Christmas tradition the late Queen banned royals from as it's too 'vicious'

25 December 2023 , 10:30

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Queen Elizabeth had to ban her family from this common festive activity (Image: Getty Images)

If there's one thing most families can relate to, it's that getting together over Christmas can be a breeding ground for family disagreements that quickly turn heated - and this is seemingly as true for the Royal Family as it is for everyone else.

So much so that the late Queen Elizabeth had to take matters into her own hands and completely banned one common Christmas activity for good. Why? because it caused the royals to simply get "too vicious" with each other during the festive period.

The upside of being the monarch and supreme governor of the Church of England is that everyone has to listen to you and obey your Christmas rules, so there was no getting around this ban for the rest of the royals. If the Queen's assessment of her family's behaviour was correct, we can only hope that King Charles has instigated a similar veto on this activity.

The seemingly harmless activity in question is a particular board game that's known to get people competitive - Monopoly. Things reportedly became "too vicious" when the royals tried to play it together, so the Queen put a blanket ban on the board game. Luckily, as the Crown Estate owns much of the premium real estate in central London, in a way she had already won the real-life version.

The ban was taken so seriously that Prince Andrew once refused to accept the board game when someone tried to present it to him as a gift in 2008, while he was on an official engagement at the headquarters of Leed's Building Society. "We are not allowed to play Monopoly at home," he is reported to have explained while declining the gift.

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There are at least two members of the Royal Family who make no pretense to hide their competitive spirit: Kate and William. Whenever the couple goes head to head at sporting activities during engagements, they take visible delight in trying to defeat the other.

They recently appeared on Mike Tindall's podcast - the Good, the Bad and the Rugby - he asked Kate in particular where her competitive streak originated and revealed it even extends to drinking games: "I'm not going to say you're uber competitive… (but) I've seen her play beer pong," he joked.

Kate quipped back that she wasn't competitive at all, before admitting she and her husband had never "managed to finish a game of tennis, the two of us," adding that it "becomes a mental challenge between the two of us."

William quickly chimed in and agreed that they try to "out mental" the other when they play tennis. If the rest of the royals are anything like these two you can see why the Queen had to ban the board game.

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Emma Mackenzie