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Speaker 1: Ah Calorogus Shark Media. Hello and welcome to Palace Weekly.

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I am your host, Mark Francis. It's been a week

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in which the board finally moved. The King's most powerful adviser,

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the man Prince Harry, once nicknamed the Wasp, announced he

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is leaving. Britain acquired its fourth Prime Minister of the Rain,

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Harry's long War where the Daily Mail was handed at

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number and the number has eight figures in it, and

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King Charles opened the Commonwealth Games by stepping out of

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a doctor who tardis, because if you're going to reassert

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control over your own rain, you may as well do

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it with a time machine. For weeks, this story has

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been all weather and no movement, everyone perpetually furious, nothing

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actually changing. This week things changed. So the question to

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hold on to is a simple one. When the pieces

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finally move, which way are they going? Let's get into it.

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We begin with the single most consequential thing that happened

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all week, and almost nobody outside royal circles will have

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heard his name. Sir Clive Orderton is stepping down. He

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has been Principal Private Secretary to the King and Queen

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and for practical purposes, the most influential official of the

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entire reign, and he will leave the role next year

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around his sixtieth birthday, staying on afterward in what he

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called a less formal capacity for the rest of his life.

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Read his CV and you understand the weight of it.

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He first worked for Charles's Prince of Wales, became Principal

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Private Secretary in twenty fifteen, and stood at the King's

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side through the death of Queen Elizabeth, the accession, the coronation,

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the cancer diagnosis, the Sussex departure, and the long Andrew saga.

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If a difficult decision was made at the Palace in

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the last decade, Orderton was usually in the room. You

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may also know him by another name, and Spare Harry

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appeared to christen him the Wasp, describing a courtier who

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was charming, arrogant, a ball of the jazzy energy, outwardly deferential,

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but capable if crossed, of delivering such a sting that

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you'd cry in confusion. Sir Clive has never responded to

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the nickname, which is rather the point of being good

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at his job. The Palace called it a planned retirement

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with a long, tidy handover in twenty twenty seven. Others

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read the tea leaves differently. Dan Wooton on The Megan

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Kelly Show called the retirement line rubbish. There A reason,

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he argued, is that Alderton was trying to stop Harry

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and Meghan returning and was doing his damnedness to try

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and save King Charles from himself. The Royalist offered the

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mirror image from the Harry friendly camp. Charles is reasserting

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his authority and reclaiming the throne, and that lines up

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rather neatly with the theory we sat with last week.

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The recovered king gifted time by a medicine, taking back

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control of his own family. Whether Alderton is a casualty

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of that shift or simply a fifty nine year old

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who would like his weekends back, The most powerful hawk

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in the King's court is on his way out, and

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the timing writes its own story. Meanwhile, the constitutional furniture

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rearranged itself with almost no fuss. Andrew Burnham kissed hands

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as Charles's fourth Prime minister in barely three years. Photographed

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with the King in the rarely seen Chinese dining room,

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all white dragons and dragon legged tables, the faces rotate,

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the monarch remains the fixed point, and in a much

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sharper reminder that a world exists beyond the soap opera,

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Iran's Revolutionary Guard named the British monarchy directly. In a

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warning tied to reports that American bombers had flown from

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the array of Fairford. Buckingham Palace declaimed to comment, which

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was the correct and only response. The King himself cancer

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and all kept up a genuinely full diary. The Palace

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confirmed a steep visit to Spain as being planned for

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twenty twenty seven, the first since Queen Elizabeth was hosted

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by King Juan Carlos back in nineteen eighty eight, and

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in Glasgow, Charles and Camilla opened the twenty third Commonwealth

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Games by emerging, I promise I'm not making this up

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from the doctor who tardis to cheers inside the hydro

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arena as part of his sequence that whisked viewers passed

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Edinburgh Castle, locke Ness an inevitably bow Moral. He then

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delivered a rather lovely speech about the baton relay, carrying

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a message to clear plastic from the oceans, and declared

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the Games open. The Daleks mercifully stay at home. It

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is a strange and slightly wonderful thing that the most

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reliably dignified figure in this entire story is also the

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one most willing to climb out of a police box

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on live television. More palace in just a moment. Now

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on to money, because this week money was the water

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everyone was swimming in. Harry's crusade finally got its price tag.

