Do Royals Rule When It Comes to Cover-Ups?

Nov. 19 -- The Corleones. The Sopranos. The Windsors?

No one's really suggesting that Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is presiding over some type of organized crime family. But certainly the fallout from the aborted trial of Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's former butler, has made a lot of people wonder exactly what kind of operation Her Majesty is running.

The other question may be: Are the British people witnessing a tragedy or a farce?

"Even with the serious death of the beloved princess, there's always a Shakespearean clown figure," said Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University.

The clown in this case would be Burrell, Princess Diana's erstwhile "rock."

But who's the villain of the piece?

"That's the big question," said Thompson. "I don't know yet. No one is in control as to who's writing it."

Questions of a Cover-Up?

If the royals were ever writing the script, they've definitely lost control. The unsavory episode started when the queen intervened in the trial of Burrell, who was accused of helping himself to many of Diana's personal possessions after the princess's death in a 1997 car crash.

Well into the trial, right before the former butler was expected to take the stand, the queen let it be known that she now remembered Burrell had told her back in 1997 that he was holding some of Diana's possessions for safekeeping. Ergo, the butler didn't do it.

Burrell was now off the hook, but many of her subjects wondered why Her Majesty's memory wasn't better two years earlier, when Burrell was first charged.

"Nowadays people are kind of hinting that the queen is involved in some sort of cover-up," said Michael Graham, associate professor of history at the University of Akron in Ohio.

But if the queen or her advisers thought keeping Burrell from having his say in court would zip his lips, they were destined for disappointment. The former butler made a profitable deal with a tabloid, and began spilling beans left and right. Among his juicier disclosures:

Diana once went to meet a lover wearing a fur coat, diamond and sapphire earrings and nothing else;

The princess's mum berated her over her predilection for Muslim men;

Diana kept a ring from former lover James Hewitt;

Diana had made a tape in which a valet who had worked for Prince Charles said he had been raped in 1989 by another man on Charles' staff.