And I think made them realize that they were fallible, and there was a very real potential for this image of them as the royal family, which should represent unity and stability, to be totally picked apart. Here's Jess Cagle again, former Editor in Chief of _People Magazine_. 

Jess Cagle: Before Diana came along, we just had never seen the sort of human side of the royals before. That kind of stuff had never really been exposed and discussed in the mainstream press. And so Charles and Diana was an extremely complicated, extraordinary union and breakup, but also it was a new toy for the media. Watching these royals lives like a soap opera. 

Katie Nicholl: It really often was a soap opera between Charles and Diana. The War of the Wales as it was known in the tabloids. This became a pivotal, an infamous moment for the Windsors. Here's Patrick Jephson, Princess Diana's former Private Secretary. 

Patrick Jephson: When Charles and Diana were competing for public popularity, particularly Prince Charles recruited a political type of news manager and political style methods of essentially trashing the opposition, came into effect. This is a sad but true consequence of what was called the War of the Wales's, and this is something that has been a feature of royal media management ever since. 

Katie Nicholl: So it was tit for tat between Charles and Diana. A negative story about Diana would leak out of Charles's office and then the next day Diana would be on the front pages looking incredible at a charity gala. 

Erin Vanderhoof: The perfect example came the night in 1994 when Prince Charles sat for a TV interview with Jonathan Dimbleby and admitted to having an affair. 

Katie Nicholl: Yes. And then Princess Diana stepped out of the car in that show-stopping dress, wiping Charles off the front pages the next day and all without the help of a PR guru.

Erin Vanderhoof: Patrick Jefferson again. 

Patrick Jephson: Princess Diana never had a full-time press secretary. We would occasionally borrow a press secretary from Buckingham Palace for overseas tours, for example. We thought that the best way to communicate what Princess Diana was doing, what she stood for, what was important to her, was by arranging good access for photographers and letting the images do the talking.

Erin Vanderhoof: She had been followed around by photographers for over a decade. It was savvy of her to realize that she could use that for her own benefit. 

Katie Nicholl: It was astonishing, Erin. Diana actually had her own way of handling the media and she'd occasionally have newspaper editors to lunch with her at Kensington Palace. But I think the Panorama interview showed that even she couldn't control the narrative. 

Erin Vanderhoof: At the same time, the Diana in that interview was messy and acidic and quippy. And that's the version of Diana that I am so devoted to. So even though you can look at that interview in a lot of different ways and see it as a moment where she cemented her legacy, it's impossible to deny that the repercussions were enormous. It's complicated, but regardless of her motivation for doing the interview, it was the beginning of the end for her. And I think that's why it's so painful to watch now. 

Katie Nicholl: So when you consider the royals today, with their communications office and their social media teams who play a big part in curating their public image, trying to control the media narrative is a tricky game and the royals can end up falling flat on their face. 

Erin Vanderhoof: We saw this in 2019 when Prince Andrew sat down for an interview with former BBC Newsnight presenter, Emily Maitlis. 

Emily Maitlis [Archival Audio]: Do you regret the whole friendship with Epstein? 

Prince Andrew [Archival Audio]: Um, now- I still not. And the reason being is that, that the, the people that I met, um, and the opportunities that I was given to learn, um, either by him or because of him, we're actually very useful. 

Katie Nicholl: Erin, for me, that interview was a car crash in slow motion. It was so painful to watch. I just remember thinking, I actually can't listen to this anymore. 

Prince Andrew [Archival Audio]: Do I regret the fact that, that he has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes. 

Emily Maitlis [Archival Audio]: Unbecoming? He was a sex offender. 

Prince Andrew [Archival Audio]: Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm being polite, in the sense that he was a sex offender. But no, um, uh, was I right in, in having him as a friend? Um, at the time, and bearing in mind, this was some years before he was accused of being, um, a sex offender. Um, uh, I don't think there's anything wrong then. The problem was the fact that once he had been convicted... 

Emily Maitlis [Archival Audio]: You stayed. 

Prince Andrew [Archival Audio]: I stayed with him. 

