Table of contents for PEOPLE Story of the Royals in People

IT WAS A MATTER OF THE HEART THAT changed the course of history. Queen Elizabeth II, in all likelihood, would not have become the longest-reigning monarch in the history of her nation, and the royal family might not exist as we have come to know them, had not King Edward VIII announced in a solemn radio address broadcast from Windsor Castle on the evening of Dec. 11, 1936, that he had given up the throne in order to share his life with “the woman I love.” Edward, the reluctant monarch, had met the love of his life, Wallis Simpson—an American socialite then married to a British shipping executive—at a house party given five years earlier by another of his married paramours, Thelma, Lady Furness. Glamorous and gifted with poise…

THE QUEEN IS NOT EASILY rattled. But in 1981, when a pack of newsmen trampled through her winter retreat at Sandringham in search of her son’s latest flame, Her Majesty snapped, “I wish you would go away!” Somehow people couldn’t turn away when Diana was around. Even at 19, her cheeks plump and a fringe of hair shielding her blue eyes, Lady Diana Spencer was captivating. To Fleet Street she was golden: Chasing her through South Kensington to the school where she worked became a kind of game. On one occasion, the school’s codirector recalled, “she was pursued like an animal, hounded into a corner with her hands over her face, and a member of the public came and said, ‘Leave her alone.’” Yet just a few months later…

SURELY THERE’S NEVER been a future King of England who began his life in such common quarters. Just one day after George made his public debut before a crowd of hundreds on the steps of St. Mary’s Hospital on July 23, 2013—and had his first cuddle with Gan-Gan (aka the Queen) at the palace—the newborn prince was whisked off to Bucklebury, hometown of the Middleton family. Though third in line to the throne, he arrived without fanfare. “No one was out on the street to cheer or wave a flag,” said an observer. No matter: His overjoyed maternal grandparents, Carole and Michael, whose home offered a sanctuary away from palace protocol, gave him a hero’s welcome. That’s life for the Cambridge kids, whose hands-on mom and dad never let…

No mere clotheshorse with a first-class-wardrobe allowance, Princess Diana dressed beautifully and with a sense of purpose. During her frequent visits to hospitals, for instance, she wore what she called her “caring wardrobe,” comprising cheerful colors and no hats or gloves, because they got in the way of holding hands and offering hugs. Just as determinedly, when the occasion called for all-eyes-on-me glamour, Diana chose sexy, formfitting wear, such as the black off-the-shoulder number, forever after known as the Revenge Dress, that she wore on the evening in 1994 when her husband publicly admitted his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. The message was clear: I’m here, better than ever. As the princess’s life increasingly diverged from the rest of the royal family after her split from Charles, Diana booked…

Yes, Americans are proud of our democratic government, the we-the-people brand of political representation we secured after giving the British overlords the boot during the Revolutionary War. In the nearly two and a half centuries since King George III and his dreaded Redcoats, or any other crowned tyrant, last wielded power over this egalitarian land, we’ve never looked back. Yet even if most of us can’t imagine bowing our heads to a stranger with a fancy title, there’s still a large part of the population that admires and enjoys the British monarchy, especially the crowns and palaces and carriages and other gilt-edged trimmings. To the average contemporary citizen, they seem both rich in history and wonderfully exotic. How else to explain the millions of followers who tuned in early…

The 2018 wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle was remarkable in many ways: Not only was the bride an American, her entry into the royal family represented a dramatic evolution of the British monarchy’s attitude to divorce. When King Edward VIII fell for the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson in the 1930s, the Church of England—which is officially helmed by the monarch—did not allow divorced people to remarry during the lifetime of a former spouse. Since both of Simpson’s former husbands were still alive, the British government and the dominions of the Commonwealth were strongly opposed to Simpson’s becoming queen. The King, however, was just as adamant about going through with the marriage; he abdicated in 1936, ending his 325-day reign, and lived in exile with Simpson for…

