Secrets of the Royal Palaces

-Britain's royal palaces -- historic.

-This -- a twin towered Italianate vision by the sea.

-Extravagant.

-It just shouts power and richness.

-And jam packed with secrets.

-Their floating palace was the only palace that didn't leak.

-In this series, we gain privileged access inside palace walls -- -I'm heading for one of the most unexpectedly spectacular and costly parts of the palace, the roof.

-...and uncover the hidden treasures within.

-It wasn't until the fire that these beautiful paintings were rediscovered.

-We unearthed the palace's dark, secret histories.

-Kew Palace had been a secret place of torture.

-And we reveal the truth behind their most dramatic moments.

-Charles and Camilla probably just had their head in their hands and thought, what else could go wrong?

-This was the closest that Hitler got to actually killing the British royal family.

-I sat bolt upright in bed saying, "What fire at Buckingham Palace?"

-The tears almost flowed.

-Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

-This is the all new "Secrets of the Royal Palaces".

In this episode, Harry makes his Buckingham Palace comeback for the Platinum Jubilee.

But the royal rift remains.

-Only working royals got to be on the Buckingham Palace balcony.

-At Kensington Palace, there's a cover up that went to the very top.

-It was in this room that Mary spent the night burning her secret papers.

She destroyed letters, taking whatever secrets they held between them to the grave.

-The gruesome fate of a 17th century prince at Saint James's Palace.

-After the attentions of these doctors, he was not just seriously ill, he was also bald, weakened, dehydrated, and completely incontinent.

-And the mystery behind one of the weirdest items ever to pass through palace gates.

-I mean, it looks like something that's come out of a rather bad horror movie.

-But first, to Kensington Palace and the hidden story behind the most dramatic royal feud of modern times.

In 1992, after years of speculation, Diana and Charles announced their separation.

Whilst Diana remained at Kensington, Charles changed his official residence to Saint James's Palace, though appeared keener to be out of the city and closer to someone else.

-He concentrated most of his time and resources at Highgrove, which was the marital country house in Gloucestershire.

Highgrove was much more Charles's cup of tea, frankly, than London.

It was far enough away from Diana, for one thing, but also, its proximity to Mrs. Parker Bowles, who was then very much part of his life, although it was not publicly known.

-Kensington Palace became a place of loneliness for Diana.

-I mean, she had the boys there some of the time.

Obviously that was great.

It was still a family home, but her life was pretty isolated there.

-And worsening relations between the palaces sparked a media frenzy.

-The high profile visit of the princess coincides with a virtual explosion of speculation about the distance between the couple in the British press.

-The war of the Wales was the entire drama that unfolded between Charles and Diana.

The ill fated marriage, the affairs, the infidelity, the separation, the divorce.

It was also a media war.

-There's a lot of sniping between both of them, and it got more and more intense, and it was largely conducted through their friends' anonymous briefings to the newspapers mainly, but also to other media figures.

Both sides started slinging all sorts of muck and allegations about the other to try and maintain some kind of advantage in the public's mind's eye.

-And as the war dragged on, we began to hear the Wales's deepest secrets.

-From the beginning of 1992 onwards, there was a sort of feverish speculation that Diana had contributed to a book being written by a royal author called Andrew Morton.

When the book came out, it was even more seismic than anyone had predicted.

-A book which claimed that Diana was desperately unhappy in her marriage, that she had thrown herself down the stairs when she was pregnant with William, that she had cut herself, that Camilla was a dark cloud hanging over the House of Windsor, which might be in danger of collapse.

It was absolutely disastrous, it seemed.

We didn't really believe it, to tell you the truth, but it became apparent that every word had come from Diana's mouth.

-It presented Charles as a cold husband, an indifferent father.

It painted him very much as the villain of the piece and Diana as the victim.

-Charles's camp was losing the war.

They had to do something to salvage his reputation, and quickly.

-Charles agreed to take part in ITV documentary to show what his work was like as Prince of Wales.

It perplexed him as to why people thought him so strange, perhaps so cruel, what he viewed as a total misconception.

So the documentary was designed to show a working prince, a modern prince, and how he saw his future as Prince of Wales and future king.

-But during the filming at Highgrove, Charles would reveal a dramatic secret about their doomed marriage.

-Until now, the prince has not spoken about the collapse of his marriage.

No friend has been permitted to speak on his behalf.

As a result, it has been put about that he was always unfaithful.

