Right royal scandals through the ages

Princess Diana.

The embarrassing mess that the Duchess of York has got herself into today is just the latest in a long string of scandals involving the British royal family.

Here's four notable examples of controversy from the past 100 years of the monarchy.

1. Edward and Mrs Simpson

English high society was rocked to the core when their beloved King Edward VIII did the unthinkable - he announced he was to marry a woman who was not only a foreigner, but also a married woman who had already been divorced. Ouch.

The pair had met in 1933 at a social function, when the future King was still the Prince of Wales.

What followed over the next three years was a series of public meetings and secret trysts, in which the pair professed their love for each other.

However, that sort of thing simply couldn't be tolerated in the genteel climate of 1930s England. Edward eventually came to the conclusion that he would have to give up the crown "for the woman he loved".

So only ten months after his coronation, he abdicated the throne on 11 December, 1936.

He was succeeded by George VI, Britain's monarch through World War 2 and beyond.

2. Squidgygate

Squidgygate is the first of a pair of scandals involving taped telephone conversations during the bumpy marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales and his wife, the celebrated Princess Diana.

The calls were between Diana and a suitor, one James Gilbey.

During covertly recorded phone calls between the pair, possibly in 1989, Gilbey affectionately called Diana by the name "Squidgy". In the conversation, the Princess of Wales likened her situation to that of a character in the popular British soap opera EastEnders, and expressed concern that she might be pregnant.

In 1992 the Sun newspaper published the tapes.

The publication of the tapes was considered by many to be the starting point in the disintegration of the royal marriage.

Diana also had other male companions, such as Major James Hewitt, her former riding instructor. Hewitt later became a notorious figure when he tried to sell his sixty personal letters from Diana for £10 million - an act many considered to be most un-gallant.

3. Camillagate

Camillagate was a scandal which broke in the British tabloids in 1992, when a transcript of an explicit telephone conversation between Prince Charles and his mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles was published.

By the time this story broke, the public was already well aware that the Prince's marriage to Diana was experiencing deep and profound problems. In any case, the release of the transcript was a source of intense embarrassment for the British royal family.

Later investigations proved that the phones of the royal family had been tapped.

Diana was interviewed in a famous BBC Panorama interview with journalist Martin Bashir, broadcast in November 1995. In it, Diana said of Hewitt, "Yes, I loved him. Yes, I adored him." Of Camilla, she claimed "There were three of us in this marriage." For herself, she shrugged off thoughts of naked ambition for the throne, instead saying said "I'd like to be a queen of people's hearts."

The writing was on the wall for this royal marriage.

The couple's divorce was confirmed by Buckingham Palace on August 28, 1996. One year later Diana was to perish in a fiery automobile crash in Paris, setting off an unprecedented level of mourning and grief in Britain.

4. Royal blackmail

In October 2007, the British media ran reports of the arrest of two men accused of trying to blackmail a member of the royal family.

The pair of wide boys apparently demanded £50,000 in return for a video purporting to show the target snorting cocaine with a royal aide. Some accounts suggested that the video showed the royal engaged in a gay sex act with the aide.

The name of the member of the royal family embroiled in this plot has never been made public (nor has the identity of the aide).

The two extortionists were named as Ian Strachan, aged 30, described as "a Scots-born businessman" and Irishman Sean McGuigan, 40. They were busted by an undercover cop who pretended to be a royal aide, and subsequently jailed for five years.

- SOURCES: Wikipedia, BritRoyals.com, answers.com