This week, minister Robert Buckland used the word to describe Martin Bashir’s interview – and the
Royal Family do have a long history of being ‘blinded’ by others
The
BBC needed to restore trust in itself, said the
British government (in which public trust is immaculate), after an inquiry found that Diana, Princess of Wales had been persuaded to appear on Panorama by lies and forged documents. The princess, claimed a minister, had been “inveigled” into her interview.
That term is a corruption of the French aveugle, meaning “blind”: so if you inveigle someone you restrict their sight, perhaps by pulling the wool over their eyes. Alas, long it has been so with royals: the verb is first attested in Robert Fabyan’s 1516 chronicle, where the future Richard III, at the time the Duke of Gloucester, inuegelyd the archbishop of Canterbury into coming with him to see the
Queen and persuade her to let him “protect” her sons. (The princes later died in the Tower of
London.)