A member of the British royal family starts a new production company. There are big Hollywood meetings, major expectations, and a good deal of skepticism. The company’s output pits brother against brother and leads to family strife.

Sound familiar? While most might think of Archewell Productions, the company founded by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, in 2020, the renegade royals were not the first to set their sights on entertainment industry glory. Thirty years ago, Harry’s uncle Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, opened Ardent Productions, determined to make a name for himself. But Edward’s run as a producer would be controversial and may have factored into Queen Elizabeth II’s hesitancy at letting the Sussexes pursue commercial opportunities while serving as working royals.

From an early age, Prince Edward, the youngest child of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, was enamored with the entertainment industry. “I love the razzmatazz of show business,” he once said. “It’s a wonderful world of fantasy and make-believe.”

Edward hammed it up for the notorious 1969 television special Royal Family, which premiered when he was five. He performed in school plays at Cambridge and dipped his toe into producing with the much mocked 1987 televised charity tournament, The Grand Knockout Tournament (nicknamed It’s a Royal Knock-Out), which one critic called the “single most damaging attack upon the royal family since Cromwell.” Undeterred, Edward went on to work for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group. In 1990, he helped found the Theatre Division, a theatrical production company. A year later it failed, racking up a debt of 600,000 pounds.

But Prince Edward was admirably determined to be more than a royal son and become a media mogul. In November 1993, he and his partners launched Ardent Productions, whose name he claimed signified “ambition, motivation, and strength.” His goals were lofty: Ardent would produce “serious arts, drama, and documentary programs for British television.” The prince’s business cards read simply “Edward Windsor, Joint Managing Director.” Desperate to be taken seriously, he insisted Ardent would not produce a rush of royal shows. “Making a royal programme would give the wrong impression,” Edward once said. “I don’t want to trade on that association any more than I intend trading on my title.”

The then 29-year-old Edward had an uphill battle. “Edward was getting into business where people were jealous of him, everyone wanted him to fail,” producer Christine Carter said in Edward Windsor: Royal Enigma. “To the industry he was a prince and not a producer.” This outlook was not helped by the fact that Prince Edward was still a working royal, receiving 96,000 pounds a year from the queen.

The royal family was also skeptical. “Why doesn’t Edward let the TV people get on with it and just turn up to accept the cheques?” Prince Philip allegedly quipped. “He’s making us look foolish.”

For a time, it seemed Prince Philip’s assessment was correct. Ardent’s first credited production was 1995’s Real Tennis, a TV documentary focusing on an obscure aristocratic racquet game, which garnered 8,000 British viewers. Next was Annie’s Bar, a 1996 satire about backbenchers in the House of Commons. Canceled after one season, it was savaged by British critics as “fifth rate.”

Having lost money every year, Ardent Productions quickly changed their tune. “I never said we wouldn’t make programmes about the royal family,” Edward claimed in 1996. That year he would be the host of Edward on Edward, a documentary about his infamous great uncle Edward, the Duke of Windsor. This backflip was immediately seized on by the British media.

“He is neither a historian nor a journalist; as far as one can tell, his only qualification for the job is that he happens to have the same Christian name as his subject,” Francis Wheen wrote in The Guardian. “It is most generous of ITV to offer work to members of the royal family…Perhaps the whole gruesome clan should form a production company—the Really Useless Group—and start preparing a few sequels: Andrew on Andrew, in which the Duke of York chooses his favourite melodies from the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber…and Queen on Queen, a personal tribute by the monarch to the late Freddie Mercury.”

Although The Guardian claimed Edward on Edward suffered from a “dearth of revelations and a leaden, cliched script,” it was surprisingly successful. When asked if his family had seen it, Edward said yes, but “I’m not going to tell you what they thought.”

Whatever the royals really thought about Edward’s career, their tacit support sparked resentment in the British entertainment industry. In 1997, Ardent released Windsor Restored, a documentary which chronicled the rebuilding of Windsor Castle after it was devastated by fire in 1992. Not only did Prince Philip, the then Prince Charles, and Prince Andrew sit for interviews, the Royal Collection also gave Ardent license to years of footage of the restoration project free of charge. ���Dealing with the Palace is not just frustrating, it’s not like dealing with anyone else: They speak a different language,” a contemporary producer told The Independent. “Ardent, at least, has an interpreter on the team.”

But if the British were unimpressed by Ardent’s “'cheesy and pompous” documentaries, Hollywood was dazzled. Capitalizing on America’s intrigue with royalty, Prince Edward signed with the William Morris Agency. Ardent also inked a deal with CBS to make documentaries. “I would mention him in the same breath as Walter Cronkite and Winston Churchill,” agent Ben Silverman said. “He has great depth of knowledge and his presence on screen inspires confidence.”

Edward appeared gratified by the reception, though naive about what Ardent’s success across the pond was really about. “In our country, we just have hang-ups about titles,” he said on a trip to America, according to The Record. “I don’t think you have so much in this country. So, if I come to this country and talk to people about producing programs, people will just accept that that’s what I’m there to talk about. But in Britain, if you’ve got a title, then you obviously don’t have any brains, so there’s no point in talking about anything else.”

But far from the serious dramas and daring comedies Ardent kept pitching, American networks were mainly interested in royal content and a royal host. “Being thrust in front of the camera was certainly not on my agenda initially,” he told a Los Angeles Times reporter with a wry smile. “But I keep getting my arm twisted to do it.”

And so Ardent cranked out documentary series on royal subjects including Tales of the Tower, Crown and Country, and Castle Ghosts of England, which helped earn him the cruel nickname “Edward the Unwatchable.”

