The Biggest Royal Family Rumors Through The Years
Britain's royal family has long utilized the media to further its objectives, eagerly inviting photographers and journalists to cover ribbon cuttings, school visits, and the like. On the flip side, the royals have also been notoriously secretive when it comes to things about them they don't want the public to know — especially regarding the desire to keep their health issues under wraps. When journalists attempt to get to the bottom of things, the relationship shifts and the media transforms from ally to adversary.
If history has proven one thing, it's that whenever there's an absence of transparency, conspiracy theories tend to flourish. The royals have certainly not been immune to this phenomenon; the tighter they've tried to clamp down by keeping a lid on their more salacious secrets, the greater the public speculation about what's going on behind Buckingham Palace's gates. The end result: rampant rumors about various members of the royal family, some seemingly plausible, others wildly inconceivable.
Here is a rundown of some of the biggest royal family rumors through the years.
James Hewitt, not King Charles, is Harry's biological father
Among the most prevalent rumors that have dogged the royal family regards the parentage of Prince Harry. According to a longstanding rumor, Harry is not the second child of then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana but the illegitimate love child of Diana and Capt. James Hewitt, with whom she'd had an affair. Harry addressed this in his 2023 memoir, "Spare." "One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt's flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism," Harry wrote. "Tabloid readers were delighted by the idea that the younger child of Prince Charles wasn't the child of Prince Charles. They couldn't get enough of this 'joke,' for some reason."
The rumor was resurrected in the 2014 play, "Truth, Lies, Diana," based on playwright Jon Conway's claims Hewitt had told him his affair with Diana began 18 months before Harry's birth. While Conway admitted he couldn't be certain Hewitt is Harry's father, he insisted that the timeline allowed for the possibility.
Hewitt, however, has publicly denied the rumor, and Harry confronted it head-on in a statement he read during his 2023 lawsuit against Mirror Group Newspapers. "Numerous newspapers had reported a rumor that my biological father was James Hewitt, a man my mother had a relationship with after I was born," Harry said, also complaining about a tabloid plot to prove it by stealing his DNA (via Daily Beast).
William's rumored affair with Rose Hanbury
In 2019, the British tabloid The Sun published a since-deleted article claiming that Kate Middleton, then Duchess of Cambridge, had a falling out with longtime friend Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley. Kate was reportedly furious about the gossipy piece claiming she ostracized her "royal rival," but the story took on a whole new aspect when British food critic Giles Coren tweeted (and subsequently deleted) a shocking allegation. "Yes. It is an affair ... I know about the affair," he wrote. "Everyone knows about the affair, darling." Days later, In Touch Weekly reported claims that William and Hanbury had been having an affair — resulting in threats of legal action from the prince's attorneys.
Coren subsequently admitted his original tweet had been a joke, assuming it would be obvious he had no access to royal circles. Nevertheless, the rumor continued to persist and caught fire again when Catherine, Princess of Wales, was out of the public eye for several months in early 2024 after undergoing abdominal surgery. Even TV host Stephen Colbert weighed in on "The Late Show," delving into the rumors when he told viewers, "Well now, internet sleuths are guessing that Kate's absence may be related to her husband, and the future king of England, William, having an affair."
The whole thing grew so frenetic that Hanbury had her lawyers issue a statement, telling Business Insider that "the rumors are completely false."
Princess Kate's daughter was born via surrogate
That was far from the only unsubstantiated rumor to dog Princess Kate over the years. Years earlier, scuttlebutt emerged regarding the birth of Princess Charlotte, her second child with husband Prince William, and currently third in the line of succession for the throne of England.
When the future Prince and Princess of Wales greeted the public with their newborn daughter, Russian news outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda greeted the photos with skepticism. The outlet shared an opinion that the then-Duchess of Cambridge looked far too serene and rested for a woman who'd just given birth, also claiming the baby appeared to be several days old, not a newborn. "There is nothing which would help a woman, even if she gave birth with the help of best doctors, stand up five hours after giving birth — and leave the clinic on her feet," the Russian outlet scoffed (via Daily Mail). That led to a wild conclusion: that the baby had been delivered via a surrogate, and Kate had been wearing a prosthetic pregnancy belly in order to conceal the ruse.
Buckingham Palace spokespeople did not comment on the Russian-born conspiracy theory — in much the same way that they haven't commented on the existence of the Loch Ness Monster or whether or not the Earth is flat.
Speculation the Duchess of Sussex faked her pregnancies
Despite the dodgy nature (and suspicious origins) of the conspiracy theory about Princess Charlotte's birth, similar claims subsequently engulfed Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. As the Daily Beast reported, there was a barrage of online speculation that the Sussexes' children were born via IVF and carried by a surrogate, while the former "Suits" star pulled the wool over everyone's eyes with the help of either a pillow of a prosthetic pregnancy belly.
