The Royals with Roya and Kate - Do Epstein Files threaten US relationship with Royals?

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

This week, three royal stories converge in America. Andrew’s ties to Epstein reach Congress, King Charles is reportedly planning a high-profile state visit, and Prince Harry is already there - recasting his role from Montecito. President Trump has signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but has the monarchy’s handling of Andrew emboldened American lawmakers? And is the British royal family still America’s favourite foreign soap opera? Roya Nikkhah is joined by Mark Landler of The New York Times, and Chiara Brown of The Times.Presenter: Roya Nikkhah, royal editor for the Sunday TimesContributors: Mark Landler, London bureau chief of The New York Times; Chiara Brown, commissioning editor at The Times Luxx.Producer: Robert WallaceEditor: Stephen TitheringtonPhoto: Getty Images Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Roy Nika, and welcome to the royals from The Times and the Sunday Times. This week, we're exploring one of the great conundrums of modern royalty. The British monarchy holds no power in America, and as George Washington put it, the return of a monarch would be the greatest mischief that can befall my country. And yet today, the royal family continues to command attention, some affection, and perhaps even influence. Right now, the royals are threaded through American public life, from the halls of Congress to the celebrity circuits of California and the diplomatic stage of the White House itself. In Washington, all eyes are on the imminent release of the Epstein files, 23,000 pages of documents signed off by President Trump and handed to the House Oversight Committee. And among the names reported to appear in those files, Andrew Mountbattenham.

Batten, Windsor. He has consistently denied any Rond doing in connection with Jeffrey Epstein and has not been charged with any offence. Meanwhile, thousands of miles west, another royal story continues. In the summer, Prince Harry spoke of publicly wanting reconciliation with the rest of the royal family. In September, he visited the king in London. But today, that rift between Harry and the palace, appears no closer to healing. And now, King Charles is said to be preparing for one of the most important state visits of his reign. He is reported to be planning to travel to the United States next year, hosted by President Trump, to mark America's 250th anniversary. So we have a royal brother under scrutiny, a royal son, whose home he has yet to visit,

and he's going to be hosted by an American president navigating his own. links to Epstein. It's a diplomatic moment that demands careful choreography, but if it's anything like the state visit by President Trump to Windsor Castle this year, it'll be full of all the pomp and ceremony that America can muster. So, three royals, two coasts, and with Kate away this week, I'm joined by two brilliant guests to help make sense of it all. Mark Landler, the London Bureau Chief of the New York Times, and Kiara Brown.

a commissioning editor at the Times Lux magazine, which I suppose sums up the royal story, a mixture of glamour and hard news, and how best to report this particularly British institution. Mark, Kiara, welcome to the Royals. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. So first of what I want to ask you both,

are you actually royal watches? I mean, do you follow the royal family closely, not closely? Mark, I think you kind of do. I do. I do because the Royals is a, substantial. It's not a huge part of my job as London Bureau Chief, but depending on the pace of news the Royals are generating, it can take up 25, 35%. Occasionally half of everything I do, I also cover British politics and American foreign policy in Europe. But the Royals, as you no doubt

know, generate a huge amount of interest. The number of page views they generate for us all around the world is pretty monumental. So we cover them on a fairly serious ongoing basis. And at times, they are almost all consuming. Tell me about it. You would know better than I. Yeah. What about you? I mean, outside of the job, personally, are you interested in the family and the institution? I think I'm intrigued by the institution. I think living in the UK, it's impossible to not have some sort of eye on at all. Yeah. It's, yeah, something I keep an eye on in a way that I would look at a celebrity, I think. We'll pick up on that point later.

