Tabla de contenidos para PEOPLE 50 Years of The Royals en People

2022: A JOYOUS JUBILEE Queen Elizabeth has appeared on the most famous balcony in the world countless times throughout her 70-year reign. But she never had quite as lively a sidekick as she did on June 2: her 4-year-old great-grandson Prince Louis, who launched a thousand memes and kicked off the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with unbridled, unscripted fun. “He’s a cheeky monkey—a typical third child,” says someone who knows the family. His famously stoic great-grandmother, 96, also had a ball—cracking a few wide smiles throughout the four days of celebrations. “The overwhelming feeling was of a tremendous flow of affection to the Queen from the public,” says her former press secretary Charles Anson, “whether they were monarchists or not.” —JUNE 20, 2022 THE STORY OF THE ROYALS: ANNIVERSARY EDITION…

SINCE THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF Windsor just over two years ago, his widowed duchess, now 78, has granted few interviews and is rarely photographed. Recently People visited the duchess in her home in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne. The taxi driver was awed and sheepish as we approached the gates: “Monsieur, if I had known I was coming here, I would have given my car a special wash and polish.” The Duchess of Windsor has become a sort of Parisian cultural monument, and her mansion, attended by 17 servants and once occupied by President Charles de Gaulle, is the center of a small court. Suddenly she is in the room, frail but regally elegant as she pauses to gaze out the half-opened French window at the perfect English…

After divorcing Prince Andrew in 1996, Sarah Ferguson lost her Royal Highness designation—and had to figure how to live as an ex-princess in the modern world. Since then she has stepped up her charity work, expanded her business ventures (products from candles to costume jewelry carry her name) and, 10 years on, remains a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers. Still, says the duchess, 47, “being the mother [to Beatrice, 18, and Eugenie, 16] is the best thing I can safely say I can do.” She spoke with People in New York City. Emotionally, where were you after your divorce? Broken. Broken heart. Broken self. Felt I’d betrayed everybody and let down the monarchy. And I’d been comfort-eating dreadfully. My mother left home when I was 12 to marry an Argentine.…

THROUGH A STEADY LONDON RAIN on the morning of May 6, the pomp and ceremony of King Charles III’s coronation began with a ride in the Diamond Jubilee State coach. Cheered on by thousands of damp but decidedly enthusiastic well-wishers, the horse-drawn coach rolled its way to Westminster Abbey. For Charles, 74, accompanied by his wife of 18 years, Queen Camilla, 75, the ride followed a carefully charted course, winding past Trafalgar Square, the Palace of Westminster and Big Ben. At only 1.4 miles, the King’s procession was a relatively short trip—but the culmination of a much longer journey to the throne. Only 4 years old at the time of his mother’s coronation on June 2, 1953, then-Prince Charles stood by with Job-like patience—a full 70 years—for his turn, making…

Ancient palaces, horse-drawn carriages, crown jewels—the storybook trappings of royal life are enchanting. But more engaging are the real-life sagas: A shy 20-year-old marries a prince in a wedding watched by 750 million, only to learn that his heart belongs to another. A young mother ascends the throne after her uncle abdicates and her father dies suddenly; by the end of a record-setting reign she is a great-grandmother and a beloved global symbol of duty and distinctly British coziness. Little princes grow up and find princesses of their own, at college or on a blind date with a TV star. Since its founding in 1974, People has covered royals from the Grimaldis of Monaco (former U.S. film actress Princess Grace was an early cover favorite) to the Chrysanthemum Throne in…

SHE’S JUST A GIRL,” MARVELED A PEDIGREED gentleman after he shared a box at Covent Garden with Lady Diana Spencer. Ah, but sir, look closer, beyond that shyly down-turned chin and those blushing cheeks the color of an English tea rose. The 19-year-old who next month becomes the Princess of Wales is a veteran of the highest society, and as the daughter of Earl Spencer she grew up calling the Queen of England “Aunt Lilibet.” Lady Di is cast in the lead of a pageant that will be viewed by 750 million global TV watchers, a spectacle whose pomp and complicated circumstance will register on the extravaganza scale somewhere between the original parting of the Red Sea and Cecil B. DeMille’s reconstruction of it. Her future in-laws have a passel of…

When Princess Diana rose to present an award at the Council of Fashion Designers of America bash—the Oscars of the fashion world—at Lincoln Center on Jan. 30, a bedazzled fan shouted, “Move to New York!” Wearing a blue sheath by favorite British designer Catherine Walker, she wowed the $l,000-a-seat crowd, who buzzed over her new ducktail do. (A love-hate proposition, they decided.) Donna Karan, who sat at Di’s table, was on the pro side. “She’s so beautiful. She has an aura about her that is wonderful.” Swedish model Vendela was impressed with the inner Di. “She’s a great role model,” she said. “She left a husband that was cheating on her and stood up for herself. And she does a lot of good things for people.” Di’s jaunt was, in…

TURNING 21 ON JUNE 21, WILLIAM has come of age. He just wrapped up his sophomore year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and is growing up gracefully. “As he is moving into adulthood, he is very sensible and well-balanced for his age,” says a family friend. “He is a good lad.” HOW TO SAY ‘HEARTTHROB’ IN SWAHILI? William spent three months during his 2001 “gap year” exploring Africa and chose an Out of Africa theme for his 21st-birthday party at Windsor Castle. “I’m trying to teach myself Swahili, which is something that has proved a little harder than I thought,” he told the Scottish Press Association. GETTING HIS GROOVE ON Last month William turned up at the Kate Kennedy Club Charity May Ball, one of St. Andrews’s…

