It Seems King Charles Is into Hot Goss Just Like The Rest of Us

(Image credit: Getty)

published 10 October 2023

King Charles may have a full calendar of royal engagements, travel, and those red boxes, but he’s still got time for that hot goss—about politics and politicians, in particular.

“King Charles loves political gossip and wants to be kept informed of what goes on behind the scenes,” a source speaking to The Daily Express reports.

It seems he follows in the footsteps of his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth, who Scotland’s former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said also enjoyed political gossip and would try to get the “real story” behind newspaper reports. “She liked a bit of gossip,” Sturgeon said on the “Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth” podcast. “She liked to hear what was happening in the political world. She would ask me about things she had read in the papers and what was the real story here.”

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Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles together

Charles himself has been no stranger to political controversy, The Daily Express reports; he has “often found himself in hot water for appearing to breach the royal family’s sacred rules of remaining non-partisan,” the outlet writes. For example, in 2015, the then Prince of Wales “sent a host of secret letters to ministers in an attempt to influence Government policy,” The Daily Express reports. “The 27 letters sent between September 2004 and March 2005, known as ‘black spider’ memos because of his spiral handwriting, were released after a 10-year legal battle. The letters revealed the heir to the throne had lobbied the prime minister and other senior ministers on the defense budget, the national curriculum, and badger culling.”

More recently, Charles is said to have described the Government’s controversial policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda as “appalling,” and his championing of the environment and warnings against climate change have also gotten him into hot water, with some accusing him of diving too deep into political fodder.

“When he ascended the throne last September, Charles made a concerted effort to ditch what many called political meddling and uphold the principle that the monarch is above politics,” The Daily Express reports.

Still, it seems, like the rest of us, he’s into the juicy scoop.

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.