I find when I come across Americans, whether that's in the course of my work or life, I get asked a lot of questions about the royal family. There does seem to be a strong intrigue and interest. Why are Americans who, in fact, got rid of the royal family some time ago, why is there this continuous sort of interest in intrigue in our British royal family, do you think? Well, I think a couple of things. One, the royals do in a way personify a sort of a celebrity culture that has, thoroughly spread through the United States. And in a way, they're the world's original

celebrities, if you will. And so I think that there's that very simple interest in the glamour, the dazzle, the fairy tale aspect of their lives. But I also think that there's a deep cultural affinity for some of the traditions of the British monarchy, notwithstanding the fact that we cast off the monarchs in our own revolution. And you see that, of course, in people like President Trump, whose interest for, reverence for attraction to the trappings of royalty and monarchy is very clear. And while he may take it to a rather extreme level, I think there are a number of people in the country for whom there's something that this resonates for them on a fairly deep cultural

level. So I do think the royals, while our country is proudly a democracy, it does have a kind of a a sort of a subliminal attraction to the royals. I mean, you mentioned the phrase reverence there, and I'm watching President Trump stand up in Windsor Castle and give that speech at the state banquet dinner. The reverence sort of dripped from every single sentence. You know, the way he depicted the king,

the way he turned and spoke to William and Kate, you know, you could feel how almost in awe of them he was, which is quite extraordinary to watch, you know, the leader of the free world sort of acknowledge something he thinks is almost above him. I wanted to ask you, you're from California. Obviously, there is now an alternative British royal court operating from California. Harry and Megan left here five years ago.

They went to pursue a different kind of life there, financial freedom, independence. And yet, there is constantly a reminder of their royal links, both from Harry and Megan themselves and from, you know, how it plays out over here. How do you think in the last five years that story has played out in America? I mean, I think the institutional drama associated with that that was playing out here isn't something that really translated over there. Is it more the family drama that? Yeah, like I say, the family drama we perceive in the same way you might perceive some sort of light celebrity family drama, like I said. But there isn't that kind of like monumental, this is such a huge change from the way that things were working before. I think it's sort of like, oh, here's this sort of slightly big change from the tradition.

But having them in California, I think just sort of underscores the fact that there are these sort of celebrities and it's a fun new chapter for them rather than this sort of like big institutional change the way that people look at it here. And what about you? I just want to mention something. You once wrote that covering the British royal family is more akin to writing about the senior ranks of the Chinese Communist Party. I had the imagination to play out behind closed doors. What did you mean by that? Well, I think what I was trying to do in that story was give our readers a sense for what it was like for me to cover the royals as a beat. And, you know, I had covered the White House. I'd covered the State Department, Hillary Clinton,

and I've been a foreign correspondent in a couple of different places prior to coming to London. And there's no job as a reporter I've had that's quite as opaque and mysterious as the Royals. Because I think what people don't perhaps understand is it's not as though you can go into Buckham Palace and have an interview with King Charles. It just doesn't happen. He doesn't give interviews. If only. If only. Right. I mean, he did. Once upon a time, but once you become king, I gather the queen didn't give an interview for decades. And so it's not like another beat where you can simply make a bunch of phone calls, get your calls for sure. Now, Roy, you may, you're in better shape than I am on this score, and you might know some people.

But for someone coming in as a foreign correspondent, that's extremely difficult. So you, in a sense, are covering them almost as a game of telephone. You talk to someone you think's well-informed who's talked to someone else who's better informed, who's talked to someone else. And maybe you slowly get closer and closer to understanding what's going on inside. But it's a tricky thing. And it did remind me a bit of when I was based in Asia and wrote about China. The top levels of the Chinese Communist Party are similarly opaque. You don't meet these people.

You don't know them. And you don't even know the people next to them. So a lot of it is sort of informed, educated guesswork. I want to, I mean, we've talked about the current Iraq and President's reverence of the royal family. And, you know, he clearly sees it as a very positive thing. But in the last few months, particularly, we have seen much more troubling links between what's going on in America, our royal family here. I am, of course, talking about the Jeffrey Epstein and the former Prince Andrew, now Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor link. The sort of spread of Jeffrey Epstein's friendships associations, whether that was with Andrew, who has been deep prince now, he's lost all his titles, with our former British ambassador to America, Peter Mandelson, who did not last very long.

