Tea, Titles & Tiaras with Emily Darlow
Feathers, Curtsies, and a Week That Had Everything
What a week. Trooping the Colour delivered sunshine and George’s sneeze, Garter Day gave us the year’s best double curtsy, the royal rent saga has grown three new tentacles, Harry and Meghan weighed in on social media bans, and across the North Sea the Norwegian royal family received news that stopped the continent. Boil the kettle and pull up a chair, there’s a lot to get through.
For those newer to the royal calendar, Trooping the Colour is the monarch’s official birthday parade, held each June regardless of when the sovereign was born.
It has marked the official birthday of the British monarch since the 1700s, featuring more than 1,400 soldiers, 200 horses, 400 musicians and a flypast that reliably reduces at least one child on the Buckingham Palace balcony to wide-eyed delirium.
This year’s parade on Saturday 13 June was King Charles’s fourth official birthday as monarch, and he marked it with evident satisfaction, smiling broadly as he surveyed the celebrations from the balcony alongside Queen Camilla.
Kate looked radiant in a bespoke light blue Lafayette coat dress from Catherine Walker, paired with a Philip Treacy hat and an Irish Guards brooch. The choice was fitting, as she is Colonel of the Irish Guards. George coordinated with his mother in a baby blue tie. The three Wales children were, by all accounts, exemplary, sitting upright and quietly in their carriage while waving to thousands lining The Mall. Even Louis largely avoided his now-infamous funny faces, though he was briefly spotted picking his nose in a fleeting moment of forgetfulness.
The moment that has been shared approximately one million times came when Prince George valiantly fought off a sneeze during the national anthem on the balcony, leaving Kate, who had apparently been quietly battling her own sneezes earlier in the procession, completely in stitches.
Less charming was the presence of anti-monarchy demonstrators positioned in front of Buckingham Palace. They raised signs reading “Not My King” and displayed images of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, stripped of his royal titles over his Epstein connections. Kate was photographed noticing the protesters and maintaining her composure with complete serenity. Princess Anne also appeared to deliver a telling look while passing the demonstrators on horseback. Practice makes perfect.
The very next day, the senior royals travelled to Windsor for the Order of the Garter, one of the oldest and most magnificent ceremonies in the royal calendar.
The tradition dates back to 1348 when King Edward III, inspired by the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, created his own band of honourable knights. Members process in blue velvet robes and ostrich feather-plumed hats from Windsor Castle to St George’s Chapel for a service of thanksgiving. It is, frankly, spectacular.
After channelling Princess Diana in her Catherine Walker coat dress at Trooping the Colour, Kate switched to a butter-yellow brocade coat dress for Garter Day.
The piece was custom-made by Patrick McDowell using fabric specially woven by Stephen Walters & Sons in Suffolk, a deliberate nod to British textile makers.
Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, wore a floral Suzannah London silk crepe dress. Both women watched from the steps as William and Edward processed in their robes.
Then came the moment of the day. As King Charles and Queen Camilla departed in their horse-drawn carriage, Kate and Sophie dipped into a perfectly synchronised double curtsy on the chapel steps. It was immaculate, effortless and immediately all over the internet. These are two women who have clearly done this a few times before.
If you thought last week’s National Audit Office revelations about royal rent were the full picture, I’m afraid not. This story is just getting started.
We already know King Charles quietly pays the rent for Beatrice and Eugenie from his Duchy of Lancaster income. Now the fuller picture is emerging, and it makes for interesting reading.
William and Kate pay £307,200 a year for Forest Lodge, their new home in Windsor Great Park. The arrangement requires quarterly payments of £76,800, no deposit, and the couple covers all internal refurbishment costs themselves. By royal standards, this is a refreshingly straightforward arrangement. William has reportedly made it clear that he intends to end the grace-and-favour tradition for non-working royals entirely. Sources say he wants future arrangements to reflect something closer to market value.
Meanwhile, Prince Edward pays a peppercorn rent on Bagshot Park, a 120-room, 51-acre estate in Surrey. He paid £5 million upfront in 2007 for a 150-year lease, while the Crown Estate covered much of the refurbishment. It is, by any measure, an exceptionally good deal.
The late Queen’s cousin, the Duke of Kent, and his wife Marie-Christine have also had their rent paid by the King from the Privy Purse. It is a grace-and-favour arrangement that has apparently existed for some time without significant public scrutiny.
The picture that emerges is of a system built on individual negotiation, historical precedent and almost complete opacity. The National Audit Office and an increasingly assertive Parliament now appear determined to shine a light on it. William’s instinct to reset the whole arrangement for the next generation looks more sensible by the week.
A story that would have been filed under “unlikely royal crossover” a few years ago saw Harry and Meghan welcome the UK Government’s announcement of a social media ban for under-16s, set to come into force in May 2027.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced the measure citing concerns about the harm social media is causing to children’s mental health. Harry and Meghan described it as “a welcome step forward” but warned that while measures such as these help reduce harm, they do not fix the problem at its source. They argued that lasting change requires safer platforms by design, meaningful accountability and a commitment to putting children’s wellbeing ahead of engagement and profit.
The Sussexes have been campaigning on this issue since 2025, when they unveiled the Lost Screen Memorial in New York. The installation featured fifty smartphone-shaped light boxes displaying photographs of children whose lives were lost due to the harms of social media. Whatever one thinks of the Sussexes’ broader situation, it remains one of their most consistent and important causes.
They issued the statement from California, with no palace involvement and no mention of the Crown. It came simply from two parents who have clearly thought deeply about what their own children will face online while advocating for others.
Finally, to the story that has dominated European royal news this week and deserves to be treated with the gravity it warrants.
Marius Borg Høiby, 29, the eldest son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway and stepson of Crown Prince Haakon, was sentenced on Monday to four years in prison after being convicted of rape.
He had been charged with sexually assaulting four women who were asleep or otherwise unable to resist between 2018 and 2024. He was found guilty of two of the four rape charges and was also convicted of domestic violence, including repeatedly hitting a former girlfriend in the face, choking her, slamming a door in her face and throwing objects at her. He had denied the rape allegations. Prosecutors sought a sentence of seven years and seven months, while his defence argued for acquittal on the rape charges and no more than 18 months for lesser offences. He retains the right to appeal.
The context for the Norwegian royal family is devastating. Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been battling chronic pulmonary fibrosis and was recently hospitalised again with a blood clot. Her daughter, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, left her studies at the University of Sydney to return home and support her mother. King Harald is in poor health, and Queen Sonja was hospitalised last week with heart issues.
The Norwegian royal family has faced this with dignity. It is, however, a family under enormous strain, and a conviction of this seriousness against a young man who carries no royal title but remains intimately connected to the Crown is a wound that will not heal quickly.
Feathers on The Mall, velvet robes at Windsor, a rent system being dragged into the light, two Californian parents taking on big tech, and a royal family in Oslo carrying more than any family should have to carry. The Crown, in all its forms, reminds us this week that it contains everything: the pageantry and the heartbreak, the curtsies and the verdicts. Until next week, keep the tea piping hot and the tiaras polished.
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