This was never going to be the ideal week for Prince Charles to learn from a new book that he was being accused of questioning the future skin colour of Prince Harry and Meghan’s children.
After all, he was arriving in Barbados to represent the Queen during a historic ceremony that marked the change of the Caribbean island into a republic. In Barbados, where identity politics and race are crucial, he also arrived representing the Queen.
Whether the claim by American author Christopher Andersen – made with his usual audacious assertions of impeccable sources – is true, is quite another matter.
It earned the immediate scorn of royal officials, with one describing it as ‘fiction’.
And it is certainly convenient that the book, Brothers And Wives: Inside The Private Lives Of William, Kate, Harry And Meghan, is being published in the US safely out of reach of the prince’s lawyers.
Andersen has a track record of writing books about the royals that rely on the most astonishingly intimate – some would say contentious – information.
In a 2001 book called Diana’s Boys, he claimed that William and Harry had insisted on walking behind their mother’s coffin when in fact they agreed to do so only the night before the funeral when their grandfather Prince Philip offered to walk with them.
Charles is not happy about the timing of the latest volume.
It is being made because Prince Charles (pictured) participates in a diplomatically delicate engagement in Barbados. Barbados was the first country since 1992 to recognize the Queen as their head of government.
To have such a grotesque accusation hanging over him as he engages in one of the most diplomatically sensitive of missions – Barbados is the first country to remove the Queen as its head of state since 1992 – is bad enough, but against the backdrop of last night’s controversial BBC documentary probing Harry and Meghan’s relations with the media, it is a mischievous distraction.
The way that the story is being shared around the globe via social media shows the damage these accusations can cause, even against someone who did more to foster racial tolerance than anyone else in the Royal Family.
Charles has to realize that the real tragedy lies in the fact that, no matter how scurrilous these allegations are, they all come from closer to his heart.
It was Harry and Meghan who triggered the ‘who was the royal racist’ mystery in their Oprah Winfrey interview last March, when it became open season for any writer to line their pockets with spurious speculation at the expense of the Royal Family.
According to Andersen, the catalyst for Charles’s alleged remarks was his son and former actress Meghan’s engagement almost exactly four years ago on November 27, 2017.
He claims that a few hours after the announcement the prince asked the Duchess of Cornwall over breakfast: ‘I wonder what the children will look like?’ Camilla was said to be ‘somewhat taken aback’ and allegedly replied: ‘Well, absolutely gorgeous, I’m certain.’
The prince, so the book claims, lowered his voice and added: ‘I mean, what do you think their children’s complexion might be?’
It sounds so enticing, but is it true? It is hard to think of a more crass conversation than the kind imagined here – even though Andersen claims the prince’s words were made innocently – not least because it requires a considerable leap of faith.
According to a source cited in Brothers and Wives by Christopher Andersen (pictured), the explosive accusation was made against Meghan, Harry, and Kate.
Who on earth overheard this confidential breakfast-time discussion, complete with voice-lowering inflection, before, as Andersen has it, ‘scheming courtiers’ gave Charles’s words ‘a racist spin’?
Were such conversations even possible at the breakfast table? The fact is the couple tend to take breakfast separately – the prince prefers tea and toast, while Camilla often has hers ‘on the go’ or skips it.
No wonder Clarence House aides are poring over the couple’s diary for November 28, 2017, which suggests they would have had little time for such a languid discussion over toast and marmalade.
Charles and Camilla travelled to Stoke-on-Trent for a day of engagements across the Potteries during which the duchess gave an interview in which she spoke of their joy at Harry and Meghan’s engagement.
Charles can take comfort in the fact that Charles’s quotes are not so common and outlandish.
Nobody has done more to foster cross-community relationships than he. He founded the British Asian Trust to combat poverty in South Asia and has for many years built strong links with the Muslim World.
Colleen Harris was the first high-ranking royal to appoint an African press secretary. He currently has an Asian bodyguard, and has also had other BAME staff (black, Asian, and minority) in the past.
The issue for Charles is that the fallout from the royal racist row long predates Andersen’s pot-boiler. It all began with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Oprah broadcast.
After Prince Harry and Meghan Markle met with Oprah Winfrey (pictured), they said that a member the Royal Family asked about the colour of their children’s skin, but didn’t name the person.
It was by some distance the most explosive and egregious of their so-called ‘truth bombs’ and contributed to the Palace’s wry observation that ‘recollections’ of what occurred ‘may vary’.
Like a good many of the couple’s claims, it was allowed to go largely unchallenged. They told Oprah that at least one member of the Royal Family expressed concern about ‘how dark’ their children’s skin might be.
They were unable to name the person involved. A point not lost on the duchess, who added: ‘That would be very damaging to them.’
Meghan was insistent that questions about Archie’s complexion were motivated by racism (as opposed to, say, curiosity) too.
At one point, Oprah put it to her that ‘they were concerned that if he were too brown that would be a problem’.
She responded: ‘If that’s the assumption you are making, I think that feels a pretty safe one.’
But remember that two very different versions of events were presented to Oprah – by Harry and Meghan – during their interview.
The duchess claimed ‘several conversations’ about Archie’s skin colour took place ‘in those months when I was pregnant’.
Harry, meanwhile, said there was just one conversation ‘right at the beginning’ of their relationship, ‘before we even got married’.
Oprah may have been a better forensic interviewer to question this apparent inconsistency. For while Harry and Meghan were just ‘speaking their truth’, they can’t both have been right.
It was still shocking enough to play to those Meghan lovers who feel she was the victim a prejudice within the Royal Family.
And, of course, it set off a guessing game that Harry’s intervention, saying neither his grandmother nor grandfather were responsible, failed to prevent.
According to Andersen, Charles’s ‘innocent’ question was being echoed ‘in a less innocent way throughout the halls of Buckingham Palace’ and was ‘weaponised’ by courtiers.
He further claims that Harry angrily confronted his father, with Charles allegedly telling him he was being ‘overly sensitive’.
Prince William, who denounced the claims with his ‘we are very much not a racist family’ intervention, is said in the book to have described his father’s comments as ‘tactless but not a sign of racism’.
Palace insiders are doubtful of US-based Andersen’s knowledge of such intimate family exchanges. William has not yet commented, as he is a fierce guardian of his privacy.
Andersen was, unsurprisingly, standing behind his claims yesterday.
For Charles in Barbados, there was the hope that diplomacy would, for one night at least, replace ‘fiction’.
However, nine months after that Oprah interview was recorded, it is not clear that the negative effects have diminished.