was, you know, lost his job just before the last state visit. It is still playing out now. This is still very much a live ongoing story. I want to ask, what's your assessment of that story? Well, one of the things that has struck me about it, and I've written about this, is that you've seen, in a way, a much more rigorous public reckoning and accounting for the senior public figures in Britain that were allied to link to Jeffrey Epstein than the comparable group in the United States. So if you think about it, Peter Mandelson was cashiered, was fired as ambassador, really pretty abruptly. Prince Andrew, the former Prince Andrew, has lost his titles, completing a fall from grace that began years ago. Now, it is worth pointing

out that Andrew's alleged associations and alleged conduct, and again, you pointed out, he's denied all of this, is much more grave than for many people in the United States, including President Trump. President Trump was a long time friend of Jeffrey Epstein a long time ago, socialized with him in Palm Beach. But by all accounts, the two had a falling out. He didn't have much to do with him. There's never been a public allegation that President Trump behaved as Andrew is alleged to have behaved with the young woman that was allegedly trafficked to him by Jeffrey Epstein, Virginia Jufrey. So that's different. But I am struck nonetheless by the fact that you've seen Mandelson and Andrew very publicly taken down in this country. And you've yet to see that kind of punishment

meted out in the United States. And I think that there is a valid question to raise, which is, is there a different culture of shame on both sides of the Atlantic? Why has President Trump managed to almost largely fend this thing off? And why have these two senior British figure has been so publicly punished. And I think it does speak to the fact that in Britain, there is a higher bar still and the cost of being associated with Epstein, not just what Andrew has said to have done, but even in the case of Peter Mandelson, is higher in the UK than in the United States. And I think that's in turn a reflection of some of the culture of shamelessness that's come in with President Trump. Can I ask, Mark, I mean, this story is still live,

And we have just last week, we've had the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Trump himself. What might that change? And what are we expecting to come out from that? Might the signing of that act change things? Are we expect to see more come out and more fingers being pointed? I think we will see more come out. And I think you can begin to see even in advance of that. You can see that in some of the things that are happening. There is a case in the U.S. of Lawrence Summers, who's the former Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard.

another longtime Epstein associate, some very embarrassing emails between Epstein and Summers came out in the last trove of documents that were released. And in fact, Summers is now under a great deal of pressure. Harvard is reviewing their relationship with him. He's given up a lot of his board seats. So that is a case where a major American public figure is beginning to suffer somewhat the fate of Mandelson and Andrew. I think we will see more. I actually think that we may see more on Andrew, which may explain why King Charles made the difficult decision to go all the way when he did. I think some of that was anticipatory. They probably do worry about things that have yet to be disclosed. What they are, we don't know yet.

We will find out eventually. I mean, there's a lot going on in the U.S. The Justice Department has opened a separate new investigation of Epstein, which may give the Justice Department a pretext to hold on to the documents a bit longer. So I'm not sure we've seen the whole drama play out, but yes, there will probably be more. It will be embarrassing. And I think people and institutions like Buckingham Palace are trying to get ahead of it. Of course, we should add that being named in these files, which we know Andrew McGrath in Windsor is, and he's consistently denied any wrongdoing. It doesn't imply any wrongdoing. And when he signed that multi-million pound settlement with Virginia Dufray in 2022, there was no admission of liability. So it's important that we say that.

Can I ask Kiara, in terms of the former Prince Andrew, who has now just, you know, has lost all his titles, how, particularly in California, where you've got the sort of Harry and Megan celebrity thing going on, how aware of characters like Andrew and the Royal Family were Americans before all of this sort of happened? I mean, if you spoke to, you know, California, were they able to tell you who Andrew, Edward and Sophie were. I think it's interesting because I don't think Americans necessarily think about the British Royal Family. as an institution with a lot of different members that are connected. It's not a unit. We think about them as individual actors and kind of in a way that you would think about, again, celebrities. So I think Andrews in the consciousness because of the Epstein vows, but I wouldn't. Before I moved here, I had very little awareness of the actors outside of the queen and Harry and Megan and, you know, William and Kate.