“To watch Ardent’s few dozen hours of broadcast output is to enter a strange kingdom where every man in Britain still wears a tie, where pieces to camera are done in cricket jumpers, where people clasp their hands behind their backs like guardsmen,” Andy Beckett wrote in The Guardian. “A soft, flattering light falls on palaces and rose gardens, on a miraculously picturesque river Thames. Strings and brass rise, as if for a corporate video or an airline advertisement.”

But Edward defended Ardent’s royal output. “By no means am I only interested in the monarchy," he said, per USA Today. “But sometimes it’s difficult to convince broadcasters. It’s one of the frustrations of the business.”

In 1998, Ardent moved offices from London to the stables at Bagshot Park, Edward’s country home, which reportedly paid him 50,000 pounds in rent some years. That year, Ardent scored a surprise success with The Cater Street Hangman, a Victorian murder mystery adapted from an Anne Perry novel. Another unexpected success was Forbidden Pleasure, a gritty documentary about sex in the differently abled community.

Despite these bright spots, by 2000, Ardent had incurred approximately 2 million pounds in losses. According to reports, a “mystery” investor had put 350,000 pounds into the international sales arm of Ardent. Edward was also accused of being a “rent-a-royal,” trading on his status as a working royal to make money on a paid speaking tour in the US. Ardent came under further fire from the media after advertising a UK trip which would feature “A castle. A show. A 4-star hotel and Edward Wessex,” leading the company to issue an apology.

There was also trouble at Ardent itself. “He was just playing at being a TV producer,” one former Ardent employee remembered, per the Mail on Sunday. “At first you hang on his every word, then you realise he doesn’t talk much sense. He hasn’t a clue…He used to walk down to the office every day at the same time. But the big question was: What did he do all day?”

Edward’s wife, Sophie, was also under fire for her business dealings. In April 2001, she was duped by a man pretending to be a sheik who claimed to be interested in hiring her PR firm. Due to Edward and Sophie’s mounting controversies, an investigation was conducted by Richard Luce, Baron Luce, the former Lord Chamberlain to the Queen. That July, new guidelines were issued to ensure that working royal family members were more careful in their business dealings.

But it was a family uproar which would truly lead to Ardent’s undoing. In 2000, Ardent was commissioned by E! to make Royalty A-Z, a multi-episode series which would focus on the Windsor family up to the present day. Astonished that Edward would air out recent, painful history, Prince Charles was reported to have “absolutely flipped.”

Prince Charles’s ire was soon to increase exponentially. In September 2001, 19-year-old Prince William arrived at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The palace had worked out a deal with the press, allowing them to photograph him during his first days at school if they then agreed to leave him alone afterwards so he could be a normal student.

While most of the media complied, one crew did not. When school officials caught the film crew still on campus, they asked them to leave. But the next day, Prince William spotted the crew as he got out of class and immediately called his father. When approached, the crew did not initially admit they were working for Ardent Productions on Royalty A-Z.

The backlash was immediate. Although Edward claimed he had no idea the Ardent crew had continued to film, Prince Charles was reportedly “incandescent” and yelled at his brother, calling him a “f-ing idiot.” A spokesman for Prince Charles made the unusual move of saying he was “very disappointed.”

“It beggars belief when I think of the efforts we have gone to to square the press…to allow William a normal undergraduate life,” Andrew Neil, the then rector of St. Andrews said. “We knew, when we were doing that, that somebody would break it at some stage. But for it to be broken by a company owned by his own uncle—well, you just couldn’t make it up.”

Ardent issued an apology but claimed that they had not been filming Prince William specifically. The gloves, if they had ever been on, were off as far as the British media were concerned. “They’re a sad joke in the industry, really,” one producer said of Ardent. “As time has gone on, their incompetence has become more and more obvious. There have been very small examples of vanity TV companies before, but not on this scale. Any company, in any industry, that had burned through that much share capital without making a profit would've been closed down by its investors years ago.”

Edward and Sophie now had to make a choice—and they chose life in the royal fold. In 2002, Edward stepped down as joint managing director and production director of Ardent, using the excuse that they were needed for more royal duties since it was the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. “The opportunity to set up and run my own company has been the biggest challenge I have faced and yet has turned out to be enormous fun, immensely rewarding and full of surprises,” he said. “Yet I always knew in the back of my mind that one day things would have to change. Well, that day has come, not just for me, but also for my wife.”

Once Edward left Ardent (though he was still a nonexecutive director), the company would produce very little new content. But the controversies were not over. Ardent was liquidated in 2009 and officially dissolved in 2011 with only 40.27 pounds to its name.

And so, Prince Edward’s dream of media moguldom had ended. He and Sophie are now some of the most respected, important and hardest working full-time royals, having taken up the slack after the death of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the disgrace of Prince Andrew, and the defection of Meghan and Harry.

Perhaps the Sussexes can learn something from Prince Edward’s experiences. Of course, there are numerous differences: The Sussexes are no longer working royals, are allegedly estranged from much of the royal family, and now live in California. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was raised in Hollywood, with a father in the business and her own successful acting career. But the Sussexes still have a tightrope to walk and must fight the royal stigma to produce the content that matters to them. There are numerous minefields: Novelty in Hollywood quickly fades, and there are always critics ready to accuse Archewell of trading solely on their royal relationships, or producing “unseemly” content, or monetizing the charitable work they hold dear.

“One is caught in a horrendous Catch-22 situation,” Prince Edward once said. “If we devote all our time to public duties, we are criticized for being spongers. If we go off and do our own thing, they say we wouldn’t be doing any business at all if we weren’t who we were. It’s a no-win situation, so it doesn’t matter which side of the fence you jump off.”