Speaking to Chief Royal Correspondent Jack Royston, Meinzer said that William’s comments on the war in Ukraine suggest “that Europe is more civilized than other places which is completely supremacist thinking. The idea that Europe is above war—even in his lifetime—is also just completely ahistorical and ludicrous.”

The comments follow a speech given by William on a visit to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre with Kate Middleton earlier this month where they met with volunteers for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.

During the visit William was heard saying: “Everyone is horrified by what they are seeing. The news every day, it’s almost unfathomable to actually witness it, to see it. For our generation, it’s very alien to see this in Europe. We’re all right behind you.”

Originally the comments caused a wave of criticism as a wire on the Press Association newsboard, the official source for journalists covering royal events who were unable to be there, misreported the comments and inferred that William also said Britons were more used to seeing conflicts like that in Ukraine in Asia and Africa.

The comment was quickly denounced by users on social media, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter Bernice King who tweeted: “Horrific comment. European people ran roughshod over the continent of Africa, pillaging communities, raping women, enslaving human beings, colonizing for profit and power, stealing resources, causing generational devastation. And European nations continue to harm Africa.”

The following day, ITV news sources released video footage of William’s speech which showed he did not make any reference to Asia or Africa. But this did little to quash the wider discussions around the ignorance of the prince’s comments.

Meinzer told Royston on The Royal Report: “Lest we forget that in William’s lifetime, I’m not talking when he was a baby or a toddler but when he was cognizant of the world, when he was being trained to be King, in William’s lifetime there’s been the Albanian civil war of 1997, the second Chechen war, the Georgian civil war, the Bosnian war, the Kosovan war—I could go on.

“How can you expect to be a monarch when you don’t know basic history on your own continent.”

Royston said that the point of William’s speech, that the nature of the Ukrainian war and its parallels to World War Two seemed bizarre for younger generations to see, is valid but that “where this gets into slightly dangerous territory is that conversation about the ‘continent of Europe’ particularly against the background of comments made on TV stations in Britain and America in the two weeks that came before, where people went further than William in saying that it’s really weird to see… and that it was more normal for communities in Syria or other countries in the world.”

On whether the royal should apologize for his comments, Meinzer raised the point that the royals “never complain, never explain—supposedly, except for when they quietly do it.” Though she would like to see him acknowledge his poor choice of wording which was “understandably offensive to a lot of people.”

Royston and Meinzer also discussed the comments in the context of them coming one year after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s television interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which they made allegations of racism against an unnamed member of the royal family.

Royston posed the question as to whether this type of comment was becoming a pattern for William, following 2021 criticism of the royal’s comments regarding climate change and the people of Africa, or was extra scrutiny being placed on the things he says “because of Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview?”

Meinzer closed the conversation by saying that if there was extra scrutiny because of the Oprah interview, she “welcomes it” because the way that the royals talk about people and places outside their own experience has greater meaning when they are using their royal platforms to say them.