But I think the people on the periphery are less in the consciousness, I would say. So who are the big players in America? Is it sort of William, Kate, Charles, Camilla? Yeah. Yeah, maybe less so Camilla, I would say. I think she's sort of, maybe because people watch the crown, they sort of were aware of who she is. But, and I think Megan has sort of turned into a bit of a folk hero, though she's complicated.

I think having her be this American who kind of broke in and had this fairy tale life is a threat that, it's a bit wrong. Yeah. But I think the fact that she was able to kind of be part of it all in this Disney-esque way is something that people really resonated with. And I think that's part of why there's a little bit more sympathy for her in the States and I think there is here. Now, I want to ask you both.

One character, sort of as part of this cast. And it feels like a cast list, doesn't it? We're talking about almost a sort of celebrity cast list. Is the former Duchess of York now, Sarah Ferguson, who there were reports last week that she is considering various very big offers of tell all interviews. Of course, we remember post her divorce back in the 90s, she did that big sit down with Oprah and made, I think, a bit of a splash in America. But since then, is she on people's radars?

People know who Fergie is. Is she more on people's radar now because of what's happened with Epstein and Andrew? Honestly, I'd say to borrow a line from an old movie Spinal Tap, I think she's currently residing in the where are they now file in the United States. I do think they're probably people that remember the 90s and remember the interviews. And also, you know, she was an advertising spokesperson for a while. And I think people remember that a bit in some of the scandals when her marriage broke up. But that was a long time ago, and a lot's happened since then, and I think probably more Harry and Megan and William and Kate that really, if you asked an American who pays a little bit of attention to this, and you mentioned Sarah Ferguson, it's not even clear they know who you were talking about.

We'll come back on to Harry and Megan and William and Kate soon, but just to sort of finish looking at the Andrew issue, the Epstein issue and how closely it may go to the president. I mean, President Trump so far has managed to keep, I think, quite a successful arm's length from it. There's footage of them from when they were friends way back in the day in the 90s. But over all of this, he's managed to, you know, say, I thought he was a bit of a creep. I threw him out of my Florida Mar-a-Lago and I turned out to be right. But if we do have, as reports suggest, if the King's Health is up to it next year, if we do have this state visit. And I think let's assume that the Epstein issue is not completely done and dusted. the implications are it won't be.

How awkward might that be for the choreography of a state visit with a king whose brother has been deprinsed and a president who knew Epstein and a former ambassador who is no longer around who lost his job because of it? How would that play out? Well, I think if you think about

what happened during President Trump's state visit here, so on one of the first days, protesters, you know, actually projected images of Epstein and Trump onto the walls of Windsor Castle and unfurled a giant picture of of Epstein and Trump on the lawn in front of the castle. So there was some quite effective guerrilla tactics used by protesters. I think you could maybe see some of that as well. Now, I think in a state visit involving the king, what you probably won't see, but I wouldn't rule it out, is the kind of extended photo opportunity.

the President Trump loves doing with foreign leaders where he brings reporters and cameras into the Oval Office and basically has his guests sit there and take questions. Well, there's no way the King would do that. There's no way the King would agree to that, right? Now, Kier Starmer has undergone that exercise and many other heads of state. And often those become somewhat embarrassing because that's the moment when reporters get to ask whatever they want to ask about. The King won't have to undergo that. So I guess it's hard for me to see it sort of absolutely eclipsing the visit because I think that the White House will take steps to make sure that if there are protests related to Epstein, they're kept well away from any of the ceremonies or festivities. You know, the king would probably be invited up to the Capitol and it's possible he might encounter some demonstrations and protests up there. So I think it'll be, you know, an undercurrent, as it was certainly for the state visit this past summer here. I doubt it'll be a lot more than that. But again, with the caveat that we don't really know what's in this last 23,000 pages of documents.

