Are they lizards? Vampires? Robots? Do they have secret love children? According to these bizarre conspiracy theories, the British royal family has plenty of skeletons in their closet.
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00:00Are they lizards? Vampires? Robots? Do they have secret love children? According to these
00:07bizarre conspiracy theories, the British royal family has plenty of skeletons in their closet.
00:13Perhaps the biggest conspiracy theory related to the British royal family is also the most
00:18fantastical, which is to say, the family is a clan of shape-shifting reptilians. That's
00:23right, not only do lizard people supposedly walk among us, they do so in the full glare
00:28of the public eye. This theory gained prominence in the UK in the late 90s due to baseless
00:33assertions put forward by a man named David Icke, a former soccer player who released
00:39his book The Biggest Secret in 1999. Icke's story goes that the reptilians are actually
00:44an alien race, one of many who have come to Earth over the course of millions of years.
00:50He also claims the reptilians are immortal, and rather than dying, Queen Elizabeth II,
00:56Prince Philip, and the Queen Mother have lived on in other forms. The theory has unsurprisingly
01:01been roundly debunked. Nevertheless, it continues to be shared by fringe believers on various
01:06social media channels. According to The Guardian, 12 million Americans believe some version
01:12of the reptilian conspiracy theory, and Icke continues to attract a global audience.
01:18The world is controlled by shadowy elites and shape-shifting lizard people.
01:24David Icke also claims in The Biggest Secret that the British royal family takes part in
01:29ritual sacrifice, which includes the drinking of blood. This disturbing belief pairs well
01:35with other conspiracy theorists who say the royal family are a clan of vampires. These
01:40accusations are actually underpinned by some strange vampire-adjacent facts. For example,
01:47King Charles III is related to Vlad the Impaler, the notorious Romanian ruler who was reportedly
01:53the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Moreover, there is a historical connection
01:58between British royals and cannibalism. As highlighted by the academic Richard Sugg in
02:04his book Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires, medicines made from human viscera were taken
02:10by British royals. The remains of King Charles I even ended up as medicine.
02:15This medicine was widely used in Europe for centuries, and not just by the royals or nobility.
02:21And in the wake of Princess Diana's death, the vampire theory gained traction, after
02:26Mohamed Al-Fayed, the father of Diana's partner Dodi, called the royal family a Dracula family.
02:33Mohamed Al-Fayed's turn against the royal family in the aftermath of the 1997 car accident
02:39that killed Diana and his son Dodi was largely based on another conspiracy theory, specifically
02:45that they were assassinated for the benefit of the royal family.
02:48"...they been murdered. Dodi and Diana been murdered, definitely."
02:54Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, claimed in his 2003 book A Royal Duty that the princess
02:59had sent him a letter 10 months before her death. It supposedly claimed that there was
03:04a conspiracy afoot to get her in a serious car accident to allow Charles to remarry.
03:09Burrell's book redacts who Diana reportedly claimed would be responsible for such a scheme.
03:15The British tabloid media, especially the Daily Express, frequently turned this conspiracy
03:20into a front-page news story. Though rumors have swirled continuously that the crash was
03:25intentional, a definitive rebuttal ostensibly came in 2008. That was when the coroner for
03:31the inquest into the crash affirmed in court that there was no evidence of murder or foul
03:36play. An earlier French inquest put the responsibility for the crash in the hands of the intoxicated
03:43driver, who also died.
03:45Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, have been tabloid fodder since
03:49the early days of their relationship, and not all of the attention they have attracted
03:54has been positive, with the duchess especially finding herself the target of plenty of vitriol
03:58from the media. Those personal attacks turned downright bizarre in 2018, when various commenters
04:05took to social media to share their belief that Meghan was a robot or clone. This wave
04:10of conspiratorial thinking sprang from video clips that seemed to show the couple waving
04:14to the public, but with the duchess' features eerily stiff and motionless.
04:19It later emerged that the clip in question didn't actually feature Harry and Meghan at
04:24all. Instead, they were actors at the Waxwork Museum Madame Tussauds who were greeting visitors
04:30while wearing realistic-looking masks of the couple. And in 2021, the Associated Press
04:36fact-checked the rumors as part of their efforts to combat online misinformation, and
04:40they definitively declared this one as false.
04:44Most of the wild theories concerning Princess Diana and her marriage to Charles made headlines
04:48in the years following the couple's divorce and her tragic death in 1997, but there remains
04:54an audience for a new bizarre story. That was clear in 2015, when the American gossip
04:59magazine The Globe ran a front-page story claiming that Kate Middleton had traveled
05:04to America to meet a young woman that the magazine claimed was Diana and Charles' secret
05:09daughter. According to this story, prior to her marriage, Diana was made to undergo a
05:14gynecological exam to assure the royal family that she was able to conceive children. During
05:20the exam, the doctor supposedly took an egg from her and fertilized it without the future
05:25princess' knowledge. Though this story persists in certain corners, it's never really been
05:31covered by any mainstream outlets. As such, there's clearly not enough evidence to take
05:36it seriously.
05:37It's stupid. It's just so stupid.
05:41While some news outlets have invented children that Prince Charles and Princess Diana never
05:45actually had, others claim that their two actual sons, Princes William and Harry, aren't
05:51in fact the legitimate children of the couple at all. The story goes that they're merely
05:56half-brothers, with the younger Harry supposedly the result of an affair that Diana had. The
06:01man in question, James Hewitt, was Diana's horse-riding teacher. It is true that the
06:06two of them did have an extended affair that was widely reported on and that Hewitt himself
06:11later went public about. He even claimed in interviews that he and Diana had fallen in
06:16love. However, as Hewitt and many of those close to the affair have pointed out, they
06:20met each other for the first time two years after Harry's birth. Thus, unless they figured
06:25out how to time travel, Hewitt couldn't possibly be Harry's birth father.