Comments were all over X, formerly Twitter. "I don't think Meghan Markle is actually pregnant. I think they are using a #surrogate and lying to the public. #moonbump," one person tweeted, with the hashtag referring to the company Moonbump, which manufactures prosthetic devices designed to assist actors fake a pregnancy. "Meghan's pregnancy is a fake pregnancy, she is wearing a bump that keeps enlarging or shrinking in size, she is able to bend over and even run in her supposed 8th month of pregnancy. She's using a surrogate. Research it," another skeptic confidently said.
Katie Nicholl, Vanity Fair's royal correspondent, weighed in on the prevalence of the bizarre theory. "Suggestions that she has faked her own pregnancy are ludicrous," Nicholl told the Daily Beast, marveling at the level of vitriol directed at the Duchess of Sussex. "I do think the online trolling has got out of hand and has been unacceptable," she added.
The alleged love child of Charles and Camilla
King Charles III has been at the center of various rumors over the years, but it's fair to say the juiciest of these has been the one contending that he and Queen Camilla are the parents of a middle-aged Australian man.
Those rumors have been spread by the man himself, Simon Dorante-Day, who insists that he is the secret love child of Charles and Camilla, born when the two were still teenagers. "My grandmother, who had worked for the queen, told me outright that I was Camilla and Charles' son many times," Dorante-Day told 7NEWS Australia. According to Dorante-Day, he was born in 1966, with Camilla secretly keeping him until he was eight months old before he was adopted by a British couple, presumably because his adoptive grandparents worked for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. He also claimed to have childhood recollections of being taken to clandestine meetings with an unfamiliar woman, whom he has since come to believe was Camilla.
In February 2024, Dorante-Day announced plans to reach out to Prince Harry in hopes of confirming his link to the royal gene pool. "It's worth me pointing out that Charles and Camilla, Buckingham Palace, the entire royal family — not one of them has ever said my claims are not true. They've never denied what I believe, told me I'm wrong," he told 7NEWS Australia during another interview. "And I think their silence speaks volumes."
Princess Diana's car accident was actually an assassination
The entire world mourned when Princess Diana died after a tragic car accident in Paris in August 1997 at 36. Since then, the late royal's death has sparked numerous conspiracy theories asserting that the car crash was no accident.
The most prevalent of those theories came from Mohammad Al-Fayed, owner of the iconic London department store Harrods and father of Diana's boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, who was also killed in the crash. For years, Al-Fayed asserted that Diana and his son were assassinated by British intelligence agency MI6 on orders from Prince Philip. Al-Fayed alleged that his son and Diana were engaged and that she was pregnant with their child. The coroner assigned to Diana's death confirmed that the latter claim was untrue.
Al-Fayed spent millions to ensure that an inquest was held into the accident, which finally took place in 2008. As BBC News reported, subtlety was not his strong suit when he took to the stand and spouted his claims. "She knew Prince Philip and Prince Charles were trying to get rid of her," he said of Diana, blasting Philip as a "racist" and a "Nazi." The inquest ultimately concluded there was no truth to his allegations and that the accident was caused by a tipsy chauffeur hounded by hordes of paparazzi.
Diana's secret IVF daughter
Another bizarre theory involving Princess Diana posited that Prince William and Prince Harry were not her only children. In 2015, the supermarket tabloid Globe claimed that the princes had a secret sister living in America. That sibling — allegedly named Sarah — was supposedly the result of 1980 gynecological testing to confirm Diana's fertility and determine whether she would be able to bear an heir before her engagement to Prince Charles was announced.
According to the Globe, some of Diana's eggs were harvested and fertilized with Charles' sperm via IVF; when the experiment proved to be successful, the resulting embryos were then destroyed — or at least that was the plan. Instead, a "rogue doctor" absconded with one of the embryos, which he implanted in his wife's uterus, resulting in a baby. Subsequent issues of the Globe resurrected the story with new details, including an insider's claim that a royal visit to the U.S. by William and his wife served as cover for a clandestine meeting between William and his secret sister.
The saga hit its nadir with a later cover story claiming that Sarah headed to London for a showdown with her father, with a headline screaming, "Di's Secret Daughter Confronts Charles: You Killed My Mother! The Most Shocking Royal Story Ever."
Prince Harry's marriage to Meghan is Britain's long-game strategy to recapture America
When Prince Harry married Meghan Markle in 2011, it was because the two had fallen in love—or at least that's what the royal family would have you believe. According to a strange online conspiracy theory, it was a marriage of convenience intended to return America to British control after more than two centuries of independence.
In a since-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter, Greg Pollowitz theorized that the union of Meghan and Harry was Britain's first step in an insidious, multigenerational plot to recapture the colonies. "Prince Harry's kids will be Americans," Pollowitz tweeted. "What if one grows up to be president and is in line for the throne at the same time? Brits are playing long-ball here, but it's a smart move. They want America back and this is how they'll do it."
