Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and More Scandalous Royal Relationships

In the late 1980s, recordings were made of phone calls between then-married Diana and secret lover James Gilbey, whose apparent nickname for her — “Squidgy” — he used more than 50 times. Years later, the tapes began leaking out, and in 1992 were sold to a British tabloid and then published in the National Enquirer, with the ensuing scandal dubbed “Squidgygate.” The conversations were salacious, to say the least, with Gilbey telling Diana “I love you,” while she shared her concern that she may have become pregnant. The ensuing scandal rocked Britain, and ultimately reached all the way to the House of Commons and Prime Minister John Major.

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As Princess Anne's marriage was deteriorating, in 1989 a British tabloid obtained a stash of gushingly romantic love letters that were seemingly stolen from Princess Anne. Buckingham Palace made the surprising move of issuing a statement about the letters: “The stolen letters were addressed to the Princess Royal by Commander Timothy Laurence, the Queen’s Equerry,” the statement read. “We have nothing to say about the contents of personal letters sent to Her Royal Highness by a friend which were stolen and which are the subject of a police investigation.” This relationship, however, appears to have a happy ending: the princess wed Laurence in 1992, eight months after her divorce, and the couple remains married.

Decades after the Koo Stark debacle, in 2014 Prince Andrew was accused by 17-year-old Virginia Roberts, who alleged she was “forced to have sexual relations with the prince when she was a minor in three separate geographical locations.” In addition, Roberts accused recently deceased controversial billionaire Jeffrey Epstein of conspiring with the prince of keeping her as a “sex slave” (Epstein cut a plea deal a decade ago that saw him serve a light prison sentence and register as a sex offender, escaping a possible life sentence on on federal sex-trafficking charges). While Roberts’ allegations were never proven, neither was Andrew exonerated; Buckingham Palace denied the charges, an American judge ordered that all allegations against the prince be struck from court records.

Is a gay royal wedding considered scandalous these days? Apparently not anymore, yet the Queen’s cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, made royal history when he wed James Coyle in 2018 in British royalty’s first-ever gay wedding. Mountbatten, 56, had previously been married to a woman (they divorced in 2010) and came out in 2016. However, in an interview with the Daily Mail he revealed he’d been gay his entire life, and told his wife about his sexuality before they wed, remaining closeted because of the stigma (homosexuality was criminalized until 1967 in the UK). “I could never tell my parents I was gay,” he said. “Where I grew up, gay men were called poofs, queers, everything derogatory under the sun.”

With the Queen and Prince Phillip having celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in November 2017, it's easy to forget the controversy over Elizabeth II's choice of husband. At the time, the future Queen faced fierce opposition against many in Buckingham Palace who considered the penniless Greek prince to be an unsuitable husband for a British monarch (along with whispers that the rakish prince would likely be unfaithful, and rumours of his affairs were rampant in the early years of their marriage). Another stumbling block was the fact that Phillip's three sisters all married Nazis. Elizabeth, however, would not be dissuaded, and the once-scandalous union has become one of the longest-lasting royal marriages in history.

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King Edward VIII fell in love with American two-time divorcee Wallis Simpson, a woman deemed wholly unsuitable to be queen of England. Yet the King could not be dissuaded, and abdicated the throne in order to wed Simpson in 1937. Forced to leave Britain, the newly retitled Duke and Duchess of Windsor continued to stir up controversy, and constantly clashed with Buckingham Palace. They remained married until Edward died in 1972.

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As viewers of The Crown saw, Princess Margaret's love life was marked by scandal and tragedy, beginning with her aborted relationship According to a recent book, the Queen's younger sister started seeing Townsend (who was 32, and married with two children) when she was just 17, far earlier than had initially been thought. When Townsend divorced his wife, Margaret's plans to marry Townsend were squashed due to the strict rules involving remarriage after divorce laid out by the Church of England (of which the Queen is the head). Margaret was reportedly heartbroken when she and Townsend were forced to break up.

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After the heartbreak of her doomed relationship with Peter Townsend, Princess Margaret rebounded into the arms of dashing photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, whom she married in 1960. While the marriage was approved by the Queen, many in Buckingham Palace felt Armstong-Jones (who received the title of Earl of Snowden) was an unsuitable husband, feeling Margaret would have been better off with a wealthy aristocrat. While the couple quickly became the darling's of the London social scene during the swinging '60s, cracks soon began to appear in the marriage, with rumours of infidelity following both of them until they eventually separated in 1976.

