The current British Royal Family have always been a reliable source of creatively strange tabloid fodder. There’s even a generations-spanning Netflix show that’s among the juiciest in the streaming world. Somehow there’s still more unusual dirt to mine from them, including this new tidbit: Queen Elizabeth II did not stand in the way of Prince Harry serving in Afghanistan. Far from it.
As per The Daily Mail and the Telegraph, a new documentary on the British broadcaster ITV called The Real Crown reveals that the late Elizabeth II wanted not only Harry but also William to go abroad and fight for queen (i.e., her) and country. The monarch — who apparently had a “deep understanding” of the conflict, which lasted some 13 years, starting in 2001 — even held a meeting with the former head of the British army, telling him, “My grandsons have taken my shilling, therefore they must do their duty.”
What does “take my shilling” mean? It doesn’t mean Harry and William literally stole a measly amount of money from her. “Take the shilling” is an old British phrase meaning to enlist in the King’s army. Since at the time there was no king, Elizabeth II seemed to be doing a play on words. It also suggests both grandsons had enlisted of their own volition.
Alas, as we all know, only Harry served, but only because William was “heir to the throne,” and therefore, they reasoned, “the risk is too great” for him to go off to war. With the younger Harry, however, who was a couple people (including his father) behind in line to the throne, “the risk was acceptable.” Well, then.
Not that William was happy to be blocked from serving. One source says he was “very keen to go. Unequivocally,” but that it was all “complex, and some very great minds and experienced people took a view on it.”
And so Harry did not one tour in Afghanistan but two. He wrote about it in his mega-selling tell-all Spare, where he revealed he killed 25 Taliban fighters, and that his training made him dehumanize them, seeing adversaries not as people but as “chess pieces removed from the board.”
(Via The Daily Mail and Telegraph)