Lord Ivar Mountbatten (left) and husband James Coyle (right) on ‘Keeping Up With the Aristocrats’ | Image Credit: ITV

This week, Peacock’s smash-hit reality competition series The Traitors celebrated Pride Month by announcing its Season 3 cast, which is full of gays and gay icons.

Essentially a heightened version of the party game Mafia, the American spin on the series assembles a group of (mostly) reality TV veterans and cuts them loose in a Scottish castle as the Faithful among them try to suss out which fellow players are secretly Traitors before they all get picked off one-by-one. Scheming, backstabbing, vaguely “famous” television stars—of course the queers love The Traitors!

As if being hosted by the immaculately dressed and accented bisexual king Alan Cumming wasn’t enough, the next season’s LGBTQ+ contestants include Drag Race winner & Madonna pal Bob The Drag Queen, Selling Sunset‘s Chrishell Stause, Survivor‘s Carolyn Wiger, The Bachelorette‘s Gabby Windey, and The Biggest Loser‘s Bob Harper.

Not to mention, there’s Real Housewives‘ Dorinda Medley (sure to deliver the quips and quotes), Zac Efron‘s brother Dylan (total eye candy), and Britney Spears’ ex Sam Asghari (because we all need a villain we love to hate). Even The Traitor‘s straight contestants are giving the gays everything the want!

However, there’s one name among the cast who likely stood out to even the most fervent reality TV obsessives: Who is Lord Ivar Mountbatten?

For starters, here’s a photo of him eating breakfast—a very important meal in the world of The Traitors, so he’s off to a good start!

After former Parliament member John Bercow proved to be excellent television this past season, it would seem The Traitors needed someone to fill their “older British guy with some form of political power” slot.

But the 61-year-old Mountabatten is much more than some random Brit. He’s actually King Charles’ second cousin—that’s right, the man who can call Queen Victoria “great-great-great-grandma” is about to compete for money in a reality show alongside the likes of Tom Sandoval. Oh, what a world we live in!

For our purposes though, what makes Mountbatten even more notable is that he’s openly gay! And though he’s not actively involved in the monarchy these days, he holds the distinction of being the first member of the extended royal family to have a same-sex wedding.

Actually, the aristocrat first married Penelope Anne Vere Thompson in 1994, but the pair amicably split after 17 years together. In 2016, he came out publicly as gay, revealing his relationship to James Coyle, a flight crew services director he met at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps.

Mountbatten and Coyle tied the knot in 2018, which was unsurprisingly a huge deal in the British press. Reflecting on his big day more recently, he shared his family was “incredibly supportive, and it soon became clear that in the scheme of things, your sexuality is of no significance to others.”

Interestingly, the media blitz around the wedding was quick to dub Mountbatten “The First Gay Royal”—a title the Lord has himself disputed! As he revealed in a profile in Tatler, his great aunt Nadeja, the Marchioness of Milford Haven, was a lesbian:

“The older generation of my family have seen and done it all before,” Mountbattan shared. “They were quite wayward in the 1940s. My aunt Nada was a lesbian. You’ve got to try every­thing once, that’s what my mother always said.”

Okay, Ivar—we see you spilling the tea! A quality that could make him a real agent of chaos on The Traitors, no?

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And this won’t be Mountbatten first time on reality television! In 2019 he was on a season of the U.K. Channel 4’s survival series Treasure Island with Bear Grylls, and in 2022 he and his husband were featured on ITV’s Keeping Up With The Aristocrats. So this guy’s might familiar with the camera!

Somewhat hilariously though, that same Tatler profile also gives us reason to believe he might not be cut out for the competition: “The delightful thing about Ivar [is] he makes his mind up about some­thing and sticks to it,” James Coyle shares of his husband. “There’s no game playing, to a degree where you’re almost looking for the catch. He’s so straightforward and remarkably easy to love.”

No game-playing you say? Well, honey, The Traitors is all game-playing. As Housewife Shereé Whitfield proved last season, being likable and staying out of the drama can take you far in the competition, but no one’s ever just coasted to the win. Let’s hope Mountbatten’s a secret schemer!

At the very least, Lord Ivar Mounbatten seems to have a good head on his shoulders and a proper respect for queer history: “I owe everything to those who struggled for LGBT acceptance,” the royal told Independent last Pride Month. “To those who have suffered and indeed still suffer prejudice, persecution and even live under the threat of a death sentence, I am humbled and in gratitude to them.”

In other words, we’re proud to have him repping the community in The Traitors castle alongside more of our favorite queer icons.

And we can’t wait for the future Red, White & Royal Blue sequel where Nicholas Galitzine’s gay Prince Henry competes on an American reality show!

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