The second-youngest of the Queen’s children, Prince Andrew met stunning Koo Stark at a London art gallery in 1982, shortly after returning from the Falklands War. They went on a romantic vacation on the Caribbean island of Mustique, and he even and invited her to Balmoral to meet the royal family. Rumours swirled that a marriage proposal wasn’t far off — until Stark's past came back to crater the relationship when newspapers discovered her naked appearance (a lesbian shower scene, no less!) in a soft-core erotic film The Awakening of Emily back in 1976. The British press went nuts, and the relationship crumbled in the face of public scrutiny. “It wasn’t like a Hollywood movie, with a grand finale,” Stark recalled of their breakup. “In the end, we just ran out of energy. It had been strangled to death."

A few years after his split from Koo Stark, Prince Andrew began dating Sarah Ferguson, with the couple getting engaged in 1986 and and married later that same year, only to separate in January 1992 after just six years of marriage (their divorce was finalized in 1996). However, the Duchess of York didn’t wait long to dive back into the dating pool after the separation; in August 1992 she was photographed sunbathing topless while her Texas businessman John Bryan — her supposed “financial adviser” — happily sucked on her toes. The Queen reportedly went ballistic; even worse, Fergie was with the royal family at Balmoral when the news broke, which must have made for an interesting conversation between the Duchess and her furious mother-in-law.

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Princess Anne, the Queen’s only daughter, met handsome Captain Mark Phillips in 1972 during the Munich Olympics, and at first glance it seemed like a match made in royal heaven. By the following year, the princess and the gold medal-winning Olympic equestrian announced their engagement, with a royal wedding taking place in November 1973. By the ’80s, signs of their deteriorating marriage were obvious (they reportedly checked into separate hotels — forget separate rooms — when travelling), and rumours of infidelity were rife involving both spouses. Not long after the couple announced their separation, a bombshell dropped when a New Zealand woman came forward claiming Phillips was the father of her five-year-old daughter. While Phillips initially denied it, it was eventually revealed that he had been making payments to the woman for the past five years; a DNA subsequently confirmed he was indeed the father.

As his marriage to Princess Diana publically disintegrated, it emerged that Charles was still in love with Camilla Shand, whom he’d met in 1970 and desperately wanted to marry (her bloodline, however, was not aristocratic enough for the Queen, and she was considered to be less-than-virginal). Charles was reportedly devastated when she married Andrew Parker-Bowles while he was serving in the Royal Navy, and the fact that he remained in love with her pretty much doomed what the public assumed was a fairytale romance with Princess Di (who only saw each other about a dozen times before their wedding). When news of his ongoing affair with married Camilla broke, she was cast as the “other woman” and faced public scorn. The British public, however, eventually came to accept their relationship, and Charles and Camilla were finally married in 2005.

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Princess Diana’s five-year extramarital affair with dashing former cavalry officer James Hewitt was confirmed by no less a source than Diana herself, who admitted in a 1995 interview that "I adored him. I was in love with him, but I was very let down." One lingering question that remains from their affair are the persistent rumours that it’s red-headed Hewitt, not Prince Charles, who is the true father of Prince Harry; Hewitt has continually denied that he’s Harry’s father, and there have been rumours that a British tabloid managed to secure a private DNA test on Harry’s hair that proved he and Hewitt aren’t related.

Princess Diana’s final relationship, which ended when she and then-boyfriend Dodi Fayed were killed in a Paris car crash, was not without controversy. Fayed’s reputation as a fame-hungry playboy with a penchant for dating famous women (his exes reportedly included Julia Roberts, Brooke Shields and actress Cathy Lee Crosby) was a detriment, with reports that some members of the royal family were displeased with Diana’s choice (and with photos that emerged of her and the princes aboard Fayed’s yacht off the coast of St. Tropez). In his 2010 memoir, former British PM Tony Blair recalls meeting with Diana and telling her point-blank that her relationship with Fayed was “a problem.”

LA-born Meghan Markle was well known for her starring role in Suits before ever being set up with Prince Harry. The biracial beauty was reportedly raised Catholic, and has also been previously married and divorced, making her a divorced woman given special exception to marry into the royal family. When the couple announced their engagement in 2017, the coverage in British tabloids became so racist and sexist in tone that Prince Harry and the palace released an official statement condemning the "abuse and harassment" of his soon-to-be bride.

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