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Worried about the in-laws? Spare a thought for the royals - whose festive lunch comes with rancour and vintage sour grapes

By Richard Kay and Geoffrey Levy for MailOnline
Updated: 18:01 EDT, 23 December 2008

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Can there be a more typical family scene than the one that will be gathered round a large mahogany table at Sandringham tomorrow? Christmas crackers alongside polished glasses at every place, traditional fare of turkey with all the trimmings of chipolata sausages, roast potatoes and chestnut stuffing, and finally two flaming Christmas puddings.

The Queen will be flanked by her two family favourites, Princess Anne's son Peter Phillips, who has flown home with his wife Autumn from Hong Kong where he heads promotions for the troubled Royal Bank of Scotland, and Princess Margaret's artistic daughter Lady Sarah Chatto.

If any lunch should drift towards teatime on a stream of nostalgia and family anecdotes, it should be this one. But not quite.

Christmas 2003 (from left): Prince Charles, Peter Phillips, Prince Philip, Zara Phillips (obscured), Vice-Admiral Tim Laurence, Prince Harry, Prince Edward, Princess Anne and Prince Andrew

Paper hats may be dutifully donned by everyone (except the Queen) and toasts drunk, but this is a Christmas lunch at which no one lingers.

The final sound of the crackers being pulled is the starting gun for the Queen's chair to be discreetly pulled back by a page and for her to lead the exodus out of the room. The record time from start to finish of Christmas lunch at Sandringham: 50 minutes.

The Queen takes the corgis for a walk. Others slip away to their rooms, some read.

You would think that these days the royals would linger rather longer in each other's company, like other families together at Christmas. After all, it is many years since the brooding presence of Princess Diana brought her desperate unhappiness to the annual Christmas gathering and, as one close figure observes, 'her shadow is no longer there'.

Nor do the royals any longer have to feel uneasy about the divorced Prince Andrew being at the table with his spirited daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, while their mother, Fergie, is tucked away as an 'undesirable', out of sight at Wood Farm, on the edge of the estate.

Since the girls grew up, the independent Duchess has made her own arrangements and will be joined by her daughters after Christmas.

Prince Charles and Camilla arriving at St Mary Magdalene church at Sandringham for the royals' traditional Christmas Day service in 2006

Of course, there is affection and a close bond among them, and jolly moments too, but deep down there are simmering tensions and differences among this group of individuals who seldom do things together, dislike sharing the spotlight and, throughout the rest of the year, spend very little time in each other's homes.

One family figure who has sat at this table for Christmas lunch later told friends: 'It was extraordinary how, after we had been at Sandringham for a while, the company divides into the blood relations in one corner and everyone else in another. It was really rather odd.'

Royal family politics

Just the other day, when Prince Andrew was presented with a special version of the property board game Monopoly while opening Leeds Building Society's newly refurbished headquarters, he revealed the game was banned from the family's festive get-together because 'it gets too vicious'.

Old tensions such as that between Prince Philip and his son Prince Charles, 60, whom he considers weak, have certainly eased over recent years, but other tensions have taken their place.

Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie next to the Queen during Christmas Day in 2005

There is, for example, the vexed question among the ladies of who precedes whom in the royal pecking order.

Technically, as the wife of the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall comes immediately after the Queen. But not even the most dedicated traditionalists could ever see Princess Anne deferring to the former Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, and certainly not dropping a curtsey to her.

When her older brother married his long-time mistress, Anne was said to have a 'marked indifference' to her. This attitude has, on both sides, now developed, it is said, into 'an eternal frostiness'. It was the Queen who came up with a wise solution to the pecking order issue, albeit one that bucks protocol.

She decided to elevate those women born royal above those who merely married into the family.

Prince Charles, always a late arrival at the royal Christmas gathering (and among the soonest to depart), has never been happy that, in consequence, his wife does not receive the curtseys to which he believes she is entitled.

Equally, Prince Edward has never recovered from the ignominy of finding his wife, Sophie, who used to be No 2 after the Queen, relegated to the bottom of the pile at No 5 - despite being one of the Queen's favourites and closest to her among the senior royal ladies.

Enlarge

The royal guest list (click to enlarge)

So what happens at Christmas to retain peace on Earth at Sandringham? The solution is simple: only one figure receives curtseys - the Queen herself. And, in true Christmas spirit, everyone is happy with the arrangement.

Actually, the Queen permits one other figure to receive curtseys. Edward and Sophie's charming daughter, Lady Louise Windsor, learnt to curtsey by practising on a statue of Queen Victoria which stands on the stairs leading to the nursery.

Now, every time the five-year-old trots upstairs to the Sandringham nursery, the stern Queen Victoria gets a deep curtsey.

Such episodes add light relief to an absorbing but tricky few days which are by no means devoid of the Christmas spirit but, like most families, are bedevilled with problems - highlighted by such close proximity.

For example, until he married Camilla nearly four years ago, Prince Charles had to make do with a single room at Sandringham while the suite with adjoining dressing room that he'd been used to was allocated - by the Queen - to Edward and Sophie.

'Someone's always unhappy about something,' says an aide. 'They rub along well enough and are well aware they all play on the same team. But after Christmas many of the family can't get away fast enough.'