-In the course of the documentary, he was asked about the breakdown of his marriage, and Dimbleby asked him if he had been faithful.

-Did you try to be faithful and honorable to your wife when you took on the vow of marriage?

-Yes.

Absolutely.

-And you were?

-Yes.

Until it became irretrievably broken down.

-Now, he didn't actually say, "I then began sleeping with Mrs. Parker Bowles", or "I began seeing Mrs. Parker Bowles", but it was all implicit in those very few words.

I mean, he was extremely uncomfortable.

I believe it was reshot 2 or 3 times.

I don't think we'd ever seen a member of the royal family squirm quite like that under the television lights.

-I mean, as I -- as I've said before, it is a deeply regrettable thing to happen.

But, uh, it does happen.

And unfortunately, in this case, it has happened.

I mean, it's the last possible thing that I ever wanted to happen.

I'm not a total idiot.

-It was a massive story, of course.

No one expected the Prince of Wales to admit it.

We all knew that the relationship was going on and that Camilla was the person in his life, but for him to admit adultery was, well, it was an absolute bombshell, obviously.

-With Charles's devastating secret out in the open, the ball was now in Diana's court.

Her response would be jaw dropping.

Kensington may have been a lonely place for Diana, but for the king and queen who created it in the 17th century, it was a days rest.

-When William and Mary arrived in London, it was very difficult for William because he was asthmatic, and Whitehall Palace was slap bang in a London that was surrounded by open sewers and stank to high heaven.

But they had to be in London.

There was a matter of running the country.

-These are Kensington Gardens, the lavishly landscaped and very public front garden to Kensington Palace.

On one level, it was really well situated because it's two and a half miles from the Royal HQ, which is Whitehall Palace to the east.

Now, on another level, this is quite an odd place to look for a royal house because it wasn't along the river allowing ease of access and there was no existing royal house here.

-What did exist here was a handsome villa called Nottingham House, apart from polluted city air, but not exactly a palace.

-They were very underwhelmed.

It was grand enough, but very small and not fitting for a king and queen, which would reflect the glory of the monarchy.

-So William and Mary embarked on a very palatial extension.

-Rather than level it and begin from scratch on a perfectly symmetrical, complete conceived new palace, they adjusted and developed the house that they found.

-They employed the very best architects, Sir Christopher Wren.

It's a pretty hasty job.

It's very expensive.

What would be the equivalent of more than �10 million today?

-His solution was to put pavilions on each corner, four of them, and then a fifth on the far side from here.

And in those pavilions could be housed the King's and the Queen's apartments.

-William and Mary were joint rulers and made most of the political decisions together, but at home Mary ruled the roost.

She took the lead in the palace's design, and one of her creations would inspire houses across Britain to this day.

-It's just a staircase, right?

But under Queen Mary and her joiner Alexander Fort, there are some secret innovations.

The stairs themselves are very shallow, and they allow her to go up and down with real elegance.

She glides up.

In fact, it's a contoured termination there, which follows into the handrail.

This is the earliest known example of a toad's back handrail, which is shaped to the contours of the hand and finger.

It's beautiful in the way that it's carved to meet your hand, and underneath it, you've got these balusters that sit not on a diagonal piece of timber called a string.

They're sat directly on the steps.

That sounds a technicality, but actually, it opens up the staircase to maximum view shows the quality of the joinery, and it's Mary's royal patronage that influences staircases in houses up and down Britain.

-Mary was just as keen to display her fashionable taste in her rooms.

-At the top of the Queen's stairs is this, the Queen's Gallery, the largest of Mary's rooms.

It is lined with rich oak paneling, shutters, sash windows, and above the carved cornice is a plain white barrel vaulted ceiling.

Now, the secret of this room is that it was intended at first to have windows on both sides to give views over the gardens.

If you were to take the paneling off on the opposite wall, you'd find the preparation for those windows.

But Mary was a great collector, so she needed more surface for presenting things like embroideries, Persian carpets, paintings.

She had 787 pieces of exotic Chinese porcelain.

-Mary had transformed Kensington, turning it into a palace fit for a king and queen.

But five years after moving in, disaster struck.

Mary had contracted the dreaded smallpox.

It prompted a drastic act.

-It was in this room that Mary spent the night burning her secret papers.

She destroyed letters from the king, from her father, the exiled James II, and from her friends, taking whatever secrets they held between them to the grave.

