Centuries ago, Shakespeare wrote that “uneasy is the head that wears a crown,” but he might as well have been writing about King Charles. Charles has the uneasy task of taking up that crown after the death of the beloved and downright legendary Queen Elizabeth. On top of that, he faces stresses ranging from the scandals of Prince Andrew to the ongoing antics of Harry and Meghan airing dirty family laundry for millions of viewers of their documentary series on Netflix.
Normally, Charles can rely on Queen Camilla to support him during these stressful times. However, Camilla is at the center of a royal racism controversy that began brewing at the end of last month. Now, instead of comforting Charles, her actions (and, more importantly, her inactions) have allegedly brought Charles great shame and humiliation.
But what did Camilla do? How has Charles responded, and how do Harry and Meghan feature in this latest controversy? Keep reading to discover the answer!
The original controversy
It all began on November 29, when Queen Camilla was hosting a special event at Buckingham Palace. This event had a very noble theme: it was meant to address violence against women, something that the palace had dubbed an ongoing “pandemic.”
Things soon went sideways, though, thanks to Camilla’s friend Lady Susan Hussey. She is an old hand at mixing and mingling, and Hussey went to strike up a conversation with Ngozi Fulani, a Black English woman who was there to represent her charity Sistah Space.
Rather than focusing on the charity, though, Sky News reports that Camilla got hung up on where the other woman was from, repeatedly asking questions such as “what part of Africa are you from?” As Fulani tried to explain that she was born in England to immigrants from the Caribbean, Hussey continued to ask things like “When did you first come here?” All of this was compounded by the fact that Camilla allegedly moved Fulani’s hair to the side first to inspect her name tag and seemed to be challenging her during this exchange.
Fulani was deeply offended by the entire incident, and she went on to tell the Independent that “This is bigger than one individual. It’s institutional racism.”
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Who is Lady Susan Hussey?
This entire ugly incident was always going to make the papers. However, what turned this into a global scandal was the woman at the heart of the matter: Lady Susan Hussey.
That’s because Hussey wasn’t just some royal hanger-on. As reported by The Tatler, she was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth since 1960. By the time of this incident, she had effectively been a royal insider for 60 years and was considered by many to be one of the more prominent faces of the Royal Family because she served as a prominent royal aide.
Because of her outsize influence, this racism flap had outside consequences. And because of that, the Royal Family may never be the same again.
The immediate fallout over the racism controversy
Things began to move pretty fast after that night. As the BBC reports, it didn’t take long for Buckingham Palace to issue a statement on the matter. “We take this incident extremely seriously and have investigated immediately to establish the full details,” the Palace wrote. “In this instance, unacceptable and deeply regrettable comments have been made.”
They went on to clarify they reached out to Ngozi Fulani for further details and that Lady Hussey (who went unnamed) “would like to express her profound apologies for the hurt caused and has stepped aside from her honorary role with immediate effect.”
At first, this seemed like an open-and-shut case of someone taking responsibility for their actions. However, the incident generated a controversy that continued to reverberate this past month. One reason for this is that Lady Hussey also happens to be the godmother to Prince William, the future King of England!
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Prince William and Kate speak up about the matter
Prince William and Kate Middleton may not have felt the need to speak up if it was just any member of the royal inner circle causing such a scandal. However, due to Lady Hussey being William’s godmother, he and Kate issued a statement through an official spokesperson.
According to the Daily Beast, the statement issued by William and Kate is short and to the point: “racism has no place in our society.” But William is likely seething behind closed doors because this incident may have vindicated Harry and Meghan’s claims about racism they encountered from unnamed members of the Royal Family.
After those claims came out from Harry and Meghan’s infamous Oprah interview, Buzzfeed reports that William got in front of a television camera to quickly proclaim, “We’re very much not a racist family.” Now that William has to distance himself from the racism of his own godmother, it seems like Harry and Meghan may have been right all along.
Why King Charles is horrified
This controversy was started by Lady Susan Hussey, and she has since stepped down from her palace position. However, King Charles is allegedly quite angry about the matter because of how Queen Camilla failed to reign in the situation.
According to RadarOnline, Charles is fuming because Camilla didn’t address the matter during the event itself, meaning that the Royal Family had to mostly find out about it in the tabloids like everyone else. Furthermore, Camilla was close enough to Hussey to see and hear everything that was going on but apparently made no attempt to control the situation.
One palace insider claims that “There’s no way Camilla didn’t know what Lady Susan was doing as she was standing just feet away.” Instead of demonstrating leadership, though, Camilla “did nothing to stop the harassment.” Considering that Charles won’t even be officially coronated until May of next year, he is understandably angry that everyone from his children to his wife is demonstrating how little control he has over everything around him. Because of that, we can only imagine his crown weighs that much heavier upon his head.