Pressure to look the part

How different are Sandringham's rather muted seasonal festivities from the sheer exuberance of last week's royal household staff party at Buckingham Palace.

There, the Queen and Philip, helped by Princess Anne and husband Vice-Admiral Tim Laurence, Prince Andrew and the Duke of Kent, joined in the fun as 600 staff and their partners spread themselves across three dance floors to the music of a disco, a jive band and the gently melodic Pasadena Roof Orchestra.

The Queen, we learn, engaged the Rhubarb Catering Company, who transformed Buckingham Palace's grand entrance hall into a lavish buffet.

'It was very jolly and the royals - they loved it,' says one close figure. 'The Queen always used to dance with her footmen at this "do", but she's 82 now and doesn't dance any longer. But she enjoyed watching them have a good time.'

The Earl and Countess of Wessex during Christmas Day 2006

Such glorious informality is never quite achieved at Christmas at Sandringham, no matter how hard they try. Everyone knows they are following a programme of unbending rituals that never varies but unfolds like an eloquent period piece set out as a series of tableaux.

For the women, it is a nightmare of outfit changes because something different must be worn at each meal.

'Even on a quiet day, you might change five times before dinner,' says one regular guest. 'There may be only around 20 guests there for a few days, but the luggage that has to be moved in and unpacked runs into tons.'

In one recent year, the Queen started in tweeds and pearls, changed to go riding, changed again to join one of Prince Philip's shooting parties, changed back into pearls and twin-set and finally wore a different outfit for dinner.

The Army, using unmarked lorries known as the 'Queen Bees', transports the Queen's effects, from shoes and clothes to government papers and computers that ensure that, wherever she is, she remains fully in touch with affairs of state.

It's by no means all frost between the royals. Camilla gets on 'really well' with Andrew - because he is 'always telling smutty jokes'.

The royals arrive for church on Christmas Day 2005

However, her relationship with the Countess of Wessex is described as 'cordial'.

This is probably because of Charles's myopic view that the former PR girl Sophie Rhys-Jones's commercial activities - she ran her own company - were far more of a threat to the image and future of the Royal Family than anything that his own wife, Camilla, has been accused of.

As for William and Harry, they are said to be 'not as close as you might expect' to most members of the family. Apart from their father, they are closest to the Queen and Prince Philip.

William's trust in his uncle Edward has never fully recovered from being shattered while at St Andrews University. His uncle's company, Ardent, was the only organisation to keep a prying camera crew around the university campus in breach of an agreement with the media to let William get on with his education.

Reverse gift snobbery

And so to the royals' first Christmas ritual, which takes place later today. Following the German tradition, presents are opened on Christmas Eve in the ballroom. They are placed on trestle tables which are covered with white cloths. Each pile has a discreet name card in front of it.

Before the presents are opened, they have tea set out at 5pm on the sideboards in the baronial drawing room - either Earl Grey or the Queen's special blend of Indian, with scones, sandwiches, toasting muffins and chocolate cake.

Square card tables will have been pushed together and there is no formal seating arrangement except for the Queen at one end, who pours tea for everyone.

After half an hour - they never linger over meals - the Queen leads the way into the ballroom, and the moment a page closes the door and they get a nod from the Queen, a presents free-for-all begins as everyone starts tearing at the wrappings.

Supporters wishing the Duchess of Cornwall a merry Christmas during her first festive lunch with the royal family in 2005

And yes, this too has a competitive edge, but with a touch of reverse snobbery. For extravagant Christmas presents are not considered fitting, an appropriate convention for a family not noted for its largesse. The contest is to find the cleverest way of spending very little on each other.

At Christmas 1981, when Diana was still a newly-wed, she gave an expensive cashmere jersey to someone who, she noted with astonishment, had received a joke loo-roll holder from Princess Anne. She learned quickly. On a subsequent year, she gave Fergie a leopard-skin-pattern bath hat.

All the presents are then left on show until after Boxing Day, with labels beside every gift revealing who gave what to whom.

Next, the family repairs to the saloon for large Martinis served by the Queen's equerry. (Tim Laurence used to do this job before marrying Princess Anne).

Anne and Andrew do not drink, but the rest enjoy a tipple. One Christmas is still remembered when the Queen, Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother got through almost a bottle of gin and a bottle of Dubonnet before the traditional black-tie dinner.

Afterwards, the Queen Mother was so merry that she missed the plate while helping herself to vegetables and they spilled all over the floor. Her giggling set off Margaret and then the Queen. Everyone was roaring with laughter as a footman scrabbled on the floor in competition with the corgis.

For the Queen, those vintage Christmases at Sandringham have never been the same since. For, within the space of a few weeks, she lost the intimate and irreplaceable companionship of both her sister and her mother.

This year, as always, Christmas at Sandringham will begin to break up on Boxing Day.

The Queen's family will take their petty differences away with them and resume lives of incredible separateness.

William and Harry will have been missing their girlfriends, Kate Middleton and Chelsy Davy, who - in keeping with yet another tradition - are not invited.

The Christmas cast of characters may change over the years at the Sandringham theatre royal. But the script never varies.
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