-The reason -- Mary had been instrumental in the removal of her Catholic father, King James II, from the throne.

She had seized the crown with her husband William, in a move backed by a Protestant majority, and forced her father into exile.

-He never expected her to stab him in the back, as it were, and I think there were times when she'd regretted what had happened and noted these down in her diary.

All this sensitive material she felt would be better off burnt and destroyed.

-Mary was right to get her papers in order.

Less than a week later, she would be dead.

Coming up, Charles's Highgrove revelations inspired Diana to seek revenge.

-There was rumors going around that something very big going to happen this evening and people should come.

-And Saint James's Palace sees the grisly death of the king we never had.

-He was not just seriously ill, he was also bald, weakened, dehydrated, and completely incontinent.

-In 1994, during documentary filming at Highgrove, Prince Charles revealed some of the most explosive secrets ever released from a palace.

He admitted an affair with Camilla while he was still married to Princess Diana.

The program was readied for broadcast on the 29th of June.

-There was a huge amount of press attention in the days and weeks leading up to it, and it's all built up to a climax.

And of course, what everyone wanted to know was what would Diana do?

Where would she be?

Would she be watching it?

How would she respond to it?

-Back at Kensington Palace, her London HQ, Diana hatched a plan.

-The same night that Prince Charles's documentary aired, Princess Diana was not staying at home, crying into her pajamas.

She was getting dressed up for a fabulous party at the Serpentine Gallery.

-That evening, at her Kensington home, Princess Diana reached into her wardrobe for a secret weapon, something she had been saving for just the right occasion.

-She looked through her wardrobe and her eyes are lit on this outfit she'd never worn before.

She thought it was too daring for her to wear.

-That night was the night she decided she could be as daring as she wanted.

-Now, traditionally, royals don't wear black unless they're going to a funeral.

But Diana, after her separation, had completely ripped up the royal style book.

-Meanwhile, royal photographer Anwar Hussein received a vital tip off.

-There was rumors going on that something very big going to happen this evening and people should come.

Diana used to send messages through somebody without us knowing that it was her who was leaked this information.

She told reporters, "I'm going to do something very big.

It's going to take on the whole royal family."

-As Charles's interview hit the screens, Princess Diana arrived at the Serpentine Gallery for the event.

-She made sure they parked the car quite far away.

Once the door opened, she just was full of confidence.

"Bring it on.

I'll take it on."

That was her attitude.

You can see from the way she walked and how glamorous she looked.

I'd never seen her like that.

She paused there to kill.

[ Laughs ] -It was a dress that was jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

It was short.

It was very low cut.

It was a little black dress that really took your breath away.

-It was off the shoulder.

It revealed cleavage.

It was cinched very tightly at the waist.

It was a fantastic dress that screamed, "I'm an independent woman!"

It also said to Charles, if you like, "Look at what you're missing."

And it very quickly, within about a day, became known as the revenge dress.

-It was revenge against the public, the media, against all the negative portrayals of her as being loopy or unhinged or vulnerable or a victim.

It was the outfit that said, "I'm no one's victim, I'm my own woman."

-And the revenge dress had the desired effect.

-Diana knew how to use imagery to send a message, and people got that message loud and clear.

-I think it's fair to say that she weaponized her fashion choices that night, because it achieved everything that she could have possibly wanted.

She looked $1 million.

She was on the front page of every paper, and I think that helped enormously, in her view, in sort of counterbalancing what Charles was up to.

-The next day, the papers may have led with the story of Charles's affair, but the pictures were all of Diana.

-Charles wasn't exactly wiped off the front pages, but The Sun, for example, had a lovely picture of Diana and the headline "The Thrilla he left to woo Camilla".

-It showed that Diana was not going to hide away, and that she was prepared to confront whatever her husband might throw in her face, and she was going to come out a stronger woman for it.

-Prince Charles, by comparison, looked like a throwback from a previous era.

Princess Diana looked like she was the future of womankind and the monarchy and culture in the mid-'90s.

-The lives of the royal family have always been in the spotlight.

In the 17th century, all eyes were on Richmond Palace and a handsome young prince.

-In early 1612, Henry Stuart, Prince of Wales, takes to his bed at Richmond Palace complaining of a headache.

Henry is the eldest son of James, the heir to the throne, responsible, frugal, handsome, athletic, intelligent.

He's the great prince.

