DYNASTY: The Royal Family’s Most Challenging Year Vanity Fair

It’s been four years since Meghan Markle and Prince Harry walked away from their royal roles, sparking an endless stream of media attention and second-guessing in the UK. This year, the biggest headlines—from historic health challenges for Kate Middleton and King Charles III to royal banquets and honor ceremonies—have been coming from Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. Meanwhile, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been carving out their own luxurious, semi-royal, and very philanthropic path thousands of miles away, in the court of Montecito. 

When King Charles III announced his cancer diagnosis in February, there was an outpouring of emotion in the UK, along with some concern about what it would look like if the monarch not wasn’t able to greet his public on a daily basis. From the beginning, the king balanced his treatments with his duties, and privately he told his medical team that attending Trooping the Colour, the parade that marks his birthday, was nonnegotiable. By the time the June celebration rolled around, the king was out on the Buckingham Palace balcony with Queen Camilla at his side, and the clouds over the Windsors’ future seemed to part. On this week’s episode of DYNASTY: The Royal Family’s Most Challenging Year, hosts Claire Howorth, Katie Nicholl, and Erin Vanderhoof return to the unprecedented events of the year, and Charles’ embrace of radical (for royals, anyway) transparency.

After a year in which the British Royal Family has been forced to foreground its humanity and vulnerability, DYNASTY is returning for a special four-episode series to examine the events and share behind-the-scenes details. On this inaugural episode, hosts Claire Howorth, Katie Nicholl, and Erin Vanderhoof discuss Prince William’s role as the royal responsible for holding the family together amid a maelstrom of illness and personal rifts. How has William balanced his public role with his private challenges? Has he recovered from the hit to his reputation when Harry spilled  in his memoir, Spare? And if his reign were to come sooner than anyone imagined, would he be ready? 

 At what point do you walk away from your dreams? Kashy gave himself a deadline: if he didn’t become a pop star by the time he turned 25, he’d give up music. But years after he left his music career behind, the universe gave him a second chance, thousands of miles from home.

The wives and daughters of Dubai’s ruler live in unbelievable luxury. So why do the women in Sheikh Mohammed’s family keep trying to run away? The New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake joins In the Dark’s Madeleine Baran to tell the story of the royal women who risked everything to flee the brutality of one of the world’s most powerful men. In four episodes, drawing on thousands of pages of secret correspondence and never-before-heard audio recordings, “The Runaway Princesses” takes listeners behind palace walls, revealing a story of astonishing courage and cruelty.“The Runaway Princesses” is a four-part narrative series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. To keep listening, follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts or via this link https://link.chtbl.com/itd_f

The king’s speech? That may mean far less than what has so far gone unsaid over the days of celebration and circumstance. What comes next for the man and his family?