And, you know, as I keep reminding myself, if there were nothing in those documents incriminating to President Trump, then why did he fight so hard to keep them under wraps? There's got to be something there he didn't want to become public. Well, I mean, we'll keep a close eye on it. Epstein aside, if we have a UK state visit to the U.S. next year for the 250th anniversary of independence, how big a deal is that for Americans and for President Trump? Do Americans care about? I think that, you know, I mean, I did notice that the Queen made a state visit in 1976 for America's bicentennial.

So I do think symbolically having the head of state of the country that our country is, in fact, the progeny of, you know, Britain is our mother country, is going to be a very big moment in a year filled with a lot of big moments. I mean, there'll be many other big events around the 250th anniversary, but I think the King's Visit will be one of the big ones. And because, as we've discussed earlier, Trump has such a deep. affection for even reverence for the institution of the royal family, he will make it a major visit. Kiora, can I ask, if we get a state visit next year and if the King's health is up to it, I think that, you know, the government would like to see the King go as head of state. We do, of course, have the Football World Cup being held in America and North America and Mexico next year. William, Prince William, is patron of the FAA. So there would possibly

potentially be the opportunity for William to visit America in that capacity too during next year? Who would Americans be more excited to see, do you think? So I was going to say, I really think it would be Prince William and Kate. I mean, there's just, I find like when I talk about King Charles here, people are a bit like, oh, you know, whatever about him. But I think that really kind of doubly extends to the U.S. My perception is they don't have strong feelings about him either way. But to the extent, at least people in my age, I think to the extent that he would come and there would be like a whole bunch of enthusiasm and fanfare around a visit from him, I think

I wouldn't expect a huge number of people to be chatting about it and there would be a lot of excitement. But if it was William and Kate, I think it would be a different thing. I think people really, really love them and they really resonate with them. And I think there's this kind of glamour around them that would bring some gusto to the visit, I think. Well, I went with them when he had the ersty. shop prize in Boston a few years ago. And I mean, there was a huge buzz. People were very

excited to see them. Everywhere we sort of went, there are a lot of people turned out in the pouring rain. And yeah, I mean, you could feel the buzz. It's interesting. The very first foreign trip I did with them as a married couple was in just after their wedding in July 2011 when we went to Canada and then California. So we did around 10 days in Canada where you really felt the sort of groundswell off. This is our monarchy. You know, this is our future King and Queen. And then when we moved to California and did a couple of days of engagements, there was a BAFTA engagement with literally every famous Hollywood actor and actress falling over themselves to see the new, you know, the new, as they were, the Cambridges then.

And you felt it switched from monarchy in Canada to celebrity in California. And that's, you could, you could, it was tangible, like the shift in how they were viewed. So I want to kind of talk a little bit more about, you know, Harry, Megan, California, how the royal brand has played out with their move from here to the US. Because I'm fascinated by, you know, the idea of this alternative royal court in Montecito. Of course, we've had Harry coming back here a little bit more. We know, you know, because I wrote a big piece about it, a couple months ago he wants to come here more if he can. How has the split from the royal family and their sort of new life in America? How do Americans see them now? Do they see them as sort of their own or as a sort of

offshoot of a slightly dysfunctional broken family that saga that sort of went a bit wrong and is still finding its feet in America? I mean, I think they see them as their own. In my mind, I think of them as like highbrow celebrities. So they're not, you know, on the same level as a Kim Kardashian or whatever, but they're kind of less high brown than the Kardashians. No, I would say to me, they're more like a Brad Pitt, Angelina Jill. You know, like they feel like they've got this sort of distance and they have this, you know, there's like a leadership about them that makes them feel in a particular category and a higher brow category than, you know, a TV star necessarily. I think they do feel like they're one of our own. But I don't think that there's this

idea of having them as like, you know, the reigning king and queen of California. I don't necessarily think that there will be like that kind of enthusiasm for them. And as someone, as a Californian, when Megan, you know, appeared on the scene in 2017 as Harry's girlfriend, then they got engaged and she became, you know, the Duchess of Sussex. She was certainly seen here as a sort of breath of fresh air, you know, that would come into the royal family and shake things up a bit, but in a good way. Was there a feeling of pride with Americans that, you know, an American was coming into the royal family and marrying a prince and we were hearing from an American, you know, in these sort of fusty old halls of Buckingham Palace for the first time. What was that like when it looked

