Revelations put spotlight on the reign in Spain...

IT MAY be some consolation for the British royals to know they’re not the only dynasty squirming from the revelations of a woman bent on exacting revenge for her treatment at their hands through a series of explosive podcasts.

The Spanish royal family are being put through the ringer by Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, one-time mistress of former King Juan Carlos who she claims is ‘unhinged’ and is suing in the High Court for alleged harassment and spying. Corinna was upset to discover that the King was a philanderer, rumoured to have bedded more than 5,000 women when they started their affair. She says she felt ‘married ‘ to him, that he was ‘the husband of her heart’.

Corinna and Meghan Markle may not have a lot in common apart from their fondness for ‘alternative facts’. Corinna’s ‘feeling’ married to a man who is married to someone else, like Meghan’s saying she was married in her garden three days before the actual royal wedding, are attempts to promote emotions above truth, wishful thinking above hard facts.

But Trumpian tactics aside, both women are doing a fine job shattering the Spanish and British royals’ carefully-curated image and forcing questions about how sustainable the illusion of royal perfection is with social media, mobile phones and indeed royal inlaws and mistresses going rogue.

If monarchies are to survive at the centre of societies, they need not just public buy-in but also that those admitted into their illustrious company are so dazzled by the experience that they are blind to the feet of clay peeping out beneath the ermine robes and velvet capes.

The determination of Corinna and Meghan to take on the might of royal families shows the days of automatic obeisance are over.