New Book Reveals Queen Elizabeth’s Stern Warning to Prince William After He Left Staff ‘Terrified’
Even Prince William wasn’t above getting a royal telling-off, and Queen Elizabeth made sure he knew who was boss.
Prince William seemed to have gotten into trouble with the Queen as a child. One particular incident at Balmoral left royal staff seriously worried and even prompted a reaction from Queen Elizabeth. Now, a former palace staff member has shared the incident in her upcoming memoir.
The story appears in Anne Glenconner’s forthcoming memoir, Trunks and Tiaras, which is set to be released on October 8. Glenconner served as a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, the late Queen’s only sibling, and an excerpt from the book has now been published by the Daily Mail.
As per her account, the royal family had gathered at Balmoral in 1990 for a weekend of shooting, with the late Queen, Margaret, Glenconner, Margaret’s son David Linley, then-Prince Charles, Princess Diana, and the young William and Prince Harry all in attendance. Glenconner recalled the weekend as a relaxed family get-together until she suddenly heard raised voices outside. When she looked out of the window, she saw the Queen giving young William a stern dressing-down.
According to Glenconner, William had been riding his pony along the drive at around 8 pm. She quietly moved away from the window and told Margaret what she had witnessed. Margaret then said she would speak to the Queen about what had happened.
She wrote, “Later that evening, she said that apparently Prince William had been out riding with the groom and his cousins and had wheeled back from the group and returned to the castle on his own without letting anyone know.”
“The grooms had been frantic looking for him. You can imagine how terrified they were in case he had fallen and hit his head with no one knowing where he was. Princess Margaret said: 'The Queen was quite right to give him a rocket,’” Glenconner added.
Furthermore, when William became more boisterous and prone to tantrums as a young child, the late Queen was reportedly unimpressed and told Charles and Diana that his behavior needed to stop. The Prince of Wales, however, understood that his grandmother had the final say when it came to discipline. According to The Independent, he once said of the Queen, “She may be my grandmother, but she is also very much the boss.”
