King Charles is facing a tough decision in the months ahead. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion
After 41 coronations stretched out over more than a millennium, you’d think the British royal family would have the thing down pat, but it’s amazing how much can and does go wrong.
William the Conqueror’s big day ultimately resulted in houses surrounding the Abbey being set on fire. Oh, and there was a riot after someone mistook a loud noise for an assassination attempt.
In the 13th century, nine-year-old Henry III was crowned sans jewels, wearing a circlet borrowed from his mother, because his father King John had managed to lose the precious cargo in a roadside bog.
When Queen Victoria got her go in 1838, the Archbishop rammed the Sovereign’s Ring on the wrong finger, later requiring her to soak her digit to get it off and “not without great pain,” as she wrote in her diary.
But this is all probably cold comfort to the next sovereign to be anointed, namely one King Charles III who is currently facing a looming coronation fandango of his own in just a smidgen over 100 days.
The reason? Arise the Prince of Wails, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
For six weeks now it has been nigh on impossible to avoid the media circus sparked by the Sussexes’ TV and literary assault, with their oh-so-lengthy ‘documentary’ series being released on Netflix in December and Harry’s tell-all Spare hitting shelves, and then promptly flying off them, this month. While their six-part TV show was largely a much longer, much less shocking rehashing of already aired claims, interspersed with so many iPhone photos Apple CEO Tim Cook should be paying them, the book was a departure.
The account of royal upbringing told by Harry, aided and abetted by ghostwriter JR Moehringer, is one that even the stoniest of hearts would be affected by, forever proof that the British upper classes are about as adept at parenting as they are at fidelity and vegetarian cookery. Denied affection, permanently reminded of his understudy status and suffering the tragic loss of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, the Harry that entered adulthood was a damaged and angry young blood with more baggage than an airport carousel. He then promptly spent a decade going to war, playing his Xbox and drowning his sorrows.
That is of course until, as he sees it, his saviour arrived in the form of Suits actress, Instagram savant and dispenser of superlative hugs, Meghan Markle. The entrance of the 30-something and her collection of ripped jeans and motivational mantras into the Windsor milieu triggered the chain reaction that led to the biggest royal rupture since the Yorks and Lancasters went at it during the War of the Roses.
In the years since their “freedom flight”, as Harry called their private jet dash to Los Angeles in March 2020 (yes, really), the duo has taken part in, according to a recent column in the Washington Post, around 40 hours of interviews and other media forays.
Collectively, this outpouring has offered up a decidedly critical view of not only the people who inhabit Buckingham and Kensington Palaces (well, technically Clarence House still for Charles and wife Queen Camilla) but of the institution itself. (Or to parrot another woebegone princeling, there is something rotten in the state of SWI.)
As the aftershocks of all of this continue to ripple out, the clock is ticking ever closer to Charles’ coronation. What the hell is His Majesty going to do?
The issue for Charles is two-fold: the actual coronation and the possible attendance of the Sussexes; and the broader existential threat posed by the seemingly never-ending pipeline of Harry’s morally superior griping.
On one hand, Charles has gone out of his way to tell the world how much he cares about his younger son, saying during his first address as King last year, “I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.” On the other hand, Harry has done more bad to the monarchy with his one man-revolutionary band than the collective sandal-wearing might of the UK’s Republic group and the introduction of royal income taxes.
So, let’s start on the invitation front. Since last year, reporting out of London has made it plain that Harry and Meghan, as Charles’s son and daughter-in-law, will be on the guest list, naturellement! A source told the Telegraph last month, “All members of the family will be welcome.”
However, that slightly rose-tinted view of things obscures the fact that, should they attend, every camera lens, TV viewer and journalist will be watching their every blink and twitch throughout the ceremony, rather than whether Charles is still upright or if Camilla has popped into the nave for a cheeky fag. Basically, the couture-clad sideshow of the Sussexes would most likely distract the masses and the media from the King.
There is also the question of the possible public reaction to the duke and duchess. When they attended the service of thanksgiving for Queen Elizabeth during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations last year, there were reports of some boos emanating from the waiting crowds as they arrived. Given that polling done recently showed that the couple’s support in the UK has fallen even further into negative territory and they have hit new record lows, just what might the public reaction be if they do indeed roll up?
For the Sussexes, if they did choose to go they would not be able to avoid confronting, in front of live TV cameras, their diminished official status. There is a very strong chance that as with that service and the late Queen’s funeral last year, they would be shunted off to the ego-deflating no man’s land of the second row.
Also, the Times has reported that the King has decided that only William, rather than all the royal dukes, will take part in the ceremony by ‘paying hommage’ which requires them to kneel and kiss his cheek. (This also handily means that Prince Andrew is edited out of the service too).
Then we get to the second part of the issue, the much bigger and harder question of how the heck Charles should approach the Harry question going forward.
Harry himself last week told the Telegraph’s Bryony Gordon that it’s his “life’s mission to right the wrongs of the very thing that drove us out” and wants to try “to save them from themselves.”
He told Gordon: “And though William and I have talked about it once or twice, and he has made it very clear to me that his kids are not my responsibility, I still feel a responsibility knowing that out of those three children, at least one will end up like me, the spare. And that hurts, that worries me.”
Does any of this sound like a man who now, having thoroughly said his piece, is going to happily live a life of quiet dedication to good deeds and reading to his chickens from the collected works of Eckhart Tolle?
For the palace, they are in a serious catch-22 pickle here. If they engage directly with the Sussexes’ laundry list of complaints, they will only add fuel to the media fire and prolong this storm. (I know, I know, so many mixed images). On the other, their policy of refusing to engage and stoically keeping their eyes forward is hardly doing them much good either if you look at the most recent polls.
While any Spare revelations of real substance are thin on the ground, aside from Prince William’s assault of Harry and the latter’s beleaguered frozen wang, this book has chipped away at their standing with the British citizenry. Since the Queen’s death last year, the percentage of Brits who think the monarchy is a good thing for the UK has fallen from 62 to 59 per cent, while on the question of whether the country should keep the institution, support fell from 67 to 64 per cent. On the question of whether respondents thought the country would still have a crown in 100 years, crucially the figure that agreed fell five points to below the halfway mark to 47 per cent.
None of this is fatal or worth hiding out in the Palace panic room for but with the UK’s honeymoon period with Charles likely to be short-lived, right now is when the King badly needs to build his support base and prove himself as being up to the job.
Just what the devil is a newbie King to do here?
Navigating the next few months for Charles and the ever-choppy Sussex waters will require the tactical genius of Nelson and the political savvy of Churchill.
In just a smidgen over 100 days it will be King Charles III’s go at walking down the aisle and I think we can assume that the rings have been sized, the St Edward’s Crown is being kept in a secure location and no one is letting Prince Andrew anywhere near a box of matches.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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