The hopes of a nation are pinned upon him because he's completely different to his father.

So the doctors surround Henry.

They decide that the headaches are caused by evil humors, fluids in his brain, and they try and work out how to get these out.

They decide the best way is by laxatives.

So on October the 12th, they give him enemas of turpentine and open his bowels 25 times.

This doesn't work.

He gets iller and iller.

But Henry isn't able to stay in bed to recuperate.

Two days later, the German prince is arriving to marry his sister.

Henry's overseeing the festivities.

He has to get out of bed and be the master of ceremonies.

Henry soldiers on, but after two weeks, he can't power through any longer and is confined to his bed at Saint James's Palace.

The headaches, dizziness, sweating, ringing in his ears.

He's so ill. And then his pulse gets very shallow.

His breathing is rapid.

On top of this, his mouth sprouts lesions.

His tongue turns black.

The prince is seriously ill. Doctors argue about what to do.

They shave his head, and then they put hot cups over the skull to draw out the fluids.

It does nothing but make him miserable and ill. Then they decide to take roosters and pigeons and kill them, and apply the still warm carcasses to his skull to draw out the fluids.

This makes the poor prince vomit miserably.

Poor Henry, after the attentions of these doctors, he was not just seriously ill, he was also bald, weakened, dehydrated, and completely incontinent.

He died on the 6th of November, 1612, just a month after he fell ill, and we now know he died of typhoid fever.

The doctors could have made him comfortable.

Instead, his bed at Saint James's Palace was turned into a place of torment and suffering for Prince Henry, the king we never had.

-Palaces are, of course, host to happier occasions, too, and none happier than the arrival of a new little royal.

In 1819, Kensington Palace saw the birth of Britain's second longest reigning Queen, Victoria.

-Just over 200 years ago, in 1819, Queen Victoria was born in this lovely room.

Her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, had come from Germany to England, where they were offered a suite of apartments in Kensington Palace.

The Duke set the room up with white curtains, white cambric on a bed, and on the 24th of May, 1819, Victoria was born in a bed much like this one, and set in a crib rather like that one.

-But behind this charming nursery scene was a secret story of frenzied baby making across the palaces of Europe.

-The baby race began when George IV's heir, his daughter, died in childbirth along with her stillborn son.

Thus, in one remove, taking away two generations of heirs to the British throne.

-So you have a crisis.

You have no heir to the throne.

It's a crazy situation.

George III and Charlotte have 15 children, 12 of whom are adults, and not one of whom has delivered an heir.

Now, that means all these old unattractive dukes who've been getting their end away with all sorts of mistresses right across the continent and beyond, suddenly have to pull themselves together and try and procreate, literally, for king and country.

[ Laughs ] -The most potent Duke proved to be the Duke of Kent, then living in Germany.

He and his pregnant wife rushed back to Blighty for the birth, and Princess Victoria was born at Kensington in 1819, the first legitimate royal of her generation.

She spent her childhood in the palace, later recalling it in her diaries as a gloomy prison.

Its sad shabbiness, seemingly a result of her father's heavy debts.

But newly discovered evidence paints a different picture.

-Secrets in the archives revealed that despite being broke, the Duke had a weakness for luxurious and up-to-date interior design.

So when the Kents arrived at Kensington, he splashed the �2,000 that he'd borrowed, which is more than �120,000 today, on carpets and curtains and upholstery and furniture, because only the best would do.

-And Victoria gave a misleading impression of more than just the furnishings.

-Victoria spent nearly 20 years writing in her diary bemoaning what a lonely, unhappy, friendless childhood she had.

Well, of course, this was not true at all.

For one thing, she had a half brother and half sister who grew up with her in Kensington Palace.

For another, she had a doting and loving mother who did her very best to surround her with the sort of things she wanted to do.

-It all begs the question why would Victoria later pretend to have such a miserable upbringing?

-Victoria felt the need to create this narrative, and when she married Albert, it was like a new chapter in her life.

So by painting that chapter as a glorious new beginning meant that she had to paint her childhood as this horrendous, love starved period of her life.

It was part of Victoria being melodramatic.

-On the 20th of June 1837, at the age of 18, Victoria was told that her uncle had died and that she was now queen.

And one of her first acts as queen was to make her new home Buckingham Palace, condemning Kensington to the past.

Coming up, at Royal HQ, Harry and Meghan take a step towards reconciliation.

But past wrongs are not easily forgiven.

