This week, commentators have been tripping over themselves to praise King Charles III for his “decisive” handling of the latest royal crisis. Some have even called it a communications masterclass. But let’s be honest: this is no masterclass. It’s a case study in how not to manage a crisis.
The Royal Family has been sitting on a time bomb for well over a decade. The story didn’t suddenly erupt last week. It’s been leaking, mutating, and resurfacing since 2010. Each time, the Palace has responded the same way: too little, too late. Now, in 2025, as new revelations spill out in the wake of The Woman in Me, the posthumously released memoir by Virginia Giuffre, the monarchy’s crisis strategy looks less like calm leadership and more like long-deferred damage control.
A crisis years in the making
For years, the Palace’s default playbook has been to say as little as possible and hope the noise subsides. It’s a tactic rooted in the age of deference when silence could still pass for dignity. But the world has changed. Social media doesn’t let a story fade quietly. Nor does the 24-hour news cycle.
The thing is, who could know this better than the family that’s lived under relentless media scrutiny for generations? If any institution should understand the cost of delay and denial, it’s the House of Windsor.
Everyone in the Palace communications team would have known this book was coming. Publishing schedules don’t sneak up on anyone, least of all when the subject matter concerns a senior royal. Yet they waited. They waited while rumours swirled. They waited while public sympathy curdled into suspicion. And when they finally acted, it looked reactive, not decisive.
From a professional standpoint, this is a textbook example of how not to handle a long-tail reputational threat. When an issue is predictable and you still choose not to act until after the damage lands on the front page, you’re not leading, you’re firefighting.
Reactive, not strategic
There are four clear communication failures here:
- Timing. Waiting until after publication day to respond guaranteed the Palace would be seen as reacting, not leading.
- Message control. Competing voices and conflicting tone have left the public guessing who’s actually steering the ship.
- Transparency. A lack of forthrightness creates an information vacuum and the internet abhors a vacuum.
- Public trust. Once credibility slips, empathy follows. A crown can’t command trust; it has to earn it, again and again.
Calling this a “decisive” response is pure spin. It’s not a show of strength; it’s a scramble to regain control of a narrative that’s been slipping for years.
I met Prince Charles once, in 1998, when he visited the Spirella Building in Letchworth where my PR agency office was located. My daughter, then young, was the only child on hand because I’d taken her out of school for a doctor’s appointment. Charles stopped to chat. He was charming and handsomer in person than on TV.
My husband met Prince Andrew a decade later, in 2008, when Andrew was the UK’s Trade Envoy. The occasion was a luncheon for business leaders on the Isle of Man. My husband, then managing director of a large satellite company, described him as confident and gregarious. He was the kind of guest who dominated a room. In hindsight, that self-assurance feels different now, shaded by everything we’ve since learned.
Those two encounters bookend the Royal Family’s dilemma perfectly: Charles, the thoughtful but overly cautious heir; Andrew, the brash insider whose recklessness created the storm. Between them lies a communications vacuum that’s lasted years.
Lessons for leaders
Crisis communications isn’t about perfection—it’s about preparation. The best-run organizations accept that bad news will come. They scenario-plan, assign spokespeople, and develop clear messaging that can be adapted as facts emerge. Above all, they act quickly and truthfully.
The Palace has done the opposite. Its reluctance to acknowledge reality early has allowed speculation to become the story. Every new revelation forces another reaction. In corporate terms, this is reputational debt with compounding interest.
Of course, the Royal Family’s situation is more complex than a corporate case study. It’s a family business, with all the emotions, loyalties, and blind spots that come with that. A mother’s instinct to protect a favourite child, the passing of the Queen and hand-over to Charles, serious illnesses, and family feuds…all of it clouds business judgment. And it shows. What might look like strategic restraint from the outside often reads as paralysis from within. But audiences, investors, and citizens rarely grant empathy for indecision.
For CEOs and public leaders, the takeaway is simple: decisive leadership means anticipating the hit, not responding after it lands. It means owning the message when you still have a chance to shape it. Waiting until a story catches fire may buy time, but it costs trust.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
The monarchy’s problem now isn’t just what’s been revealed, it’s what’s still to come. The Epstein files haven’t been fully unsealed, and journalists continue to dig. Each new leak risks dragging the Royal Family back into the headlines they’re desperate to escape.
So yes, the King has acted. But the public doesn’t feel closure; they feel suspense. This doesn’t feel like the end of the story but another chapter in a slow, painful unravelling. When people are waiting for the other shoe to drop, it’s a sure sign the crisis isn’t over.
For all the talk of decisiveness, this moment feels less like a turning point and more like a holding pattern. The monarchy isn’t just managing a scandal, it’s fighting for its relevance, its credibility, and perhaps its survival.
And that, in the end, is no communications masterclass.
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