Royal Job Post Is Open: 'The Wasp' Is Leaving

Buckingham Palace is starting the hunt for King Charles III's next behind-the-scenes power player. Sir Clive Alderton, the monarch's principal private secretary and de facto chief of staff, will leave the role by May 2027, stepping down around his 60th birthday after two decades in the royal household, reports the BBC. The $400,000 job comes with big responsibility: managing the king and queen's official work, steering major events, and quietly shaping decisions at the top of the monarchy.

Alderton, who helped oversee the exit of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from their royal duties, and was nicknamed "the Wasp" in Prince Harry's memoir, notes People, which quotes a passage:

• "The Wasp was link, charming, arrogant, a ball of jazzy energy," Harry wrote. "He was great at pretending to be polite, even servile. You'd assert a fact, something seemingly incontrovertible—I believe the sun rises in the mornings—and he'd stammer that perchance you might consider for a comment the possibility that you'd been misinformed: Well, heh-heh, I don't know about that, Your Royal Highness, you see, it all depends what you mean by mornings, sir.'" But Harry added that the "Wasp" also had an "outsized stinger" if you crossed him.