What a whirlwind week it has been for Prince Harry. No sooner had he jetted into the UK on Monday for what should have been a celebratory few days of charity engagements and a family reunion, than he was caught up in controversy once again.
His much-anticipated visit from his home in California – for which he was to be accompanied by wife Meghan and their children – was set to be the beginning of a thaw in relations with the royal family as well as a long-awaited opportunity for the King to spend time with his youngest grandchildren Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five.
But what should have been a feel-good trip, based around events for Harry’s Invictus Games Foundation, descended into farce amid last-minute drama over his security, his accommodation, and whether Meghan and the children would come at all.
For no sooner had Sussex camp released Harry’s itinerary to the press and confirmed that all four family members would be travelling, they backtracked because a planned security review by the Home Office had not yet happened.
Meanwhile, with impeccably terrible timing, the trip ended up coinciding with the High Court’s ruling, on Tuesday, in Harry’s privacy case against the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, which he and celebrities including Sir Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley had brought to court earlier this year.
To Harry’s dismay, all 97 of their allegations of illegal newsgathering, which included phone hacking, bugging, and blagging, were dismissed by the judge who said that “suspicion isn’t proof”. Having lost the case, the claimants have been left facing a legal bill of £50 million.
Harry, who received the bad news in the middle of an engagement for his Invictus Games Foundation, responded in typical fiery fashion, condemning the judgment as a “whitewash” and appeared to suggest that the judge was somehow in cahoots with the newspapers.
His reaction was hardly surprising because we have been here before.
From allegations of racism against the royal family in his and Meghan’s TV interview with Oprah Winfrey and the airing of more grievances in his memoir Spare, to his legal action against His Majesty’s government over the withdrawal of his 24-hour armed police security when he stepped down from being a working royal and moved to America, it seems that wherever the Duke and Duchess of Sussex go, drama is never very far away.
You would think that a visit back to the UK should be fairly straightforward, notwithstanding the complexities around Harry’s security. The King had offered to put Harry and his family up at a royal residence (possibly Buckingham Palace), ensuring their safety. But Harry declined last Saturday morning, according to palace sources, only to accept the invitation hours later, when it was too late to put staffing arrangements in place.
Further complicating the issue was the prospect of Harry issuing his incendiary statement about His Majesty’s judiciary from his bedroom at the palace – a dilemma which was apparently explained to Harry.
Nevertheless, Harry appeared to take it as a snub, with his spokesman saying it was “disappointing” that the offer of accommodation had been withdrawn at the last minute.
© Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty ImagesOnce again, there appeared to be yet another case of “recollections may vary” – the killer phrase uttered by the late Queen Elizabeth in 2021 when Harry and Meghan claimed a member of the royal family had questioned how dark their unborn son’s skin might be.
Harry has said he longs to reconcile with his family. Given his father’s ongoing cancer treatment, he appears to acknowledge that life is too short to let grievances fester.
It’s not hard to understand why Harry still holds anger, resentment and trauma after losing his mother Princess Diana almost 30 years ago, when he was just 12. He has always blamed the press for her death, as he does for making Meghan’s life a misery.
But surely there is a better way to move forward without the drama that follows Harry and Meghan wherever they go.
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