-The relationship that was already damaged probably had a giant crack by the end of that interview.

-And we reveal the dirty secrets of the most bonkers object in the Royal Collection.

-There's even a drop of snot that's sort of falling out from the nose.

It's such a weird object.

-Like any other family, the royals have their quarrels.

They usually play out behind palace walls, but sometimes, a feud bursts onto the public stage.

After years of tension between them and the wider royal family and officially stepping back from royal duties, in 2020, Harry and Meghan spilled the beans in a shocking interview with Oprah.

-The infamous interview that Harry and Meghan gave Oprah Winfrey certainly made a bad situation many times worse.

Neither of them held back.

Harry talked about how his father had financially abandoned him.

They weren't talking on the phone.

The rift with his brother William was brought up.

And of course, the bombshell announcement that a senior member of the royal family had been allegedly racist.

-I'm not exaggerating when I say it blew a hole within the royal family.

-The late Queen remained pretty tight lipped, but there's no way she could have been pleased by the interview.

The interview was very damaging to her own family and to the royal family's status.

-The relationship that was already damaged, already had a fissure, probably had a giant crack by the end of that interview.

-The relationship appeared irretrievably broken and when, just over a year later, the couple came with new daughter Lilibet to the Platinum Jubilee, things didn't seem to improve.

-When there was a story doing the rounds that Harry and Meghan wanted to take an official photographer with them to capture the moment that Lilibet met her great grandmother, the Queen was very uneasy with that proposal, put her foot down and said no.

The assumption being, I think, that those photographs would have made their way into the American media and would have been used to promote the Sussexes.

-But with the awkwardness of the photographer put aside, the royal couple did get to visit the Queen and introduce her to great granddaughter Lilibet.

-It was a very relaxed occasion.

It was a garden party.

Friends and family around.

And it was an opportunity for some of the royals to meet Lilibet and spend some time with Archie, as well.

-But despite the beginnings of a reconciliation, Queen Elizabeth had to make a tough decision about the most iconic moment of the celebrations -- who got to stand on the famous Buckingham Palace balcony.

-I think the Queen came up with a pretty elegant solution to who got to watch Trooping the Colour from where.

Only working royals got to be on the Buckingham Palace balcony.

That killed two birds with one stone, if you like.

It meant that Andrew couldn't be on the balcony and couldn't embarrass the royals, and it meant that Harry and Meghan couldn't be on the balcony.

-So Harry and Meghan watched the Trooping of the Colour from the Major General's office.

And that's where you had those amazing pictures of them shushing the nieces.

And those were the first shots, actually, that we had of Harry and Meghan in the UK for a long time.

-The following day, at the Thanksgiving service at Saint Paul's Cathedral, a question mark remained over the relationship between the siblings.

-If Harry and William and Kate and Meghan really had made up, this would have been the perfect opportunity to show that.

Perhaps they could have arrived together.

Perhaps they could have been smiling together.

Perhaps they could have sat near each other.

-They sat on the second row.

Prince William and Kate sat in the front row on the other side of the church, and there was no eye contact or conversation between them whatsoever.

-The fact they were seated on separate sides of the aisle confirmed to most observers that there hasn't been any sort of patching up of that relationship.

-What we did see, which was significant, is Charles and Camilla and Prince William and Kate very much together in a foursome.

I think that was quite deliberate as well.

Kind of a new Fab Four in town and also showing us the future of the monarchy.

-Royal palaces are packed with treasures, many of them gifts from fellow royals and visiting dignitaries.

And some gifts are full of secret meaning intended to send a message to the monarch.

-The horned helmet is one of the strangest things in the whole Royal Collection.

I mean, it looks like something that's come out of a rather bad horror movie.

You certainly wouldn't expect it to be owned by Britain's most infamous monarch.

Well, it was gifted to King Henry VIII by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1514.

It was made by one of the world's most renowned armorers, Conrad Sukhanova.

This was part of a really fascinating tradition in the 16th century of one ruler giving a gift to another as part of a diplomatic mission.

-It would have looked a lot blingier, a lot shinier.

It would have had velvet cloth covering it and silver gilt panels on the face area.

-Look closely and you'll see some extraordinary handiwork.

-There are incredible details that have been worked into the surface of the metal.

Things like crow's feet around the eyes.

You've got stubble, you've got these strange little teeth, and there's even a drop of snot that's sort of falling out from the nose.