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Lawyers for Associated Newspapers say their bill has climbed past

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thirty four million pounds, and they're asking the judge to

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award costs on an indemnity basis, which recovers more than

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the standard approach. The claimant's insurance runs to roughly sixteen

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point two million. If the judge goes on the indemnity route,

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that cover could fall short by million, leaving Harry and

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his fellow claimants personally on the hook. Closer put Harry's

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own share somewhere around twenty five million dollars, and all

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that talk of Elton John riding to the rescue dismissed

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by his own camp as ungrounded. Harry, a source said,

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is far too proud to ask friends for handouts, and

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they simply have to take out a loan, A prince

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applying for a loan. The sentence alone tells you the

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direction of travel. And it wasn't only Harry counting pennies

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beggins as Ever, Brand saw its website traffic for roughly

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forty six percent between January and June. A CBC investigation

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found Harry's visits to Canada generated the highest security costs

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of any internationally protected visitor over five years, and the

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Royal Collection's trust income collapsed from nearly fourteen million pounds

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to three and a half as the post coronation tourism

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boom finally exhaled. Everyone King and Duke alike is watching

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the meter, which brings us to the week's most enjoyable reversal.

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Last week, deed Crown mocked the tabloids for their one

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permitted adjective, William forever and always furious. This week, the

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irritation appears to be running the other way entirely. Tina

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Brown reports that Charles is currently less annoyed with the

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prodigal Harry than with his elder son. The arithmetic is unkind.

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Charles carried out engagements on one hundred and seventy five

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days this past year, while managing cancer treatment, whereas William

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took five confirmed family holidays in seven months and returned

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to a first week back consisting of a rugby mansion,

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a walk through a museum garden, and Harry's donation of

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one point one million pounds to children in need cannily

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raised the question of what exactly the Prince of Wales

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is doing with twenty three million a year. The furious

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air it turns out maybe one his father is quietly

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furious with Harry himself spent the week being of all

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things liked. He turned up at the time one hundred

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sports gala in New York, told the room his father

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is doing great and called sport medicine. He bickered with

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James Cordon about whether it's footballs, and the reconciliation drumbeat

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kept steady time. Charles's once again offered him a room

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at Buckingham Palace, this time for September's Well Child Awards,

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and Harry dithered too long to accept. Last time, Ingrid

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Seward framed it as a chance for Harry to show

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his father he knows how to behave. There was even

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a trial balloon floated and promptly popped about an overseas

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roll possibly Australia, possibly Governor General in the spirit of

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the Duke of Windsor decamping to the Bahamas. The Palace

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gently noted that the King does not actually get to

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hand out that job and is not about to reinvent

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the monarchy for one family member. Not everyone in the

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family is charmed, and the caution is worth logging. Camilla,

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by several accounts, supports the King's reunion with Harry because

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she loves the King, but hasn't forgotten a word of

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what was said about her, and reportedly suspects Harry could

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turn on the family the moment things don't go his way.

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Her priority, one source put it, is not letting Charles

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be blindsided twice, and William, we are assured, remains immovable,

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reportedly telling Keith that under no circumstance answers should she

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extend so much as an olive branch to his brother.

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So the door Charles's holding open is being watched warily

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from both sides of it more palatine. The moment, now

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to the soap opera, which ran at its usual volume,

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began's guest turn on Masterchefstrada arrived trailing in tiny tempest

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her team and reportedly asked producers not to use the

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word royalty, and a judge duly used it in the introduction.

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The episode then drew one point six million viewers, the

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show's best Sunday and weeks, so the threatened boycott went

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the way of most threatened boycotts. Along the way, we

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learned that Archie and Lilabet eat Brussels sprouts, that Meghan

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considers food a love language, that Harry phoned in a

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FaceTime cameo which some viewers found charming and others found staged.

