Tough choices ahead for Edward?

The couple have faced controversy over career choices

		By Nicholas Witchell BBC royal correspondent

As a member the royal family, HRH The Prince Edward Antony Richard Louis CVO, Earl of Wessex is used to having things his own way.

Which is daresay why he is having a spot of difficulty at the moment as he and his wife, HRH Sophie, ponder the mess they have got themselves into and, it is reported, reluctantly accept that they may have to chose between their business careers and their royal status.

They have fought tenaciously to be allowed to have it both ways.

They have argued that in this day and age it is right and reasonable for the more minor members of the family to have their own careers and to earn their own salaries.

'Experiment Eddie'

Surely, their friends argue, this is preferable to their having to look to the Queen for all of their financial support.

In this argument they have been strongly supported by the Duke of Edinburgh, who believes his youngest son and his wife should be allowed to earn a living - and strongly opposed by the Prince of Wales who is said to have remarked at an early stage that what we might describe as "experiment Eddie" was bound to end in tears.

Sophie resigned from her PR post as chairman

It is not that anyone opposes the principle of what Edward and Sophie have done. After all it is not that revolutionary.

Princess Margaret's ex-husband the Earl of Snowdon and her son Viscount Linley have quietly and successfully pursued their careers as a photographer and furniture maker respectively without public fuss.

Fickle industry

What has caused all the problems with Edward and Sophie is the nature of their careers in the fickle and frequently duplicitous world of the media, and the way in which they have chosen to pursue them.

Few would credibly argue that in Edward's stewardship of his television company, Ardent Productions, or in Sophie's running of her public relations firm, R-JH, there was not a blurring of the line which appeared too frequently to suggest a deliberate attempt to make best use of the fact that they are members of the royal family.

It is not just that some (but, it must be stressed, by no means all) of the programmes Edward's company has made have a royal theme.

Mistakes

It is also, to take just one example, the rather clumsy way in which, at one stage, he sought to give broadcasting organisations the impression that he could deliver an interview with his grandmother, the Queen Mother.

Such an interview was never going to happen, but that fact did not prevent Edward from taking the concept from one company to another and hinting that such an interview might be possible.

To try to sell one's granny for commercial advantage was one mistake.

The behaviour of Sophie when confronted earlier this year with a man whom she believed to be a wealthy Arab sheikh was another.

Edward's tv company was accused of breaching filming restrictions

But arguably the biggest was the recent behaviour of the Ardent television video crew in St Andrews, who insisted on remaining after all other media organisations had left the town following Prince William's arrival there.

In these and other instances there has been evidence of an almost wilful disregard for the propriety which, as members of the royal family, Edward and Sophie would surely expect from others, but which they seem careless about exercising themselves.

Hence the concern at Buckingham Palace and St James Palace.

Hence the belief that ultimately the Earl and Countess of Wessex will have to choose between their present careers and their positions as His and Her Royal Highness within the royal family.