It's such a weird object.

And then, almost to add a bit more comedy value, it wears a pair of rivet spectacles.

Now, was this because Henry VIII was known to be a bit short sighted, or was there another reason to this?

-The helmet horns pose another mystery.

-Perhaps the most important aspect of this helmet are the two ram's horns that are on either side.

Now, symbolically, the ram is not a good symbol.

They are representative of the devil.

But there's another element of symbolism here, too, which is that ram's horns was the sign of a cuckold, someone who had been betrayed by their wife, who'd been unfaithful to them and cuckolded them in the process.

And that leads us on to question why Maximilian I would have given this to King Henry VIII.

It could have been seen as an insult.

When you look at the helmet, it does actually seem to depict a fool.

And the glasses are the things that give it away.

Court jesters would often wear glasses.

I don't think there's any insult intended with this gift.

What I think it was meant to be was a way of adorning the king's fool.

So the fool would look magnificent and complex when he came out to perform.

And of course, remember what the role of the fool is in a royal court.

They are there to remind the monarch to remain humble, to remain connected to his people.

So in that respect, the helmet becomes quite symbolic.

-As well as being home to mysterious objects, Royal palaces have been at the center of mysterious deaths.

-It's Windsor Castle, the long, hot summer of 1560.

Elizabeth I 27th birthday.

And she's spending her time with her handsome master of the horse, Robert Dudley.

His job was to be with the Queen when she rode, to ride out with her.

It's a really important job.

But Elizabeth spends even more time than she needs with him.

She's devoted to him.

And all the rumors are arising that really, they're not just friends, they're lovers.

That she's in love with Robert Dudley.

He wants to marry her.

It's going to be a huge romance.

But there's just one problem.

Robert Dudley is married.

He's married to a young noblewoman, Amy Robsart.

So people start to say, well, clearly he's in love with the Queen.

Clearly he wants to marry the Queen.

And at the midst of these febrile rumors, there's a shocking, shocking incident.

Something dreadful happened.

His wife was found suspiciously dead at the bottom of the stairs, and the Tudor rumor mill started up.

He'd killed her.

She'd been murdered.

Robert had bumped off his wife in order to marry Elizabeth.

And this was the biggest possible scandal you could imagine.

There were all these rumors about murder, and they all blamed Robert Dudley.

But I don't think it was him.

I think it would have been a complete disaster for him to do this.

I think it was more likely was it was Robert's enemies.

Because if Robert's enemies kill Amy, then that means that he's forever tainted by the idea of murder.

It meant, above all, there was no way that Elizabeth, who was so devoted to Robert Dudley, could ever marry him.

-Coming up, a Clandestine royal relationship at Kensington Palace.

-There is speculation on whether or not they were lovers.

Whether that relationship was sexual.

But certainly, I think that certain lines were crossed.

-And how rumors of witchcraft at the palace destroyed a royal wife.

-The astrologers are hanged, drawn, and quartered.

The witch is burned at the stake for giving out a love potion.

-As well as being roofs over royal heads, palaces have also been home to royal mistresses, and not just the kings.

In the 18th century, a queen installed a favorite at Kensington Palace, and it caused a scandal.

-Kensington's many apartments are often given over to people who enjoyed the favor of Kings.

George I remodeled the palace lavishly, but behind the state rooms, there are apartments for his own mistress, Melusine, nicknamed the Maypole.

But even before George I, Queen Anne gave apartments to her personal favorite, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough.

-Queen Anne's reign saw some pivotal moments in British history, not least the unification of Scotland and England, and she was a queen who wasn't afraid to take on the establishment and established tradition.

-When Anne arrived at Kensington, she didn't want the Queen's apartments that Mary had built.

She moved in to the King's apartments.

-And it was the King's apartments where her secretive relationship with Sarah Churchill, who became known as her favorite, played out.

It was an intense friendship that had started in childhood.

-Long before Anne becomes queen, Princess Anne has in her bedchamber a young Sarah Jennings.

-She's from relatively impoverished, but nonetheless, respected gentry.

-She wins this position in the princess's bedchamber.

-She's five years older than Anne.

-Sarah was intelligent, articulate, and very forthright.

She had that access that I think only comes from knowing someone for a very long time as well.

But she was the dominant partner in that friendship.

-And you know what it's like with a childhood friendship.

There's this belief that you can really trust somebody because you've shared so much together.

