Prince Edward is the Windsors’ new ‘leading man,’ complete with a butched-up image

8 months ago 42
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Did you realize that Prince Edward and Sophie were in Scotland last week? I barely saw anything about it, but they were in Kincardineshire, Scotland last Friday, the same day the Princess of Wales announced her cancer and chemotherapy treatment. Which is probably why Edward and Sophie’s trip barely got any attention. While they are now the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, they go by the Earl and Countess of Forfar when in Scotland. Which is also weird! You would think their Edinburgh titles would be their Scottish titles. They visited the Bogenraith Equestrian Centre and touched some horses. Edward is reportedly uncomfortable with physical contact, but he was really putting his paws on those horses (and the horses seemed into it). Meanwhile, did you know that Edward is the monarchy’s new secret weapon?? Usually that designation is saved for his wife, but now Edward is getting some of that attention. He is truly the last prince standing! From this dumb Telegraph column about how Edward is a big manly man because he shoots deer.

A completely different picture is emerging of Prince Edward, who seems destined to be the Royal Family’s new “leading man” – albeit temporarily – thanks to both the King and Prince William curtailing their public duties. Although some eyebrows may have been raised over him abandoning his training as a Royal Marine and for embarrassing the Royal family through dabbling in show business, I heard from a man who had a different view entirely of the youngest of the late Queen’s four children.

“He was a really tough bloke,” said a former Balmoral gamekeeper, who took Edward deer stalking in the hills around his mother’s Highland home.

With King Charles suspending his list of public engagements while he is treated for cancer and now William, the Prince of Wales, expected to do the same at least until the middle of next month while his wife, too, receives treatment, Prince Edward may now become an even more central figure in the nation’s life. Edward will be the senior male involved in royal engagements, although his older sister Anne, the Princess Royal, is already heavily involved in supporting the monarchy through this incredibly difficult period. Edward, who recently celebrated his 60th birthday, was third in line to the throne when he was born after his elder brothers Charles and Andrew. He has now slipped to 14th.

One person who always thought highly of him was Sandy Masson, the former head stalker on the royal estate at Balmoral. To this hard as nails countryman, Edward was “the best of them all”. Nicknamed “Massacre Masson”, by Edward’s father, the late Duke of Edinburgh, because of the number of stags the stalker shot in the estate’s annual cull, Masson regularly took members of the Royal family stalking. He was in no doubt about which of them he respected most.

Of the three senior Royal princes – Charles, Andrew and Edward – Masson declared to anyone who’d listen in the Climbers’ Bar at the Glen Clova Hotel: “Edward was easily the toughest of all the princes. Nothing was too much for him.”

Asked how he explained the Prince’s decision to quit his Royal Marine training, which is renowned for its toughness and for the “beasting” endured by recruits, he replied: ‘That’s easy – he didn’t want to waste people’s time. He didn’t want to be a Marine. Simple as that.”

Masson, who died several years ago, introduced several generations of the Royal family to this sometimes controversial sport – earning some unflattering headlines years later when he “blooded” the then teenage Prince William after he’d shot his first stag.

I had met Masson several times when he had a cottage on the edge of the Balmoral estate and as is typical of gamekeepers and stalkers everywhere there was no ‘them and us’ in the relationship with the Royal family. To Masson, the man who’s now King Charles but was then Prince of Wales, was simply “Wales” but it was clear from these conversations over a dram that he had a special regard for Prince Edward.

[From The Telegraph]

This is where we are. Not just the endgame for the monarchy, but an endgame for British masculinity. Like, one of the few things I actually like about Edward is that he seemed arty and a bit sensitive – now they’re trying to butch up his image and pretend that he’s secretly been the “toughest” of all QEII’s sons. Notice I didn’t say “all of QEII’s children,” because everyone knows Anne is the toughest one. Anne is not arty or sensitive or squeamish or delicate. Anne would slice out a beating heart and squish it and then go to her next three events. But Edward? No. I don’t believe it. And I’m appalled that they’re applying these toxic-masculinity standards to poor Edward. Just let him do his artsy theater stuff, please.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

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