DYNASTY: The Royal Family’s Most Challenging Year

This spring, Catherine, Princess of Wales, ended a long silence and rampant public speculation with a solemn video announcing her cancer diagnosis. In the final episode of DYNASTY: The Windsors’ Most Difficult Year, hosts Claire Howorth, Katie Nicholl, and Erin Vanderhoof explain why the message that accompanied her diagnosis was the most important speech of her royal career, and what it says about the Catherine we will see in the future. After a year of struggle, is the monarchy emerging into a new, calmer era? And what lessons will the Windsors take away from their brushes with ill-health and public speculation?

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?

The DYNASTY hosts recap King Charles’s coronation, the highs and lows, and the Prince Harry of it all

After Harry and Meghan’s royal exit, the royal family doubled down on “never complain, never explain,” but there are a few signs that the Buckingham Palace public relations strategy is undergoing a reset. Can King Charles change the Palace’s relationship with the press?

On a special episode of DYNASTY, cohosts Katie Nicholl and Erin Vanderhoof break down some of the king’s successes on the world stage and some of the threats to his new reign.

After taking a few days to savor Prince Harry’s eye-opening memoir Spare, cohosts Katie Nicholl and Erin Vanderhoof sit down to explain the book’s revelations and debate whether Harry will come to regret his disclosures. Can the Firm weather more controversy? And will the royals ever make up with Harry and Meghan?

All ten episodes of season 5 of The Crown are now on Netflix, and Dynasty's Erin Vanderhoof joins Vanity Fair reporter Julie Miller for a special Still Watching breaking down the first five episodes of the new season. Catching up with the royals in the 90s, the decades of Charles and Diana's bitter divorce and the Queen's "annus horribilis", the new season includes plenty of drama for every adult member of the royal family, plus the introduction of new key figures like Mohamed Al-Fayed and Hasnat Khan. Vanity Fair's royal correspondent and Dynasty cohost Katie Nicholl also joins for a conversation about how the real-life royals are feeling about the new season, and why the show may be much more than just an inconvenience for the newly crowned King Charles III. For more on The Crown, read all of Vanity Fair's coverage.Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast is also recapping this season of HBO’s The White Lotus every Monday - head over their page to hear the latest episode featuring an interview with Beatrice Granno.

As the splintered family mourns its matriarch, Vanity Fair's DYNASTY examines how Charles, William, and Harry are planning for their respective futures.For more DYNASTY, visit VF.com/dynasty.For a transcript of this episode, please follow this link.

Vanity Fair royals experts Katie Nicholl and Erin Vanderhoof discuss the Queen's legacy, Operation London Bridge, and the challenges facing King Charles III in this special episode.For more DYNASTY, visit VF.com/dynasty.For a transcript of this episode, please follow this link.

No one has ever waited longer to become monarch than Prince Charles. But who is Prince Charles, and how has his life in the shadows of nearly everyone close to him—his mother, his ex-wife, his sons—impacted who he is today? What can we even expect from King Charles? To understand these questions is to understand the man who has seemingly always played second fiddle in the Windsor P.R. machine. We’ll examine the ways in which Charles has reinvented his image and speculate on what his role and power within the firm mean for the future of the monarchy.For more DYNASTY, visit VF.com/dynasty."For a transcript of this episode, please follow this link.

The sovereign brand is a powerful thing—alluring to those outside, and even intoxicating to those inside. But when royals trade on the family business for personal gain, the whole family takes a hit. This episode will focus on how Prince Andrew’s alleged abuses affected the monarchy, and what the lasting repercussions may be.For more DYNASTY, visit VF.com/dynasty.For a transcript of this episode, please follow this link.

The British royal family is sometimes referred to as “The Firm” – the time-honored, drama-tested machinery that refines, defines and helps control the family’s public image. The inner forces are shadowy—perhaps that’s what led King George VI to coin the phrase in the first place even to the family’s highest-profile members. So how exactly does The Firm work, and who is in it?  For more Dynasty, visit VF.com/dynasty.For a transcript of this episode, please follow this link.

When it comes to the Windsors and the press, who really holds the power? From Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson’s earth-shattering scandal to revealing TV confessions from Diana and, later, Prince Andrew, why has the royal family always been so afraid of, and prone to, scandal? We’ll investigate the ongoing tug-of-war between Fleet Street and its fetishized family, and how that has played out for the royals who dare try to reset the balance. For more DYNASTY, visit VF.com/dynasty.For a transcript of this episode, please follow this link.

This episode will explore the role the Commonwealth plays in the monarchy—and how the perspective of its role in the world is quickly shifting. We’ll also examine the effect that the Sussexes’ departure had on the crown’s relationship with the other 53 Commonwealth countries, and how the royals may need to readjust if they want the Commonwealth to survive.For more DYNASTY, visit VF.com/dynasty.For a transcript of this episode, please follow this link.

Motherhood is far from simple, but motherhood within the context and confines of a monarchy comes with its own set of challenges. From the queen to Princess Diana to the Duchess of Sussex, royal mothers have had to balance their maternal instincts with centuries of tradition. This episode explores the disparate ways Meghan, Kate, and the generations before them have entered into and engaged with motherhood—and how the modern royals have begun to change the narrative.For more DYNASTY, visit VF.com/dynasty.For a transcript of this episode, please follow this link.