And I think very much Anne had that with Sarah, and she leant on her emotionally.

-There is speculation on whether or not they were lovers, whether that relationship was sexual.

But certainly, I think that certain lines were crossed.

Uh, how far they actually went, well, we'll never know.

But it was a very close relationship.

-In 1702, when Anne became queen, her best friend Sarah also got some perks.

-Sarah is vastly elevated at court.

She becomes the mistress of the robes, the groom of the stool, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, and the Ranger of Windsor Park.

She gets lots of money for those positions, and she installs her daughters into Anne's bedchamber.

She's properly embedded in the royal court.

-Sarah and Anne's relationship ruffled a lot of official feathers, because it was feared that Sarah had a great deal of political influence on the decisions made by the Queen.

-Queen Anne and Sarah wrote secret, intimate letters to each other.

Anne's often written at Kensington Palace.

-There were these letters that we know they exchanged, each between the other, and they had code names.

So one was Mrs. Morley, the other was Mrs. Freeman.

This is about stripping away Anne's position so that she's not on this queenly pedestal, so they can talk honestly and affectionately to one another.

-But halfway into the Queen's reign, tensions began to show in her relationship with her favorite.

-What Anne wants from Sarah is attention, is time, is emotional support, is someone who listens unconditionally.

But Sarah, she becomes more and more elevated and ever richer, thanks partly to Anne and the position Anne's put her in.

She doesn't read the room, and she fails to see the extent to which she's lost Anne's favor.

-The nail in the coffin came when Sarah secured her cousin Abigail a job in the Queen's inner circle.

-Meanwhile, Abigail -- who ironically, Sarah has placed in the Queen's bed chamber -- is this impoverished cousin.

Young, pretty, sweet.

It's that girl Abigail who's able to fill the emotional void in Anne's life, the sadness in Anne's life, the loss around Sarah, who's busy.

She doesn't really have time for an old queen in the way she once did.

So Abigail takes that spot.

There wasn't room for both of them.

-Queen Anne now had a new favorite, and Sarah was out of the picture.

-It all came to a head here in Kensington Palace when Sarah stormed into Queen Anne's rooms demanding to be heard, but the Queen wouldn't listen, and Sarah realized she had no other option than to leave with the understanding their relationship was destroyed forever.

-Sarah may have lost her place in the palace, but she did get the final word.

After Anne's death in 1714, she published her private letters from the Queen, revealing for posterity the secrets of their roller-coaster relationship.

Most of us might fancy living as a queen in a palace, but aspiring to royal life doesn't always end well.

-Eleanor Cobham was an incredibly cultured, beautiful, ambitious woman in the early 15th century.

She married Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, one of the most powerful men in the land.

She had been lady in waiting to his wife.

He annulled his marriage, an incredible ascent.

She was now Duchess of Gloucester.

Humphrey, her husband, was particularly powerful because he was the uncle of the young King Henry VI, so he was directly in the line of power.

When the King's brother died, that made the Duke of Gloucester not just the regent, but also the next heir to the throne.

As soon as the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were the possible next monarchs, their enemies moved to destroy them.

The were going to destroy Humphrey, but he's too powerful, so they went for Eleanor.

Eleanor did what many women of the time did.

She consulted astrologers, and they said that Henry VI was going to be ill. And this caused a massive scandal.

Everyone then accused Eleanor of wanting Henry VI to fall ill, of wanting her husband to be king so she could be queen.

Eleanor is accused of witchcraft.

Eleanor was questioned by a set of men, and she admitted that she had actually been to a magic woman called Margery Jourdemayne, or the Witch of Eye.

She'd been to her for a love potion to make Humphrey fall in love with her, and then a fertility potion to have a child by him.

Her enemies moved in to seize her, accused her of being a royal witch who wanted to kill the king and put her and her husband in power.

Her reputation is ruined, and she is under threat of death.

The astrologers are hanged, drawn, and quartered simply for saying that the king might fall ill.

The witch Margery Jourdemayne, she is burned at the stake for giving out a love potion, and Eleanor herself is forcibly divorced from her husband and forced to undergo a series of humiliating punishment.

She has to walk through London carrying a candle, begging for confession three times.

Eleanor had moved from a lady in waiting to being the most powerful woman in the whole land, and yet she was punished for it, pulled down by her enemies, ruined by the scandal of witchcraft.

Power is what you want in the royal court, but be careful what you wish for.