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Both camps, as ever, were catered to. Meghan also made

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her first public appearance in Munths at a LA screening

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of Cookie Queen's, a documentary she and Harry produced about

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girl Scouts in their Cookie season. She used it to

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share a lion. Harry apparently tells her on hard days

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that he flew helicopters for ten years and even in

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the storm above the storm, the sun is always shining.

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So genuinely nice sentiment and a reminder that underneath the brand,

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traffic and the boycott arithmetica two people trying to talk

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each other through a rough patch. The louder row was

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an Instagram post, Megan shared a set of summer holiday photographs,

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among them Archie and Lilibet at Althorpe, the Spencer Estate

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where Diana is buried, the family walking an avenue of

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lime trees carrying bouquets. Even sympathizers winced. Tom Sykes captured

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the genre precisely. Some kissed holiday content that pauses briefly

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for then we went to a grave. Piers Morgan made

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the sharper version of the point, asking why a couple

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who left to the world about children's online privacy would

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post their own children to millions. Whether the post was

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ten or attack, He is a taste question and tastes

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questions of the tabloid's favorite cane precisely because they never resolve.

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When broadcast to Mark Donlan went further and speculated that

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the Sussex children would one day make life a misery

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for their cousins. The Sussex's spokesperson broke along silence to

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call it disgusting to cast two small children as future antagonists,

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and on that narrow point, they are hard to argue with.

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The quieter degradations continued for Andrew. He was not invited

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to the family's Bowmorl gathering. The City of London is

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now drafting the legislation specifically to allow it to strip

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his freedom of the city, and a new Disney documentary

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revisited the murder conviction of his ex wife's former dresser

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under the cheerful title The Duchess and the Killer. Sarah,

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for her part, is reportedly chopping a tell all documentary

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of her own, one production source predicting it could be

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as sensational and as embarrassing to the family as the

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Sussex's own opera Sit Down The Yorks Endure Downward. The

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King in between all the pieces moving had a couple

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of small human moments worth keeping. At the Sandringham Flower Show,

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he was pestered by a persistent fly, Camilla was handed

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citronella repellent for her trouble, and when a well wisher

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his own age told him he was looking good, Charles

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laughed and replied, it gets much harder, doesn't it. And

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in Cambridge he padded into Europe's first purpose built eco

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mosque in a pair of grain knitted socks, joking to

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a group of school children that he hoped he hadn't

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ruined their holidays by dragging them in before praising the

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building as a remarkable example of integrated faith activity. A

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monarch in his socks blessing a mosque is a quietly

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radical image and a direct continuation of the faith story

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we've been tracking these last few weeks. And then quietly

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came the realist thing anyone said all week. Visiting a

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cancer hospital in Manchester, Kate spoke about her own treatment,

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how she lost the ability to read or focus and

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turned instead to coloring, which she described as a way

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of playing and losing yourself, something that didn't require a

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finished product. You have to support yourself, she told the patients,

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Alongside all the things you can't control. Your body changes

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physically and emotionally, and it puts everything in perspective and

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you hold onto what's important. No unnamed source, no spin,

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no frame, just a woman who was it's been through it,

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telling other people going through it that there is a

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way through, which is in the end, what all this

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movement is actually about. Strip Away the courtier and the

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loan and the Instagram grief and the tartis and the

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story is an old man with cancer working one hundred

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and seventy five days a year moving the pieces while

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he still can't. The advisor eased out, the sun offered

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a room. The door held open a careful inch, because

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the only clock in this whole songa that genuinely ticks,

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is his. Everything else, as always is weather. And there

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you have it. If you'd like to email us or

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addresses the Palace intrig at gmail dot com. If you're

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on Spotify, leave us a comment. If you're on Apple,

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hit that button up there that says listen uninterrupted and

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get this show commercial free for just five bucks a month.

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We really appreciate your support. By Mark Francis my thanks

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to John McDermott. This is Pallace Weekly. Good terms