As the Queen prepares to mark her Golden Jubilee, Johann Hari reveals startling evidence of a royal refusenik at the heart of her family

One man has the power to bring the British monarchy to the brink of destruction. No, not our best republican journalist Jonathan Freedland, nor our best republican rabble-rouser Tony Benn, nor even our constitutional moderniser Tony Blair. The man who might finally herald the Republic of Britain is a 19-year-old named William Mountbatten-Windsor - or, as the history books might record him, William the Last.

At the dawn of the Queen's Golden Jubilee year, marking 50 years of her public service, William's reluctance to be King is in tune with many of his subjects. A recent Observer/YouGov poll revealed that 38 per cent of Britons want the Queen to abdicate at some point in the future, most think royal perks should be curbed, and more than a third think the £8.9m civil list should be axed.

The first piece of evidence that Wills did not want to go into the family business comes straight from his late mother's mouth. In a book about the Windsors, Jennie Bond, the BBC's royal correspondent, reports a conversation with Diana shortly before her death. Diana talked about the pain of losing her royal title, and how her son tried to comfort her, telling her that she was "very lucky to be able to give up the HRH". The clear implication is that William would like to give it up, too.

This hint is much more extensively corroborated in an authoritative new book, Diana's Boys by Christopher Andersen, a widely respected contributing editor of Time magazine. After interviewing friends of Diana's, Andersen reports that, on more than one tearful occasion, William insisted he did not want to be King. Diana would tell friends that "William is waiting patiently for the monarchy to be abolished". William once told Charles that perhaps he would "go backpacking in Nepal and never come back".

This wasn't just adolescent petulance. William should have become His Royal Highness Prince William of Wales on his 18th birthday. In a move that was little noticed at the time, he refused point blank to accept the title. According to the journalist and royal expert Nicholas Davies, during one holiday in his mid-teens, William was tobogganing down a steep hill in the dark. When he neared the bottom of the slope where cars were passing, a detective leapt out, seemingly from nowhere, threw himself on the sledge and hurled William into a heap of snow. William screamed: "Why do I have to be surrounded by policemen all the time? Why won't you let me be a normal person?"

It's a good question: why won't we let him be a normal person? We certainly could: constitutionally, the throne could pass, after his father, to his younger brother, Harry, who seems much happier in the limelight. Yet William's pre-emptive abdication would deliver a clear blow to the monarchy. If he accompanied his resignation with a damning public statement making it clear that raising another child in the uniquely cruel goldfish bowl of the British monarchy would be intolerable, he could bankrupt the entire "Royal Firm" for ever.

If you think this is an unlikely scenario, try to imagine the life we know he has been forced to lead. Wherever William goes, an armed private detective is, at most, 50 yards behind. The prince has recently been the target of militant Scottish nationalist groups, who have even threatened an anthrax attack on St Andrew's University. So long as he is a royal, he will remain a target for the Real IRA, al-Qaeda and all other enemies of the British state. He has never known the pleasure of being truly alone, free to make his own private decisions. As a royal, he never will.

It could all be so different for him. Unlike previous royals, William has an immense personal fortune totally unconnected to his royal status. No matter how rich Prince Charles seems to be, if he gave up his connections to the "Firm", there would be a huge conflict over whether he owned any of it. He could never quit in the certain knowledge that he would remain a rich man. Thanks to Diana, William is in a very different position, sitting on a cool £8m in the bank. He could live a private life of luxury far away from the windy palaces of Britain. Indeed, all of his life choices so far indicate that he wants to live the carefree, decadent aristocratic lifestyle of his friends. He wanted to spend his gap year playing polo in Argentina. Instead, he was forced by his father (and a committee including Chris Patten and the Bishop of London who convened to "discuss" his gap year) to choose a more media-friendly project.

William need only look at his parents to see the poisonous effects of monarchy upon the individuals involved. His father, Charles Windsor, has spent his life preparing for a job that he is highly unlikely to get until he is elderly (the Queen is reported to be implacably opposed to abdicating, ever). He has been unable to find a meaningful job in the areas that clearly interest him - architecture, say, or politics. Instead, he is condemned to trail behind his mother. He spends his days surrounded by sycophants and is denied the dignity of marrying the woman he so clearly loves, forced to monitor opinion polls to see if he can be seen with her in public. Is it any surprise that, as Andersen tells us, William asked when he was 15: "Mummy, do I really have to be part of this family?"

