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Like anyone else, the royals love to let loose on a glitzy getaway.
The British royal family’s summer vacations are typically kept private. But over the years, their go-to destinations have made headlines. And it turns out they don’t just go to Balmoral, their Scottish estate, to reflect and spend time with loved ones.
“There have been many incidents of royal recreations which have raised eyebrows in the past,” Ian Pelham Turner told Fox News Digital. “In the 1950s, Prince Philip regularly went on sailing trips to New Guinea, Ceylon and Malaysia for three months at a time, allegedly with female secretaries, leaving the queen alone in London.”
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“Balmoral was always the official favorite for the royals and the queen chose [to spend] her last days there,” he shared. “[But] there were many [past] stories of girls rushing up to [the former Prince] Charles in skimpy bikinis when he was a bachelor visiting Australia.”
Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams pointed out that Prince Harry’s escapades in Sin City are still legendary.
“Prince Harry’s naked cavorting in Las Vegas was the perfect advertisement for the city – ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,’” Fitzwilliams told Fox News Digital. “[The city] reportedly benefited from the publicity enormously.”
Harry wrote about his 2012 trip to Las Vegas in his explosive 2023 memoir “Spare,” Vanity Fair reported. According to the Duke of Sussex, after a night of gambling and boozing, his pals invited a group of “dodgy” women to his luxurious suite.
“I suggested we up the stakes,” Harry wrote, as quoted by the outlet. “How about a game of strip pool? Enthusiastic cheers. Ten minutes later I was the big loser, reduced to my skivvies. Then I lost my skivvies. It was harmless, silly, or so I thought.”
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The photos from the night were posted on TMZ. And while Harry was expecting his father, King Charles, to reprimand him, he was “gentle, even bemused.”
“He felt for me, he said, he’d been there, though he’d never been naked on a front page,” Harry wrote. “Actually, that was untrue. When I was about 8 years old, a German newspaper had published naked photos of him, taken with a telephoto lens while he was holidaying in France.”
But several royal experts agreed that Harry wasn’t the royal family’s most well-known for escapades across the pond – it was the late queen’s younger sister, Princess Margaret. Her lady-in-waiting’s husband, Lord Colin Tennant, spent vast amounts of his fortune on transforming Mustique, a tiny island in the Caribbean, into a party resort for the rich and famous. He gifted Margaret a 10-acre plot of land on the island.
“Princess Margaret’s scandalous affair with ‘toy boy’ turned wannabe disco star Roddy Llewellyn also unfolded on Mustique,” Vanity Fair reported. “In 1976, photos of the couple frolicking on Mustique (Llewellyn wearing Union Jack swimming trunks) were published in The News of the World, hastening Margaret’s separation from equally unfaithful husband Antony Armstrong-Jones.”
Over the years, other royals have found themselves in hot water. Vanity Fair reported that the “most notorious vacation mishap in modern royal history” took place in 1992. Sarah, Duchess of York, who had separated from Prince Andrew, was soaking up the sun in St. Tropez with her beau, financier John Bryan. It was there where paparazzi snapped photos of Bryan sucking on her toes while she sunbathed topless.
Sarah and Andrew’s divorce was finalized in 1996.
“Recently, there haven’t been any scandals,” British royals expert Hilary Fordwich told Fox News Digital. “But back in 2012… the topless photo scandal involving Kate Middleton… was considered in such poor taste that the media has stayed away from such [stories] in general.”
In 2012, the French magazine Closer and the local newspaper La Provence published photos taken with telephoto lenses of the future Princess of Wales sunbathing topless with Prince William at a château in France, Glamour magazine reported. According to the outlet, the couple sued and were later awarded $118,000 in damages by a French court.
While the royal family’s vacations don’t always take place during the steamy season, they are known for letting their hair down when duty doesn’t call.
According to Vanity Fair, the Prince and Princess of Wales, now parents of three young children, also enjoy embarking on family trips to Mustique, the Isles of Scilly, the ski resort of Courchevel in France, as well as Jordan, where Kate spent a part of her childhood.
“By all accounts, Prince William and Catherine are such upstanding royals that they simply aren’t involved in any scandals,” Fordwich added.
For William and Harry, Africa has been a destination for love. Prince William proposed to Kate in Kenya in 2010. Harry and his then-girlfriend, Meghan Markle, traveled to his beloved Botswana in 2017.
“I gave her my best Botswana pitch,” Harry wrote in “Spare,” as quoted by Vanity Fair. “Birthplace of all humankind. Most sparsely populated nation on Earth. True Garden of Eden, with 40 percent of the land given over to nature. Plus, the largest number of elephants of any nation on Earth. Above all, it was the place where I’d found myself, where I always re-found myself, where I always felt close to – magic? If she was interested in magic, she should come with me, experience it with me.”
Since the couple tied the knot in 2018, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have reportedly vacationed in Costa Rica, Canouan in the Caribbean, as well as Elton John’s home in Nice.
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“We look forward to hearing how they vacation in their reported holiday home in Portugal,” said Fitzwilliams.
Harry is said to have bittersweet memories of the south of France. In July 1997, his mother, Princess Diana, was photographed in St. Tropez on the Jonikal, Mohamed Al-Fayed’s yacht. A month later, the Princess of Wales died from injuries she sustained in a Paris car crash at age 36.
According to the outlet, Diana was known to use her getaway during the last year of her life to bargain with paparazzi, who were eager to take photos of her in stylish swimsuits. It’s been said that Diana wanted to show the public that she was free after her divorce from Charles was finalized in 1996.
“There was much laughter, horseplay, the norm whenever Mummy and Willy and I were together, though even more so on that holiday,” Harry recalled in “Spare,” as quoted by the outlet.
“Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven. The weather was sublime, the food was tasty, Mummy was smiling.”
In recent years, Charles appears to be focusing on cost. While he still maintains his late mother’s tradition of spending his summers in Balmoral, Buckingham Palace announced that the king will end 156 years of service for the Royal Train. The palace noted it costs too much to operate and would need a significant upgrade for more advanced rail systems.
“It is a pity this did not happen in the 1990s,” said Fitzwilliams. “The Royal Yacht Britannia, which was decommissioned in 1997, should have been saved… It was famously used for the royal family’s summer holiday when Queen Elizabeth could relax at her beloved Balmoral. This became a rite of passage for members of the royal family.”
“A royal favorite was the Britannia,” chimed Turner. “It was one of the few times the queen was seen to shed a tear when it was decommissioned due to cutbacks in finances.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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