The Queen has united with Prince Charles and Prince William in a threat to boycott the BBC over a documentary alleging vicious briefing wars between members of the Royal Family.
The Palace is furious that the Corporation has refused to let it see The Princes And The Press before it airs on BBC2 tomorrow, and says it will refuse to co-operate on future projects unless it is given a right to respond.
Last night, a senior royal source condemned the documentary as ‘tittle-tattle’ and said the row over the programme had left the 95-year-old Monarch ‘upset’.
The film is presented by Amol Rajan – a self-declared republican who has described the Monarchy as ‘absurd’.
In a highly unusual move, the three most senior Royals have joined together to complain to the Corporation – and threatened a ‘tri-household’ boycott if it goes ahead with the programme as planned.
Despite a series of meetings between Prince William’s representatives and the Corporation, the source said the BBC was still refusing to show the programme to courtiers before broadcast.
A Palace source said: ‘There is upset about it. The households are all united in thinking this is not fair. No one at the Palace has seen it.’
The BBC says the two-part programme will provide ‘context’ for William and Harry’s relationship with the media.
But while Palace insiders say ‘we’ll judge it when we’ve seen it’, sources believe the film will suggest that the brothers – or advisers working for them – ‘briefed against each other’ to the media and want a fair right to reply.
The allegation that William and Harry instructed courtiers to plant smears against each other in the media is particularly sensitive for the Princes. They successfully united to block the same allegation from appearing in another documentary earlier this year.
Claims by Omid Scobie, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s biographer, that Prince William and his staff had leaked a story about Prince Harry’s mental health were cut from the primetime documentary Harry And William: What Went Wrong? hours before it was broadcast on ITV in July.
Media speculation about the relationship between the brothers was rife for more than a year before Harry revealed the full extent of their rift during a tour of South Africa in 2019.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex gave a revealing interview during the trip to ITV’s Tom Bradby in which Meghan claimed that no one in the Royal Family had asked if she was ‘OK’ with her new role.
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