‘The Traitors’ Star Reveals Queen Elizabeth’s Petty Payback Against Airport

One star of The Traitors recently shared an anecdote about his cousin, Queen Elizabeth II.

Lord Ivar Mountbatten, who recently appeared on the third season of Peacock’s Emmy-winning reality competition series, told a story of his late relative on Gyles Branreth’s podcast Rosebud.

On the episode, the 62-year-old royal discussed how the late queen once took petty vengeance against a British airport for causing a delay in travel time.

He said a “sweet check-in lady” at the Bristol airport would not allow him to bring his shotguns on the way to a trip to Aberdeen, Scotland with the queen. She was reportedly so annoyed by the flight’s delay that she decided not to open the airport’s new terminal, as previously expected.

Mountbatten told airport staff, “The Queen’s sending me a car and she’s expecting me for tea.” Eventually, he gave up and left his guns at the airport before boarding the flight. The Queen eventually ordered the police to send his guns over to Scotland.

“She said … ‘I would like Lord Ivar’s guns to be up here tomorrow morning, please see to it,” he said on the podcast. “Whereupon she turns back to me and she looks at me over her glasses with a glint in her eye and she says ‘They want me to open their new terminal’. She says ‘I don’t think I will now.’”

Now, every time he returns to the airport’s new terminal, which was later opened by Princess Anne, “I have a quiet laugh to myself,” he said.

A spokesperson for the airport told the BBC that the princess was always supposed to open the airport, not the queen.

“Bristol Airport followed royal protocol which was to request a member of the royal family to open the new terminal through the Lord Lieutenants office,” the spokeswoman said. “The Princess Royal was always assigned for our area, never the late Queen.”

Mountbatten is Elizabeth II’s third cousin, once removed. He made headlines in the U.K. when he was the first member of the royal family to come out as gay. Earlier this year, he became a star in America after appearing on Peacock’s wildly popular reality series The Traitors, which he ultimately won.