A member of the Royal Family is facing backlash for allegedly naming her two black sheep after tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams. The royal family member at the center of the rumor is the wife of Prince Michael of Kent, Princess Michael of Kent. Prince Michael is also the son of Prince George and grandson of King George V. 

Princess Michael of Kent reportedly named her two black sheep after Venus and Serena Williams

The person who sparked the latest rumor about the royal family is an author named Aatish Taseer, who is the ex-boyfriend of Lady Gabriella Windsor (daughter of Princess Michael). Lady Gabriella is also King Charles’s cousin. Taseer, who was Lady Gabriella’s boyfriend for three years, told the story on Monday when he appeared for an interview on the Tell Me About Your Father podcast, Us Weekly reported. 

“I think the [story about] Venus and Serena was part of that weird air of abstraction that exists around these people and how they’re not even aware of how shocking or offensive that might be,” Taseer said on the podcast, per Us Weekly.

Taseer also told the story about the royal family’s sheep when he wrote a 2018 article for Vanity Fair.

“Princess Michael, though generally free of British colonial prejudices, and beyond reproach when it came to me, nevertheless invited trouble out of what felt like a desire to shock: her pair of black sheep in Gloucestershire were named Venus and Serena,” Taseer wrote at that time.

Why did Aatisha Taseer fall out with the Royal Family?

Taseer said he remained close with Princess Michael even after he broke up with Lady Gabriella, but his relationship with the Royal Family deteriorated after he came out as gay.

“I think once I came out and was married to a man, then it kind of, I don’t know. It’s one of those situations where it must have felt like a betrayal of our time together, even though it hadn’t felt like that [for me],” Taseer said on the Tell Me About Your Father podcast, per Us Weekly. “I always had relationships with men.”