King Charles III’s second cousin is shedding light on what royal life is like behind the scenes.
Lady Frederick Windsor (also known as British actress Sophie Winkleman) — who is married to Lord Frederick Windsor, a great-grandchild of King George V and Queen Mary — revealed what she has learned since entering the royal family after her September 2009 wedding.
“The more I get to know the royal family, the more I get that their lives are total hell and that level of unasked-for fame is a form of torture,” Lady Frederick, 45, said in an interview with London’s The Times published Wednesday, November 12 (via Us Weekly). “None of them went on Pop Idol or something to be famous.”
“To have that sort of blinding spotlight in your face from when you’re born, not knowing quite whom you can trust, not knowing if someone’s going to betray you, people writing lies about you the whole time, is just brutal,” she continued. “I feel for them all.”
After becoming engaged to Lord Frederick on Valentine’s Day in 2009, Lady Frederick married into the royal family on September 12 of that year.
James Whatling / MEGA
She has had a career performing in film, television and theater. The actress has been seen in guest roles on Hot in Cleveland and Two and a Half Men, and she recently appeared as The Countess in the 2023 film Wonka, starring Timothée Chalamet.
Her husband, who is 54th in line to the British throne, is the son of Prince Michael of Kent and Baroness Marie-Christine von Reibnitz.
While she and her husband — who share two daughters — rarely make headlines, the lives of the royal family are often written about in the press.
Prince Harry told Newsweek in 2017 that he felt like he was “living in a goldfish bowl” and in his memoir, Spare, he wrote that “royal fame was fancy captivity.”
This story King Charles’ Second Cousin Says Royal Family’s ‘Unasked-For Fame’ Is Like Living in ‘Total Hell’ first appeared on National Examiner. Add National Examiner as a Preferred Source by clicking here.