Erin Vanderhoof: It used to be that when people found out about my job, they would always ask about Kate and Meghan. But in the last couple of years, it's been, 'what's the deal with Prince Andrew? What was that with the sweating and pizza express? What was he really doing on that plane?' Prince Andrew recently settled out of court with the woman who accused him of sexually abusing her, and he has denied witnessing or participating in sexual abuse. But in parts of the interview, he seemed so dismissive of the allegations and what Epstein's victims reportedly went through. Almost as though he didn't grasp how serious the whole situation really was. He even said he didn't regret his friendship with Epstein. And I think it speaks to the fact that the royals don't always seem to understand that we're not just interested in them as a soap opera. They do have these roles in society and connections with the government. So it's about a lot more than just ratings. These clashes with the press are also about accountability. 

Katie Nicholl: Well, I think for so long, Andrew just thought he was going to get away without having to explain himself simply because he was the Queen son. Possibly her favorite. But, there were so many rumors swirling around about his relationship with Epstein that he seems to have decided the best thing to do would be to explain himself on national television, which he did. And it backfired. You do wonder, Erin, don't you that perhaps the royals ought to have learned from the past that sitting down in front of the camera is almost always a bad idea. 

Erin Vanderhoof: It makes you suspect that they cannot always see themselves the way we see them. 

Katie Nicholl: Maybe Andrew believed that he was going to be able to control, possibly even change the narrative. And that, together with his arrogance, was a massive mistake. It's a shifting power struggle. The royals wield the power and that they know that they're going to get column inches in front pages, and newspaper editors and royal correspondents, like ourselves, welcome those stories because that's what sells newspapers and magazines and that's what gets clicks. 

Erin Vanderhoof: Here's Patrick Jephson again. 

Patrick Jephson: There is a simple rule that I learned. Whenever you see a royal story in the media, you have to ask yourself, why is it there? Who briefed it? Who comes out of it well? Who comes out of it badly? 

Katie Nicholl: I actually think that these are the questions the royals, or more specifically their aides, do ask. How will we come out of this? Is this positive for the royal family? Is this the message we're trying to communicate? As you said at the beginning, Erin, it's a complex relationship.

Erin Vanderhoof: From the outside, it's easy enough to look at these moments where things go totally off the rails as a failure to fully think through those questions. But the more you learn about the family, the more you begin to see how much their public dynamic is shaped by private conflict. So we start to wonder. What exactly are these wayward royals rebelling against? Who are the people behind them advising for or against the decisions and who is in charge of managing the fallout?

Robert Hazell: I think Buckingham Palace can't always remain silent. And so those are the kinds of tensions which take place behind the scenes. 

Katie Nicholl: Next time we'll explore the inner workings of the Royal Organization. Can it be characterized as the shadowy halls of power run by men in suits, or is it an institution where there are increasingly more women in suits trying to find its footing in the modern world?

Patrick Jephson: The royal household, the organization is a magic machine. It will do anything you want. But you do have to take the trouble to learn how it works. 

Erin Vanderhoof: That's next on _Dynasty. Dynasty_ is hosted by Katie Nicholl and me, Erin Vanderhoof and is produced by _Vanity Fair_ in partnership with Somethin' Else. Lizzie Jacobs is our executive producer. Darby Dorras and Bryant Urstadt are our editors. Rob Dozier, Zoe Edwards, Cheeka Eyers and Sylvie Lubow are our producers. 

Katie Nicholl: Ginny Bloom is our showrunner. Basak Erten and Jessica Jones are our associate producers, and Ike Egbetola, Lily Hambly and Peyton Hayes are our production coordinators. 

Erin Vanderhoof: This episode was engineered by Josh Gibbs and the theme song was composed by Woolly Music. Fact-checking was done by Sara Krolewski. _Dynasty_ was conceived by _Vanity Fair_ Executive Editor, Claire Howorth. Claire and Katey Rich are our staff editorial consultants. Thank you to our guests, jess Cagle, Laura Clancy, Andrew Lownie, Patrick Jephson and Shon Faye. 

Katie Nicholl: If you love the show, be sure to rate, review and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more _Dynasty_, visit vf.com/dynasty, and you can follow _Vanity Fair_ on Instagram and Twitter @vanityfair.