Author Aatish Taseer recently revisited claims about casual racism within the British royal family during a brief conversation on the “Tell Me About Your Father” podcast, hosted by Matt Phillips. The interview, which was also discussed on the podcast’s Substack, touched on an anecdote Taseer previously shared about Princess Michael of Kent, specifically, that she once named two black sheep “Venus” and “Serena,” after American tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams.
Taseer first made this claim in a 2018 Vanity Fair article, in which he described his experiences while dating Lady Gabriella Windsor, a cousin of King Charles. The recent mention has brought renewed attention to his earlier comments and sparked further discussion online about the royal family’s relationship with race.
According to The Daily Beast, while Taseer’s comments on the podcast were brief, they were consistent with his earlier written account. British media outlets, including The Daily Mail, have since picked up on the renewed attention.
According to reports, a British Royal named their two black sheep after Venus and Serena Williams.
— BET (@BET) July 17, 2025
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In 2021, following Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Markle’s public revelation that unnamed members of the royal family had made racist remarks about their son Archie’s skin tone, The Guardian investigated the monarchy’s history and uncovered documented evidence of institutional racism within the royal household.
According to their reporting, which, unlike the claims from Prince Harry and the Duchess Markle or Taaser, are not based on anecdotes or personal experience, but documents in the British National Archives.
Those documents, per their reporting, depict an instance of the royal family using its power and influence to sidestep legislation enacted in the United Kingdom to prevent discrimination in the workplace, including hiring people based on the color of their skin, an exemption known as “Queen’s consent,” which they noted at the time of their reporting was still in practice.
The royal family took exception with the newspaper’s use of conversations between the Queen’s chief financial officer, James Callaghan, and a number of civil servants in 1968, but issued no official apology for enacting “Queen’s consent” in a statement they issued after the bombshell report was published.
“The Royal Household and the Sovereign comply with the provisions of the Equality Act, in principle and in practice,” the palace told CNN in a statement. “This is reflected in the diversity, inclusion, and dignity at work policies, procedures and practices within the Royal Household.”
Despite this, Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University, noted at the time that the story published by The Guardian was unlikely to shift the majority opinion of the royal family.
“These debates are not about rational thinking or evidence. People will probably put it into the context of it being historical and of its time,” Andrews told CNN. “The royal family has a terrible record on race, but no incident has radically changed thinking before, so why would it now?”
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