{"id":597039,"date":"2026-05-21T23:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T23:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/597039\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T23:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T23:34:09","slug":"controlling-secretive-prince-williams-dark-side-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/597039\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Controlling, secretive\u2019: Prince William\u2019s dark side revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENT
\u2018Dog bowl\u2019. Those are two words we haven\u2019t heard in a while. Forever shall they associated with Prince William<\/a> and his biff with Prince Harry<\/a>, The Duke of Sussex. When Harry decided to add \u2018author\u2019 to his bio (husband, father, Apache pilot, number three ranked air hockey player south of Sacramento, learner waffle-maker) and penned Spare, he wrote how William had \u2018knocked him to the floor\u2019 where he landed on a dog bowl \u201cwhich cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me.\u201d<\/p>\n

For William\u2019s Centrist Dad Nice Guy image, of him as the human personification of a grey Marks & Spencer hundred per cent wool jumper, Harry\u2019s picture of him, steam coming out his ears, going all Kensington street fighter was a direct hit. (All puns, always intended.)<\/p>\n

Well William\u2019s Good Bloke bit has come back under attack, via a couple of new reports. <\/p>\n

\"Prince<\/p>\n

MORE: Prince William<\/a>\u2019s $1.5bn property empire revealed<\/a><\/p>\n

The first comes from historian Andrew Lownie, the man Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor would most like to shove headfirst into a sewage tank. Last year Lownie published the scorcher Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, which revealed a Vegas-style buffet of scorching claims about the former prince such as his alleged sexual binges (40 women in four days) that Berlusconi would have blushed and slippilily wheeler-dealering his way around the world. <\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s Williams\u2019 turn. This week Lownie gave an interview to the Telegraph, with the paperback of Entitled and weighed in on what sort of job he thinks the prince will do when he assumes the top job one day. <\/p>\n

MORE: Kate\u2019s bombshell move from \u2018prison\u2019 palace<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a nice \u201ccautiously optimistic\u201d bit, with Lownie saying, \u201cFrom the things I\u2019ve heard, he is more prepared to move to this more European-style monarchy<\/a> \u2013 fewer people with titles who are not working royals, look at the Crown Estates\u201d. But then comes the \u2018but\u2019. <\/p>\n

Lownie went on: \u201cBut at the same time\u2026 he is quite controlling, quite secretive, quite suspicious of the media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because for all William\u2019s routine hugging of old age pensioners and I\u2019m-just-another-lad outings to talk about mental health he likes to do in northern boozers or photo ops where of him casually having a cuppa on a hay bail with some horny-handed son of the land, William is also the CEO of a multi-billion dollar empire and 2IC of one of the world\u2019s most recognisable brands and venerable institutions. <\/p>\n

Meet Mr Hardboiled, the take-no-prisoners prince. (Who, yes, still likes a nice jumper.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThree words come to mind when I think of William,\u201d a source who has known William for many years has told the The Times<\/a>. \u201cNormal, private, control. These are the things he wants: as normal a life as possible; private time for his family; and control over how he organises his life and work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question of William and control is one that just keeps coming up, particularly in regards to la famille York. It was the Prince of Wales who reportedly forcefully pushed King Charles to stop dithering and to take decisive action and to de-prince Uncle Andrew. <\/p>\n

The prince is now reportedly lobbying his dear old dad to cut Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s bestie out of the line of succession. <\/p>\n

That steely stance extends to his cousins with reports suggesting William is trying to sideline Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, because what I\u2019m assuming was his initial plan of making them wear paper bags over their heads or relocating to Isle of Skye never took off. <\/p>\n

The father-of-three thinks his cousins \u201cshould be kept at arm\u2019s length\u201d a royal insider told the Daily Mail<\/a> earlier this year. <\/p>\n

In what might be the coldest move from a royal since Elizabeth 1 disinvited Mary Queen of Scots to her dirty 30 party (and had her head cut off), at Christmas, \u201cthere were no presents under the Sandringham tree [this year] for Beatrice and Eugenie from William and Kate \u2013 something everyone pretended not to notice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there is the prince\u2019s \u201cVesuvius temper\u201d which is so fierce, according to biographer Christopher Anderson, that he \u201cterrifies\u201d the King. <\/p>\n

\u201cWilliam has a huge, booming voice,\u201d a former Highgrove staffer who allegedly witnessed several shouting matches told Anderson. \u201cMuch louder than his father\u2019s, so it\u2019s not something you soon forget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another issue that keeps landing William in freshly boiled water are his financial dealings. <\/p>\n

Becoming the Prince of Wales also gave him control of the associated trust, The Duchy of Cornwall, which sees he and Kate, pull in more than $43 million every year. (Or $118,00 per day. Since Eurovision last weekend he will have made more than $828,000 for a week in which he undertook official duties by going to two football games.)<\/p>\n

The Duchy owns 130,00 acres of land largely nicked during by various Kings during the Middle Ages and which in modern times, has pulled in tens of millions of public money by slapping rents on things like lifeboat stations, the fire service, village halls and school playing grounds.<\/p>\n

After a five-month investigation by The Times<\/a> revealed this \u2018orrible, greedy fact, in 2025 William announced the Duchy would do the British people a solid and stop charging Scouts and for use of hockey fields. Ooo, errr, Lord Bountiful and all that. <\/p>\n

While in 2025 he announced a stop to this, this month it was revealed that William\u2019s Duchy had charged the government $4.7m in 20 months for an abandoned prison that had to be shut because it\u2019s full of toxic gas and which is on Duchy land. <\/p>\n

(It\u2019s not all bad news. Also in May it was revealed the Duchy will sell 20 percent of its land over the next decade so it can invest nearly $1 billion in things like affordable housing and protecting the environment.)<\/p>\n

The prince\u2019s tax arrangements are also \u2026 interesting. Unlike Charles who was far more upfront about his tax affairs, William has \u201cnot declared the tax that the Duchy pays\u201d, Lownie pointed out to the Telegraph. <\/p>\n

So far, despite growing calls for the prince to come clean about how much tax he pays, William has refused to budge and publish the figure.<\/p>\n

Add it all up, the yelling and the cousin-cold-shouldering and \u201ccontrolling\u201d and \u201csecretive\u201d bits and William looks less perfect prince and more like one of his iron-willed forebears all done up in chain mail and halberds and off to clobber the French circa 13 something. <\/p>\n

At least he has Kate. Lownie told the Telegraph that he thinks she is \u201cvery tough \u2013 shades of the Queen Mum. And I think as an outsider, she gets it in a way I don\u2019t think the royals do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniela Elser is an editor and commentator with more than 15 years\u2019 experience with Australia\u2019s leading media titles. <\/p>\n

Read related topics:Prince Harry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COMMENT\u2018Dog bowl\u2019. Those are two words we haven\u2019t heard in a while. Forever shall they associated with Prince…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-597039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}