Hello and welcome back to another episode of Bad Gaze, a podcast about evil and complicated

bears in history.

I'm Ben Miller, a writer, researcher, a member of the board of the Shulism Museum in Berlin.

And I'm Hugh Lemmy, a writer and author.

Last week we talked about Truman Capote, a writer who made it all the way from rural

Monroville, Alabama, to the glittering heights of New York society,

but not without discovering some monsters both unspoiled and spoiled on the way and turning

into a bit of a spoiled monster himself. Who are we talking about this week, Hugh?

Today's subject is the man who would be king, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and

Avondale, first born son of Edward

the 7th, grandson of Queen Victoria, a man who would have been known as, by the grace of God,

of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the seas, King, defender of the faith,

an emperor of India, but who was known to his friends and family simply as Eddie.

Regular listeners will know that I have a morbid fascination of the royal family in the same way

that other people, you know, like to watch YouTube videos with people pop in their own swollen zits

and stuff like that. Are you suggesting here that the royal family is the great swollen

zit of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

No, the great swollen Zit is the class system. The royal family is just the pus that emanates forth from it when you give it a squeeze.

But yeah, Albert, Albert Victor or Eddie, is a prime example of a sort of classic British royal story, an intellectually

dull man, charmless, with neither cultural interests nor creative talents, but who, due to sheer

accident of birth, found himself permitted to indulge all of his whims.

One thing that's always so remarkable about the British Royal family is that having inherited all the privileges that the earth could possibly offer, all the opportunities, they do so little with it.

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