We can only imagine the effect on the pubescent William, at an age when any mention of our parents' sexuality sends us into paroxysms of embarrassment, of having to learn every detail of his own father's sexual life, including his fantasy about being a tampon.

Then there is Diana, the ghost at every royal feast. It is a moot point whether the press directly killed his mother; it is beyond dispute, however, that the media destroyed her life. At her funeral, William joined in the ovation for his uncle's damning attack on those who had "hounded" Diana to her death, while the Queen sat in silence.

We know that many, many times it fell to William to comfort his mother after she had been harassed by the paparazzi. While holidaying with her in Lech in 1995, William reacted with fury when a group of photographers broke an agreement that they would take no more photographs of Diana that day. He had an aggressive altercation with them and threatened to take their cameras away. The situation was resolved only after a personal detective reasoned with the prince and secured a promise from the photographers that they would leave. An even more striking episode happened while William was on holiday with his mother in the south of France in 1996. Unfortunately, the villa could be seen from woods about 200 yards away, a public place from which photographers could spy on their every move. William became so determined not to give anything at all to the photographers that he refused to leave the villa at all during daylight hours. After several days of this, the holiday was cut short and they returned to London.

Even in his 18th birthday press interview, William was at pains to point out that he felt "uncomfortable with it". According to reputable sources, Diana said that "he hates the press even more than I did when I first got into this family. He sees them as the enemy."

Yet what is the monarchy now, if not a ceaseless media roadshow, selling nothing but itself? How can the royal family exist in the public consciousness, if not through the flashbulbs and omnipresent cameras? A prince who hates the press is a prince who cannot do his job.

And the removal of his privacy is not the only problem William has to endure. Suppose that, while at university, William experiments with, say, different faiths. Suppose that, like his mother, he begins to see the appeal of Islam. Suppose he wants to embrace Hinduism, or Scientology, or - heaven forbid - atheism. What then? He was born to be the head of the Church of England. So we rob him of one of the most basic human rights: religious freedom.

That still isn't enough, though. We've taken his privacy and control his beliefs, but we want another pound of flesh, too. There are whole websites dedicated to the belief that William is gay. It has to be said that they seem to rely more on daydreams and his pretty eyelashes than on any evidence, but what if they are right? Could William have a gay partner as royal consort? You can imagine the Sun headline: "Two Queens at the Palace."

A straight William would not be much better off. According to the reputable end of the US press, several government agencies monitor, for "security purposes", any girls in which William expresses an interest. One paper quoted "a former member of parliament with close ties to the palace" who said that, after all the scandalous headlines, "the Queen pays very close attention to the girls in William's life" to avoid "another Diana or Fergie". Can you think of anything more hideous for a young lad than for his granny to be vetting his shags?

Or what if William finds himself passionately attracted to politics? He can never speak out on political issues. So William is asked to give up his privacy, his sexual, religious and political freedom, any career he might want to pursue, any life he might lead - and for what? For the glory of one day being King? A glory that consists of, um, unveiling statues and chuntering about in carriages, waving like a buffoon to an increasingly resentful and chippy public? Would you do it?

What will ultimately destroy the monarchy is not republi- canism (although that will help). No, it is the sheer inhumanity of monarchy in a celebrity-obsessed, 24-hour media culture. Prince William, conscious of the effect this voyeurism had on his mother, may well choose to walk away before the press can argue that, like Diana, he's "asking for it", "thrusting himself into the limelight" or "loving the attention". As it stands, he can make an unimpeachable case that he deserves to be left alone.

In time, if he quit, he would fade into the obscurity enjoyed by other celebrities' children (such as Ronald Reagan's and Jane Wyman's), and would be able to pursue a career and a life he wanted. But the clock is ticking on that option, and all the evidence suggests William knows it, too.

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