AFTER PRINCESS DIANA died suddenly in a car crash in the summer of 1997, Prince Charles, distraught over the death of his ex-wife despite their miserable marriage, reportedly told his private secretary Stephen Lamport, “They’re all going to blame me. The world is going to go completely mad.” He wasn’t entirely wrong. Diana’s death and the shock it caused around the world boiled over into anger in Britain, much of it directed at Charles. His relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, the woman Diana famously called the “third person” in her marriage, won him little sympathy from the public. In her confessional TV interview in November 1995, Diana had brashly questioned whether Charles was fit to be King, and many Britons shared her concern. As we look back today, that…

The rules of British royal succession can be complicated. Just ask Anne Boleyn. She may well have kept her crown, not to mention her head, had the Succession to the Crown Act, passed by Parliament in 2013, been in place 500 years earlier, nullifying her do-or-die need to bear King Henry VIII a healthy male heir. Today, thanks to the new law that ends the system of succession that gave princes precedence over princesses, H.R.H. Princess Charlotte of Cambridge—great-granddaughter of Elizabeth II—did not lose her fourth-place position in line upon the April 2018 birth of her younger brother Louis. From there the line of succession zigzags between generations and genders—bewilderingly so in light of the fact that the Succession to the Crown Act was made retroactive only to Oct.…

“I LOVE MY CHILDREN THE SAME WAY ANY FATHER DOES, SO WE ARE VERY NORMAL IN THAT SENSE”—PRINCE WILLIAM “I HAVE NEVER SEEN BEATRICE AS HAPPY AS SHE IS RIGHT NOW”—SARAH, DUCHESS OF YORK…

SHE BECAME QUEEN BY a twist of fate and went on to become Britain’s longest-serving monarch, whose reign has spanned 68 years from the postwar era to today’s digital age. Elizabeth II’s life was forever changed by a single event that dramatically altered the course of history and put her on an unexpected pathway to the throne. But what if it had played out differently? The birth of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor on April 21, 1926, was not considered a milestone worthy of public fanfare when she arrived into a world at the height of the Roaring Twenties. Her parents, Albert and Elizabeth, the Duke and Duchess of York, were senior members of the royal family but not expected to wear the crown. They doted on their curly-haired “Lilibet,”…

CAMERAS FLASHED, reporters craned their necks, and all eyes were fixed squarely on the heir, but when Prince William visited a child-bereavement center in 2017, he seemed oblivious to anything other than the quiet pain of a little girl who had lost her father. “You know, I lost my mummy when I was very young too,” the prince told 9-year-old Aoife, whose father had died of pancreatic cancer. “Do you speak about your daddy? It’s very important to talk about it.” That touching moment offers a glimpse of the King to come when Will takes the throne one day: a compassionate monarch who’s comfortable revealing the man behind the magic. Shaped as much by his mother’s legacy and loss as his royal destiny, William has “lived and breathed what…

HIS GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-grandfather was so hated that a liberty-minded American mob toppled his statue in 1776 and molded the tyrant’s lead likeness into musket balls used to rid these shores of the Crown’s rule for ever after. And so, 163 years later, King George VI might have wondered what sort of reception awaited him when, in 1939, he became the first reigning British monarch ever to tread on American soil. A throng of more than a million citizens took to the streets of Washington, D.C., not to call for his head but to roar approval for the British sovereign (of The King’s Speech fame) and his queen consort, Elizabeth (later beloved as the Queen Mum), as they arrived for dinner with President Franklin Roosevelt at the White House, rebuilt after…

THE DUKE AND DUCHESS of Sussex wore radiant smiles as they arrived at the March 7 tribute to Britain’s armed services at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Harry resplendent in the gold-braided uniform of the Captain General of the Royal Marines and his wife, Meghan, in a regal red gown. But emotions ran high during what would be one of the couple’s final official engagements before they began new lives as private citizens. Harry, who had served the nation’s army, including two tours in Afghanistan, was visibly moved by the standing ovation from the largely uniformed crowd. “He’s a military man through and through,” a palace insider told People. “That’s 10 years of his life that he gave to serve his country, and he basically has to give it away…