When a smooth-shaven Prince William was photographed going to church in Scotland last month just days after appearing in an Olympics congratulation video with a beard, it looked like a case of heir today, gone tomorrow.
But now, it seems, William’s beard is here to stay after the hirsute prince was spotted at London’s Saatchi Gallery to support a homeless charity. The engagement marked his first royal duty of the season following a summer break.
When William appeared with a beard in a short clip to mark the closing of the Olympics, a friend described it the Daily Beast as a “new installment of the beard wars”—referring to an alleged argument about Harry’s beard that fed into the collapse of his relationship with William.
In his memoir, Spare, Harry said he had come to rely on his new beard as a “Freudian security blanket,” but William demanded he shave it off for his wedding, saying it was inconsistent with military rules to wear a beard while getting married in uniform.
Harry said the bristling “went on, in person, on the phone, for more than a week.” He added, “At one point he actually ordered me, as the Heir speaking to the Spare, to shave.”
Harry claimed that William was jealous of him, having come back from an assignment with the special forces “sporting a full beard, and somebody told him to be a good boy, run along and shave it. He hated the idea of me enjoying a perk he’d been denied.”
A military source previously told the Daily Beast: “The point about the beard at the wedding is that serving members of the armed forces were not allowed to wear beards at that time. It’s a rule that goes back to gas masks. They wouldn’t seal properly on the face if you were not clean shaven. He went to granny and got special permission. William was completely right.”
Duncan Larcombe, former royal editor at the Sun, who once discussed beards with Prince William (Larcombe had grown one, and William had just had to shave his off) told the Daily Beast: “I am delighted to see William with a beard. He looks fabulous. I hope he goes for a full Prince Michael,” he said.
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