The Royal Family is there to set an example when it comes to duty and traditional values.
Over the years, however, members of the aristocratic set and, indeed, senior royals have become embroiled in controversy over sordid details of their hard-partying and drug-taking ways.
Among them is Nicholas Knatchbull, the future Earl Mountbatten of Burma, whose reputation for drug use made him a social outcast.
Nicholas, now 44, was disowned by his father, the 3rd Earl Mountbatten, after becoming addicted to Class A drugs, like heroin, cocaine, LSD, and ketamine.
Relegated to a life of squalor, Nicholas has made an ‘astonishing’ comeback while taking his rightful place as the heir to his family’s Broadlands estate in Hampshire and staggering £100million fortune, the Daily Mail reported.
As the former addict and aristocrat, whose appetite for scandal made him ‘unmentionable’ in Broadlands, finds redemption, the Daily Mail looks back at the royals who have spoken about drug use – from Lord Frederick Windsor’s ‘cocaine’ confession to Princess Margaret’s sleeping pill ‘overdose’.
Nicholas Knatchbull
Once a close friend of Prince William’s, Nicholas was the future King’s mentor at Eton College and frequently enjoyed holidays with him, Harry, and Princess Diana growing up.
King Charles’s godson made childhood appearances on the Buckingham Palace balcony, and Nicholas’s mother, Lady Penelope Romsey, was close to both the late Queen and Prince Philip.
As heir to the Broadlands estate and one of the most eminent titles in English peerage, the world was Nicholas’s oyster – until drugs altered the course of his life.
Through his late teens and twenties, Nicholas, who then had the courtesy title of Baron Brabourne, was addicted to heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine and also repeatedly consumed LSD, ketamine and endless amounts of cannabis.
He underwent treatment twice for drug addiction at the renowned Cottonwood centre in Tucson, Arizona, and was also an inpatient at the Farm Place Clinic in Surrey and the Stepping Stones Addiction Centre in South Africa.
Nicholas, living in sordid squats in London and Southampton, was even at one point sectioned under the Mental Health Act for his own safety after he ‘disappeared’ from the Priory clinic where he was being treated for his addictions.
He was banished from Broadlands, the 60-room mansion in Romsey, Hampshire, where both the Queen and Philip and later Charles and Diana had spent parts of their respective honeymoons.
He was repeatedly threatened with disinheritance, and eventually the threat was carried out.
After he was removed from Earl Mountbatten’s will, it was expected that it would now be left to his sister, Lady Alexandra Hooper, the goddaughter of Princess Diana.
In November 2014, the aristocrat cut a shocking figure after he was pictured outside his home at the time: a housing association flat in Notting Hill.
At the time, he was engaged to Raz Tedros, a nurse from Eritrea, and trying to make his way as an artist.
Today, he is 15 years sober after repeated stints in various rehab facilities. Nicholas is also now in a long-term, steady relationship after he married French cabaret performer Ambre Pouzet in May 2021.
In a sign that Nicholas’s fractured relationship with his father, the 3rd Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and family was healing, the wedding was held at Broadlands.
They were allowed to live in a cottage adjoining the estate boundary before moving into a larger converted barn after the birth of their first child, son Alexander, in 2022.
Nicholas was given gainful employment on the estate as a gardener, with sources telling the Daily Mail that his two children, including daughter Endora, have been instrumental in helping Nicholas turn his life around.
Now set to inherit his father’s title and a £100million fortune, Nicholas has finally found his way home.
A source said: ‘It was decided to bring Nicholas back into the family because he’s proved that he’s a changed man.
‘He’s now married, has two children and has settled down a lot. The family feel that he’s put his past behind him and that the time is right for all of them to move on.
‘He’s living back in the main house with his family. Nicholas has gone through a lot, and it’s good to see that he’s got his life back on track. We are all happy for him.’
Lord Frederick Windsor
Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Queen Elizabeth’s first cousin Prince Michael of Kent, also admitted to taking cocaine after a photo was taken of him on the floor of a London club.
A 20-year-old Freddie was photographed spread-eagled on the floor of a London club after attending a film premiere in 1999. He later confessed to snorting a line of the Class A drug off a glossy magazine during a party in Fulham in west London.
