BRYONY GORDON: Facing the implications of your individual behaviour is NOT trauma… and should not be a defence towards being a jerk

Dig out your smallest violin. You’re going to need it when you hear the tragic, tear-jerking tale of the Earl of Yarmouth and his missing £85 million estate.

If you’re already caught up on the saga… well, can I apologise in advance if I re-traumatise you with the details of what must surely be 2025’s saddest sob story? To recap: William Seymour, the earl in question, is facing off against his parents and siblings in a bitter court battle over who should be in control of the 400-year-old ancestral home.

As the eldest son of the Marquess and Marchioness of Hertford, 32-year-old William expected to inherit the Ragley Hall estate, in Warwickshire, comprising a Palladian mansion and 6,000 acres of working farms, woods and parkland. 

The Earl believed he only had to wait until his 30th birthday, in 2023, before he could take it over. After all, he had been given £4 million worth of estate land and property by the time he was 21.

Imagine his shock, then, when he found out that when his 30th ticked around mummy and daddy would not immediately hand him the keys.

Documents lodged at the High Court do not show if they gave him a birthday card, or even a meal out at the local pub, as was the case for my 30th birthday. What they do show is that being cut off by his parents had ‘upended’ the Earl’s life, leaving him needing ‘professional help and counselling to deal with trauma as a consequence’.

To compound matters, poor William and his wife allege they were kicked out of their cottage on the estate with just a few days’ notice, and that trustees refused to release funds to pay their two children’s private school fees. I do hate it when that happens, don’t you?

The Earl has now gone to the High Court in London in an attempt to dismantle the structure that controls the family trusts, and remove the trustees, whom the Earl claims have sided with his parents.

In response, Lord and Lady Hertford say they fell out with their son in the run up to his wedding to his wife Kelsey, now Countess of Yarmouth, a former Goldman Sachs banker. They claim their son sent ‘hostile and inflammatory’ emails ‘questioning’ his father’s ‘mental capacity’, and that he’s behaved in an ‘unreasonable and vindictive manner’.

The judge has now finished hearing the case, and will give his ruling at a later date. But whatever he decides, I think we can all be grateful to the Seymour family for this much-needed dose of perspective.

On a serious note, this ridiculous tale of overblown self-pity has got me thinking about the word ‘trauma’, which is bandied around a lot nowadays.

As someone who campaigns on mental illness and addiction, I’m all for us discussing upsetting emotional experiences. Under the right therapeutic conditions, it’s a powerful way to move on with your life. I applaud anyone who tackles their emotional baggage so they’re no longer defined by the bad things that have happened to them.

But people like the Earl of Yarmouth, who carry their trauma around as a sort of designer handbag, seemingly using it to deflect things in life that they don’t like? Well that, I am afraid, is not such a good thing.

No doubt he’s upset, but ‘trauma’ is not a tool for manipulation. It’s important to say this, because every time someone uses a word like ‘trauma’ to try to get their own way, it makes life harder for people who genuinely need help.

I love the fact we’re now talking about ‘small t trauma’ – meaning events that aren’t life-threatening but which still cause harm, such as bullying or emotional neglect. But let us be clear: experiencing the consequences of your own behaviour is not trauma. 

It’s cause and effect. It may well be upsetting if your parents cut you off as they’ve taken offence at your habit of questioning their sanity. But you can’t step on people’s toes and then be surprised when they retaliate.

We need to be careful that in the admirable drive to better understand trauma, it doesn’t end up being redefined entirely, so it simply becomes a defence against behaving like a jerk.

As my colleague Katie Hind reported last week, celebrities are co-opting the mental health cause as a new (far cheaper) way of gagging the Press. Simply say that reporting on your bad behaviour might damage your mental wellbeing, and you never need be held accountable for your actions again. 

Yet I will repeat this until I am blue in the face: mental illness and trauma might be explanations for questionable behaviour, but they’re not excuses for it.

Similarly, if every child in the land took family matters to court on the grounds that they’ve been traumatised by their parents, the judicial system would collapse. As Philip Larkin put it: ‘They f*** you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do.’

There’s a bit of that poem that doesn’t get repeated as much: about your parents being effed up ‘in their turn’ as ‘man hands on misery to man’. Trauma is almost always a family thing and, as I hope the Earl of Yarmouth will learn, it’s far better to deal with it behind closed doors on a therapist’s couch, rather than out in public, at the High Court.

Watch out for Aimee

Who else cannot wait to watch the latest series of The White Lotus, set this time in Thailand?

OK, so it doesn’t have the peerless Jennifer Coolidge in it anymore, but never fear: it does star the brilliant Aimee Lou Wood, who hails from Manchester and was the best thing about Netflix’s Sex Education. Remember her name, and watch as her star soars.

A woman would never get away with this, Elon 

Can you imagine a woman turning up at the Oval Office, dressed in a baseball cap and accompanied by one of her 12 children by three different partners? Nope, me neither. 

But that’s what Elon Musk did this week, as he and the President discussed the Tesla billionaire’s work with the Department of Government Efficiency. Welcome to MAGA land – and a world of double standards! 

Gen Z drink far less than their parents, with one in five effectively teetotal. But before you feel too relieved, you should know the same research found rising numbers of Gen Z also want cocaine and ecstasy decriminalised. As I suspected, their restraint where alcohol is concerned is only because they’re too busy taking drugs! 

Kate’s Diana Aids moment

Kudos to the Princess of Wales, who visited a mother and baby unit at HMP Styal, in Cheshire, this week. Meeting women who’ve given birth in prison, Catherine embodied the daring compassion of her husband’s late mother. 

Indeed, it reminded me of when, in 1987, Princess Diana was photographed shaking hands with an Aids patient – a groundbreaking moment that tackled the stigma faced by so many with the disease. Catherine has taken a similar road less travelled, in the hope of improving the lives of children born behind bars.

Reader, I married my work husband

People are up in arms about Card Factory’s Valentine’s range for work wives and husbands (a joke term for a close colleague). I had an entirely platonic work husband called Richard, our relationship ending when he left the company. 

I then got my second work husband, a man called Harry whose company I enjoyed so much that, reader, I actually married him!