like it might be going quite well? Yeah, I think there was a lot of enthusiasm for it because it just felt also like this Disney dream, right? It's like, this is the thing that we hear about from the time that we're little like you want to be a princess and go. And also, the British monarchy is the only one that we really, though I said, you know, we only know bits and pieces of it. It's one that we do associate with. And you could name, you could name a few members. I couldn't say I could name members of any other royal family in the world. So there is, there is like an enthusiasm for it and an awareness of it. Yeah. So yeah, I think it felt like an exciting time. But I always felt sorry for Megan because California, we're really an earnest

people and she is the very earnest person. And I think, you have to correct me if I'm wrong, but my perception of British culture is that the thing that you value most above all else is an ability to make fun of yourself. And I always think... 100%. And I always think that that's really not a quality

that they champion in California, I wouldn't say. And so I always felt sorry for her because I was like even if she'd done every single thing right, I think it would have been an uphill battle for her because just culturally she wasn't ever going to be aligned. It's a really interesting point. Mark, in terms of how you followed the Harry and Megan's story from here across the porn,

and how it's played out. Have you been surprised by any of the twists and turns? Because they have been quite extreme some of them. There have. I mean, one thing that strikes me about the transition that they've made is that it's a sort of an incomplete transition because Harry still very clearly and visibly feels pulled by his family history, his role in the monarchy,

even though he's now not a working royal. He's just written an essay, The Best of British, what it means to be, why it's so great to be British? Yeah, and by the way, talking in a way about what you just said, Kiarra, about the sort of British banter at football games or in a pub, again, the ability to sort of be self-deprecating and make fun of yourself and your friends. But one of the thing that struck me, and you've seen it recently with Harry,

is he occasionally trips up on the kind of imperatives of being an American-style celebrity and being a British royal And a really interesting, albeit trivial example of this, but telling, was when he went to the World Series, baseball World Series, as a guest of the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. There's a cap and he wore a bright blue Dodgers cap, which is classically what you would do if you were invited to cheer for the Dodgers by the owner of the Dodgers. The problem is Harry is a British prince, and he was also about to go visit Canada, a member of the Commonwealth, which was also. the home of the Toronto Blue Jays, the team playing the Dodgers. So Harry had this kind of cringy moment where he had to apologize in Canada for having worn a Dodgers cap. And he said, well, you know, I wore it under duress.

And I really, you know, did want to cheer for Toronto. And but to me that really kind of captured it. This is the kind of thing where if he was Brad Pitt or, you know, Shaquille O'Neal or any other celebrity who might show up in row three, of Dodger Stadium, this would have been an odd issue. It would have been an odd issue. And yet for Harry, it did become briefly an issue. And it kind of, to my mind, really showed the tensions that he still has to occasionally navigate

between his kind of royal history and lineage and his life in California. I also, sorry, just to say, like, I also think that, like, that role of royal as statesmen and, like, royal as person who's cutting ribbons at factories in small towns is not something Americans really understand. Like I think, and I think, again, people said this at link, but that's where Megan may have misunderstood.

And like you said, the flip side of that is I feel Harry maybe is a bit like, okay, well, what's the service part of this new life? Like, where's the ribbon-cutting element, basically? In a funny way, I think it's easier now for Megan, because Megan can fully embrace being an American-style, lifestyle, guru, and celebrity. I mean, she has this Netflix series where she says, sort of talks about crafting and brings in famous friends to chat with her in a kitchen

that's not actually her kitchen. Does that play out better in America than here? It doesn't play out so well here. No, I mean, one thing I noted in my coverage of the last time I wrote about this was how savage the reviews of this were in the UK. I mean, people just took that series apart and just made fun of it. And I think in the U.S., I'm not going to say this series has been a big hit. It hasn't.