IT CAME THROUGH THE STONE WALLS OF the 766-year-old church: the heart-pounding throb of millions of hands clapping and voices cheering, a joyful rising tide reverberating through Westminster Abbey. And in that moment—the moment when the Archbishop of Canterbury declared William Arthur Philip Louis and Catherine Elizabeth man and wife—something extraordinary happened: One by one, the 1,900 gathered guests broke into grins. “There was a swell of smiles and laughter when the cheers came from outside,” says Kate Wright, one of the attendees. Despite the massive scene outside, for those inside the abbey, the service seemed “so personal and very relaxed,” says guest Claudia Bradby. “I think if William didn’t have a public role, they would have loved to have gotten married in a little church in Bucklebury. It felt…

MUSTIQUE, A 1,300-ACRE DOT AT the far end of the Caribbean, where Princess Margaret is known casually as “P.M.” The 45-year-old younger sister of Queen Elizabeth owns a $60,000 villa on the exclusive island to which she often retreats, unburdened by husband Lord Snowdon or her two children. None of the 32 homeowners on Mustique pay much attention to P.M., but last week the rest of the world was clucking: The princess and a blond Etonian young enough to be her son had spent three weeks in her four-bedroom villa Les Jolies Eaux (“Pretty Waters”). The brief idyll of Margaret and Roderick Llewellyn, 28, made headlines in the British press and reportedly infuriated Snowdon. When the princess flew back to London, he was conspicuously absent—engaged, it was explained, on…

This is homecoming week for Princess Grace of Monaco. In Philadelphia, where she was born 52 years ago, Her Serene Highness will be aided by old friends Frank Sinatra and James Stewart in popping the cork on a gala retrospective of her movies (among them The Country Girl, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder). She had appeared in 11 of them when at 26 she abandoned the screen—and her maiden name, Grace Kelly—to wed Prince Rainier in 1956. Since then Grace has often seemed at odds with the media (“There is freedom of the press,” she once complained, “but not much freedom from it”). However, before departing for Philadelphia, she granted a rare extended interview at the family’s Paris residence to People. Grace settled into a deep-cushioned sofa, a…

ZOOM IN, IF YOU WILL, ON A FEW RECENT moments with those wacky wives of Windsor. See Fergie, the Duchess of York, leaping into sister-in-law Diana’s lap in the royal box at Ascot. See Diana giving Fergie the giggles by standing up to straighten her clingy yellow dress, then shaking the royal bum with the finesse of a stripper. See Fergie and Di at the races, jabbing well-dressed gentry in the behinds with their umbrellas. See Fergie gushing over David Bowie like an awestruck schoolgirl. See Diana turning to her sister-in-law and suggesting jokingly, “Let’s get drunk.” Hardly stuff to rock the globe out of orbit, except that the girlish perpetrators are the future Queen of England and the duchess. If Diana brought the family a badly needed infusion of…

IT IS A RITE OF PASSAGE IN MANY AN upper-class household: seeing the children off to boarding school. For the Prince and Princess of Wales, as for many others in Britain, it was enacted as a family. On Sept. 10 they glided in a Bentley up the drive of Ludgrove School, 25 miles west of London, with Prince William, 8, in tow. A touching scene of familial togetherness? Not exactly. What the world did not know is that the threesome came together only that morning. The Bentley had whisked Charles from Highgrove, the Waleses’ country estate, to Ludgrove, while Princess Diana had motored from London with Wills in her Jaguar. Only at the foot of the school drive was there a rendezvous, with Di and Wills climbing into the…

AT ALTHORP HOUSE, THE SPRAWLING ancestral home of the former Diana Spencer, the estate’s 30-member staff spent the days before Sept. 6 quietly preparing for her final visit. Outside, six gardeners cut grass and trimmed back lime-tree branches. Inside, household servants—forced to use buckets as vases—coped with a flood of flowers. “There were lilies in so many rooms,” says Anne Shaw, a cleaner at Althorp for 17 years. “The whole house just smelled of flowers. It was beautiful.” But beyond the estate’s imposing wrought-iron gates near the tiny village of Great Brington (pop. 180), 75 miles northwest of London, another kind of preparation was underway. Overnight, mourners, nestled in quilts and sleeping bags, had begun lining up along the narrow, winding road in anticipation of Diana’s return. “We have always…

SO WHAT IF THE GROOM NEVER PUBLICLY kissed the bride? Behind the scenes, Camilla Parker Bowles featured in some smooches that were more significant. As she and Prince Charles left their Windsor Castle reception on April 9, a beaming Prince Harry pecked his new stepmum goodbye on both cheeks, followed by an equally affectionate Prince William. The royal welcome to the family from the Windsor boys—who had never even been photographed alongside Camilla before—didn’t end there. As the couple stepped into a Bentley the princes had decorated with graffiti reading “C+C” and “Just Married,” the brothers showered Charles and Camilla with confetti and chased the car, yelling the same phrase Charles and Camilla had shyly proffered to their invited guests all day: “Thanks for coming!” In fact, William and Harry…

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