06:30Queen Elizabeth and her husband Philip were at the center of British public life for more
06:34than 70 years. They were known mostly for serving in symbolic and ceremonial roles,
06:40so the public was traditionally afforded little insight into the inner workings of their marriage
06:44or home life. But all that changed to a certain extent in recent years thanks to the popularity
06:49of the Netflix series The Crown. This historical drama is based on the real history of the
06:55British royal family, and it covers Elizabeth and Philip's early courtship and marriage.
07:00But the show has drawn criticism for, among other things, dramatizing rumors of an alleged
07:04affair on Philip's part. And in fact, he was rumored to have had affairs with several women
07:10over the course of the marriage.
07:12The earliest of these rumors goes back to the late 1940s, shortly after Elizabeth and
07:16Philip tied the knot. But these rumors are in fact just rumors. None of them have ever
07:21been substantiated in any convincing way, thereby indicating that the writers of The
07:26Crown have been making liberal use of their artistic license.
07:29You make a better person of me.
07:33And you of me. Isn't that the point of marriage?
07:38The death of Prince Philip on April 4th, 2021 could hardly be considered unexpected. He
07:44was 99 years old, and his health problems had been widely publicized. But it still felt
07:49to many like the end of an era, the first loss in a generation of royals who had achieved
07:54notable longevity.
07:56That his death occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic has become especially memorable due
08:01to some famous photographs taken at his funeral. They show Queen Elizabeth dressed in black
08:06and wearing a black medical face mask as she mourns her late husband entirely alone due
08:11to the necessity of social distancing.
08:14So it was really no surprise that there then arose a conspiracy theory, specifically that
08:19Philip had died as a result of receiving the newly developed COVID-19 vaccine. The
08:24theory was one of many that circulated around Philip's death. Vice reported that the event
08:28had also been co-opted by the debunked QAnon conspiracy movement, which saw dates and details
08:34in the funeral that supposedly reaffirmed their beliefs.
08:38That the British royal family has powerful connections goes without saying. As one of
08:42the most prominent examples of a monarchy on the planet, they've welcomed generations
08:47of world leaders and sit atop a hierarchy of wealth and aristocracy. This is all to
08:52say that the royals still exist as a powerful force in global diplomacy, which is another
08:57reason why they've been a target of conspiracy theories. For example, there are those that
09:02claim that they're instruments for bringing about the New World Order on behalf of the
09:06people who really run things, known in conspiracy circles as the Illuminati.
09:11Such theories point to the existence of the Bilderberg Group, an elite collective of businesspeople,
09:16academics, politicians, and so on that meet annually for a conference in Switzerland.
09:22Members of the British royal family have been invited, including King Charles and the late
09:25Prince Philip. Since no minutes of the meetings are released, and the subjects discussed remain
09:31undisclosed, many conspiracy theorists consider this sinister and suspicious.
09:36However, there's scant evidence to suggest that these are anything more than transnational
09:41debates.
09:42It's just incredible that they can say one thing and do the other."
09:46In 1910, Dracula author Bram Stoker published one of his final works, a freewheeling, nonfiction
09:52book called Famous Impostors. The final chapter makes a somewhat bizarre suggestion, namely
09:59that Queen Elizabeth I was actually a man. The theory goes that Elizabeth, daughter of
10:05the tyrannical King Henry VIII, had to leave London when she was 10 years old to avoid
10:10contracting the bubonic plague, which was rampant in the city at the time. Alas, while
10:15still in the country, Elizabeth grew ill and died, leaving her terrified nanny to search
10:20for a replacement rather than face Henry's wrath.
10:23To make the story even more farcical, no girl matching Elizabeth's pale complexion and ginger
10:28hair could be found, but the nurse did identify a boy who agreed to return to London and serve
10:34as an imposter. This story wasn't originally Stoker's, as it had been circulating as a
10:39fringe tale for centuries, though the Dracula writer did add a notable new detail. The replacement
10:44was possibly also supposedly Henry's illegitimate son, thereby explaining the resemblance between
10:51him and the deceased Elizabeth. But frankly, the story is nonsense, as this is hardly a
10:56secret that could have easily been hidden.
10:59One of the longest-running mysteries concerning the British royal family involves the so-called
11:04Princes in the Tower, whose fate remains a point of contention among historians to
11:09this day. The mystery occurred during the Wars of the Roses, an ongoing conflict between
11:14the houses of York and Lancaster over who had a legitimate claim to the throne. In 1483,
11:20King Edward IV suddenly died, leaving behind his son and heir, also named Edward, who was
11:25just 12 years old at the time. As was customary, the boy's paternal uncle, who would become
11:30King Richard III, became his guardian and took control of England as Lord Protector.
11:35However, soon after, word spread that Edward IV had an earlier secret marriage that produced
11:41another heir, and overnight his reign was declared illegitimate, meaning his children
11:46were too. The young Edward and his younger brother were then locked in the Tower of London.
11:51They were never heard from again. Then, in the 17th century, the remains of two bodies
11:56were discovered. The received wisdom was that Richard murdered the children to secure
12:01his monarchy. However, more recently, historians have questioned this assumption, which was
12:06undoubtedly influenced by Richard's portrayal as a villain by William Shakespeare. Several
12:11other key figures have since been identified as the boy's potential killers, and some historians
12:17have alternately posited that the princes were allowed to leave the Tower and then lived
12:21out the rest of their lives in anonymity.