It hasn't been one of Netflix's top 10 shows, which is telling, given how much money they're spending on it. But I think Americans would have taken, in a way, a less hard-edged view of it. They would have thought, okay, another kind of self-involved celebrity talking about how she crafts with her friends. You know, but I don't think Americans would have found it particularly offensive. I think some people in Britain just looked at it and were contemptuous of the whole thing. And having said all that, you know, Megan can keep herself busy and make good money. She doesn't have to apologize to anyone for it. And Americans understand what the game is.

Harry's in a much different position. Yeah. He can't do a show like that. It's harder for him. It's much harder for him. So in a way, I feel like the more time that passes, I almost see the two of them diverging a little bit where Megan's role is more and more comfortable for her, despite the slings and arrows she's taking back here in the UK. Harry's role, to my mind, still feels awkward, which I think is why you reported recently that he wants to spend more time here. And I think that's what that reflects in a sense.

Well, we'll watch the space to see whether that does actually play out under this rain or into the next rain. I think as we're sort of just coming to a conclusion, I want to ask you both a bit of a sort of broader question. How much of a part or how important a part do you think the British royal family is in the special relationship? I'd say it's a pretty big part of it, only because it's something, like I said, that we really value. It's something that we see as sort of this admirable, interesting, historical thing. And though we don't totally understand it and we might kind of think of it, like we keep saying in this sort of celebrity-esque way, it's still like a functional part of the PR for the special relationship, I would say, and for the UK in the U.S. And I think, like I said earlier, I would be very surprised if any random person in the U.S. could name five members of.

the Spanish royal family, but they could definitely scrounge up five members of the British royal family. I think our government would hope so after the state visit, what we need on for the state visit. What do you think, Mark? I think that the British government has been really shrewd in deploying the royal family as almost a diplomatic secret weapon. Obviously, it's more effective with Trump in office than it might be with a president who's less interested. I mean, Joe Biden was an interesting slightly counter-example. He was an Irish American who didn't that much about the sort of grand old British traditions. But if you look at the last couple of years in particular, Keir Starrmer going to the Oval Office and pulling out the letter from King Charles

with this incredibly stagey kind of approach and of Trump, of course, lapping it up. I think that the government in Britain, in London, fully understands the value of the royal family. I think King Charles is, of course, willing to play his role. He recognizes it too. Prince William recognizes it. He He had a very warm meeting with President Trump or President Trump and on and on about what a good-looking guy he was. So I can tell him about that actually, privately. Yeah, yeah. Only I could repeat that conversation.

I'd love to hear what he had to say. Maybe in a book someday. He understands the role that he knew, that the role family need to play. Right. So I think they, I think the government is very wisely and shrewdly using the royal family at a potentially very tense moment with the war in Ukraine, tariffs, trade. war potentially, to try to keep things on an even keel, keep things smooth. And I think the royal family has played that role and will continue to. Do you think the scandal around the

former Prince Andrew threatens that, the power of the royal family with America? I think on the margins, yes, because I think the fact that the royal family is sort of so visibly connected to a particularly sordid part of this story does register with some people in the U.S. and they think, Oh, God. On the other hand, as Kiara said earlier, because Americans tend to think of the royal family as individual personalities, I don't think they're necessarily going to look at King Charles and immediately say, oh, your younger brother is this guy. So I think to that extent, it's probably helpful the way we tend to think of royals in the United States. And so, for example, if William and Kate came, as you said, for the World Cup, I doubt that many people would really connect them too closely to Andrew Mountbat. I mean, so, I could talk to you both for hours. Honestly, it's so interesting to get your perspective. My huge thanks to Mark Landler and Kiara Brown for joining us on this episode of the Royals. This week has shown us that the monarchy's footprint in America is deep, but it's also complex.

From scandal to soft power, state visits to celebrity circuits, the royal family's presence in America is hard to ignore. and perhaps even harder to define. Thanks for joining us on the Royals. Kate's back next week and we'll see you then.