OPINION:
Being the Prince of Wales, for much of the time, must be dull.
Take the current holder of the roughly 800-year-old title, Prince William’s, outings over the last week. First, he, along with wife Kate, the Princess of Wales, spent a very grey day visiting a community in South Wales where they went to a local leisure centre. Thrilling stuff!
A day later, he got to have his first go at being the Colonel of the prestigious Welsh Guards, presiding over a St David’s Day parade that involved wearing a hat with a leek slapped on the front and a very strange coat.
Next, he got to spend a morning having talks with Norwegian business leaders, along with the Scandi nation’s Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit. Look no further than the official pics to see it was clearly a riot!
This is the tedious, bland reality of much of royal duties: Spending icy mornings in a concrete and brick quadrangle being saluted while wearing a vaguely comical get-up or having to feign interest in the sustainable practices in the Norwegian carp industry or whatever.
But if outwardly William has been busy demonstrating how achingly boring his role can be, then privately the prince has been proving just how much power he has under the reign of father King Charles.
A new report has revealed that the Prince of Wales has been involved in the manoeuvring that has culminated in Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex being booted out of their Windsor residence Frogmore Cottage. Tootles you troublesome twosome!
Last week the news broke with a resounding clang that King Charles took a measly 24-hours after the publication of Harry’s memoir Spare in January to decide it was time to revoke the Sussexes right to use the 19th century Frogmore.
It was an “ouch” for the ages, a surprisingly forceful move by His Majesty against his son and daughter-in-law in the face of their recent anti-palace campaigning. (Don’t let the “Cottage” part of the name fool you – it would likely be worth millions of pounds if it was ever put on the market and has interiors done by society decorator Vicky Charles.)
Except now it has been revealed that it was not just Charles wielding the might of his red pen behind the scenes on the Frogmore decision but that William was also involved in the controversial move to force the Sussexes to finally pack up their entire crystal collection. (Never before and never again will Windsor Castle’s private Home Park have so much rose quartz on its grounds, unless Prince Louis really gets into numerology or something.)
So too was William reportedly a part of the decision to oust Prince Andrew from his vast pile, Royal Lodge, and instead offer him the keys to the comparatively modest five-bedroom Frogmore.
The news of William’s involvement in this game of Windsor real estate musical chairs comes via The Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes, who always seems to have the on dit.
A friend of the King’s, and the wider royal family, told Sykes: “Charles is not making these decisions in isolation. He has the support of his son and heir and is working in partnership with him. They are a unit and are closer than ever.”
(Should we just assume they co-ordinate their pocket squares when they are going to get together for a day of royal real estate war games, given the extent to which they seem to be in lock-step?)
As with Charles, the revelation of William’s involvement raises the question of how much the Frogmore decision was driven by a hard-nosed focus on ensuring the royal family operates as leanly as possibly (anything to counter the image of the monarchy as bloated and chock-full of freeloading cousins and twice-removed relatives enjoying cushy rental arrangements) and how much was just good old-fashioned revenge.
It is William, of course, whom Harry has hit the hardest with his recent laser-guided truth-telling missiles, including telling the world that he had been “terrified” when his brother “screamed and shouted” at him during the Sandringham Summit and that William had attacked him during a fight about Meghan’s treatment of their shared staff. (Let us also never forget Beardgate when the two brothers faced off over Harry’s insistence on keeping his whiskers for his wedding.)
However, it has not just been William who has come in for Harry’s denunciations but Kate too, a woman we now know is horrifyingly disinclined to share lip gloss and is seemingly averse to bouncy Americans dispensing overly exuberant hugs.
Given the Sussexes’ Netflix series, given Spare, given Harry’s associated roster of TV interviews to sell, sell, sell his book, you hardly need the collected works of Freud to understand why William might be out for a spot of retribution.
There might also be a practical dimension to the 40-year-old’s thinking too. In late August last year, William and Kate, along with their three kids moved from Kensington Palace to Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor estate, which is less tiddly bungalow and more Victorian sandstone beast. Their new property is also only about 640m away from, you guessed it, Frogmore.
Perhaps William is just not keen on having someone in close vicinity to his family and home who now earns a packet by targeting him on the reg; or perhaps he and Kate simply don’t want to have to ever run the risk of bumping into their agitator neighbours every time they pop out for a loaf of Mother’s Pride or to meet with G6 leaders.
While the Waleses and the Sussexes might now run zero risk of accidentally crossing paths on the 655-acre estate, that does not mean they can avoid one another forever.
Over the weekend, a spokesperson for the Sussexes confirmed to The Sunday Times that the King’s office had been in touch to invite them to his coronation, firmly lobbing the ball into their court about whether they will attend the May 6th event.
If the duke and duchess do decide that they want to be inside Westminster Abbey on the day (maybe they want to support his father or maybe they will have realised their royal mojo is winking out or maybe their Netflix paymasters could pressure them to go) they will have to come face-to-face with the very people they have built their multimillion-dollar careers on criticising.
Should Harry and Meghan decide they need to stay home on May 6 so they can refile their country taxes or wash their hair (Harry doing so very carefully as to preserve what’s left) or whatever, “William won’t shed a tear,” an old friend of the brothers has told the Beast’s Sykes.
“[William] feels utterly betrayed by Harry. Relations have never been this bad, and he hates him for what he has done to the family in the books and interviews. He will support whatever decision his dad makes but it’s no secret he would prefer it if [Harry] wasn’t there, or, indeed, never stepped foot in England again,” the friend has said.
And if the Duke of Sussex kept away from British soil? Well, I suppose William can focus on his day job of having meetings about the latest Finnish forestry practices or visiting Welsh Scout halls or popping out to buy GuGurts for the kids’ lunches. What a lucky man.
Warm water in therapeutic pools reduces swelling and eases joint pressure.