The outlandish theory was clearly introduced with tongue planted firmly in cheek, which was evident to some (although not all) who responded. "It's The Crown/House of Cards crossover episode you've been waiting for," posted a Netflix fan. "This is the most credible post-Brexit strategy for the UK that I've heard so far," added someone else, while another already had a campaign slogan in mind for an inevitable run for the White House: "Prince Harry Jr 2052."
The queen was a shape-shifting Illuminati space lizard who ate babies
David Icke was a professional soccer player in his native Britain until segueing into a whole new career as the perpetrator of some of the world's most unhinged, crackpot conspiracy theories. At the top of Icke's greatest hits is his belief that the late Queen Elizabeth II and her family descend from an ancient bloodline that had resulted from humans breeding with reptilian extraterrestrials thousands of years ago; the only reason people haven't caught on is because the queen and her fellow lizards have the ability to shape-shift into human form (they are also, Icke maintained, Satan-worshipping pedophiles who drink the blood of infants).
In an interview reported on by Express, Icke maintained that those lizard-human hybrids had been worshipped as gods in ancient times, with their descendants becoming the forebears of today's royal families. In the modern era, these reptilian hybrids rule the world through a secret society known as the Illuminati. For proof, Icke claimed he'd visited dozens of countries and met with numerous people who told them they'd witnessed VIPs morph from human to reptile and back again, right in front of their astonished eyes. "When I look into the queen's eyes, I don't see human eyes," Icke told the Sydney Morning Herald.
While most people would file this theory in the "bonkers" category, it's oddly not as fringe as one might imagine; according to a survey by Public Policy Polling, 4% of American voters believe Icke is telling the truth.
Princess Margaret had a secret love child
One of the royal family's biggest scandals is also responsible for one of its strangest rumors: that Princess Margaret got pregnant and had a secret baby with the love of her life, Capt. Peter Townsend (whom the queen forbade her to marry because he was divorced).
While there has been no evidence to suggest even a whiff of truth to that rumor, in 2007, British accountant Robert Brown contended that he was Margaret's love child. Brown was born in Kenya, where his father was posted during the Second World War, while his mother had worked for the queen's former dresser. He believes he was adopted by his parents in order to protect Margaret from scandal and launched a lawsuit seeking access to the late royal's will in the hopes that it might back up his claim.
Lady Rosemary Muir, who knew both Margaret and the queen, dismissed his allegations entirely; she insisted that she'd interacted frequently with Margaret during the time she was supposedly pregnant with Brown. "These claims are absolute poppycock," she told the Daily Mail. "It's lunacy to suggest she gave birth to a child out of wedlock, then or at any time."
Meghan Markle is an American spy ... or maybe a robot
Sometimes, it can be difficult to find the origin of a rumor about the royal family, but there are those occasions when it can be precisely pinpointed. Such was the case when British actor Paul Bettany appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in 2018. Discussing Prince Harry's upcoming wedding to Meghan Markle, Bettany jokingly offered his own take on what was going on. "I think that Meghan Markle might be a sleeper agent for the U.S. government," Bettany declared, claiming that her father being busted for staging pre-wedding paparazzi photos for a tabloid was proof. "The dad doing the photos thing, it's like a false-flag event," Bettany mused. "I think the CIA's involved — everybody. I think Piers Morgan's involved."
An even more bizarre theory about the Duchess of Sussex emerged when doppelgängers of Harry and Meghan appeared on "Britain's Got Talent," apparently actors wearing lifelike masks courtesy of the famed Madame Tussauds wax museum. When a brief clip was circulated online, some who saw it became freaked out by the rigid, unmoving face of the Markle mask, not realizing it wasn't actually her. In fact, some since-deleted social media posts theorized that the royal family had the duchess assassinated and replaced by a robot.
Jack the Ripper was Queen Victoria's grandson
One of the oldest royal rumors still making the rounds involves the infamous serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who terrorized London's East End during the late 1880s. In 1970, the Sunday Times ran a story featuring a bombshell claim: that Jack the Ripper was actually Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, grandson of Queen Victoria. The story's basis came from the claim of Thomas E.A. Stowell, a surgeon who claimed to know the killer's true identity.
While he didn't ID the royal outright, he did offer a series of clues, revealing that the killer was a gay male with an aristocratic background who'd been treated for syphilis. "His grandmother, who outlived him, was very much the stern Victorian matriarch, widely and deeply respected," Stowell wrote. "His father, to whose title was the heir, was a gay cosmopolitan and did much to improve the status of England internationally." For the Sunday Times, that was all the evidence needed to prove the Duke of Clarence was Jack the Ripper. "All the points of Mr. Stowell's odd story fit this man," noted the Sunday Times. "He did die young, he was ill, he was almost certainly affected mentally by his illness."
The truth may never be known; weeks after that bombshell report, Stowell died, and his son burned all evidence that could have potentially pointed to the duke being the ripper.