His mother, Princess Michael of Kent, at the time defended the Oxford graduate in a statement, saying: ‘I brought up my children to be anti-drugs and I am disappointed but he has assured me he won’t do it again and I trust him.’
She added: ‘He’s down as a drug user, but he’s not. You just have to watch him in action. Freddie is not a junkie.’
Frederick, who is married to Sophie Winkleman, acknowledged it was ‘difficult’ to steer clear of ‘this sort of thing when you move in these circles’ but hoped his experiences would be a ‘lesson to others’.
To teach him a final lesson, Lord Freddie and his younger sister Lady Gabriella Windsor were taken by their mother to a drug rehabilitation centre so they could see the problems caused by addiction.
It was reported at the time that both children were sick after leaving, having been left shocked by the aged state of a 17-year-old addict they met, the princess said.
After declaring that he was going to start taking his law studies seriously, he was still spotted enjoying himself at party spots, drinking champagne and turning up for swanky gambling events at London clubs.
But after being caught taking cocaine in his early twenties, Frederick – known as Freddie – vowed to focus on his studies and later married glamorous actress Sophie Winkleman of Peep Show fame.
Princess Margaret
The death of her father, George VI, and the breakdown of her marriage to Lord Snowdon left Princess Margaret ‘melancholic and despairing’, according to royal biographer Andrew Morton.
In his book, Elizabeth and Margaret, the royal author revealed the princess was ‘smoking and drinking’ excessively in the mid-1960s.
In 1967, Margaret was admitted to King Edward VII’s Hospital in Central London amid reports that the queen’s younger sister had ‘made a cry for help by overdosing on pills and alcohol’.
After her affair with Roddy Llewellyn became the final nail in the coffin of her marriage, it was rumoured that Margaret had tried to end her life by taking a large amount of sedatives in 1974.
However, Margaret denied the claims and told her biographer Christopher Warwick she had taken the pills because ‘I was so exhausted because of everything that all I wanted to do was sleep…and I did, right through to the following afternoon’.
Prince Harry
Even before Prince Harry opened up about his experiences with drugs in his controversial memoir, the Duke of Sussex was known for being the Royal Family’s ‘wild child’.
During the Golden Jubilee in 2002, the duke described being dragged into an office by an anonymous Royal Household staff member after a reporter enquired about his drug-taking habits.
In February 2002, it was reported that Charles, then Prince of Wales, had ordered Harry to visit the Featherstone Lodge Rehabilitation Centre in Peckham after learning he had taken drugs at parties.
In 2012, Harry enjoyed a wild weekend in Las Vegas, where he was snapped in just a necklace while a naked girl hid behind him following a game of strip billiards in his VIP suite.
Nearly a decade later, Harry published his memoir Spare, which included several candid confessions about drug-taking, and admitted to having taken cocaine ‘a few times’ during his wilder party years.
Harry revealed he smoked cannabis and drank alcohol early on in the book, before later saying he was offered a line of cocaine while on a hunting trip.
He also confessed to taking ketamine and magic mushrooms, and ended up hallucinating that a bin was talking to him.
‘Beside the toilet was a round silver bin, the kind with a foot pedal to open the lid. I stared at the bin. It stared back. Then it became… a head.
‘I stepped on the pedal, and the head opened its mouth. A huge open grin.
‘I laughed, turned away, took a p***. Now the loo became a head too. The bowl was its gaping maw, the hinges of the seat were its piercing silver eyes. It said, “Aaah”.’
He also described smoking cigarettes and cannabis and drinking at the Windsor Castle golf course while he was a student at Eton.
The Duke of Sussex wrote that he smoked marijuana while he and his family were staying at US actor Tyler Perry’s house in Los Angeles in 2020, after they left Canada.
He wrote: ‘Late at night, with everyone asleep, I’d walk the house, checking the doors and windows. Then I’d sit on the balcony or the edge of the garden and roll a joint.
‘The house looked down onto a valley, across a hillside thick with frogs. I’d listen to their late-night song, smell the scented air.’
Cannabis was made legal in California for recreational use in 2016.
Harry credited the use of psychedelic drugs with helping him deal with the ‘grief’ and ‘trauma’ he felt after the death of his mother, Princess Diana.
He said using psychedelics when he got older ‘cleared away the idea’ that he needed to be sad to prove he ‘missed’ his mother.
