What better way to hog the limelight in advance than by engaging in a performative will-they-won’t-they guessing game? Photo / AP
What better way to hog the limelight in advance than by engaging in a performative will-they-won’t-they guessing game? Photo / AP
OPINION:
RUDE. Rude, rude. SO RUDE.
Apparently Harry and Meghan still haven’t confirmed whether they will be turning up to the Coronation.
Less than a month away and counting.
Only 30 or so sleeps before I have to unveil my commemorative coronation trifle. Spoiler Alert: incase you’re wondering, I’ll be channelling the Friends episode in which two pages of Rachel’s cookery book were stuck together leading her to make an English trifle featuring a layer of minced beef.
We’ll certainly be tucking into a delicious melange of curried chicken, raspberry sponge and custard here at Woods Towers. Bet Queen Camilla would wolf it down no questions asked; country folk are like that.
Probably wouldn’t turn a hair if it were roadkill.
Anyway, talking of the Tower, it’s arguably the best place to accommodate the look-at-us-but-don’t-look-at-us snow-flakey Sussexes now they have been evicted from Frogmore Cottage and can’t make up their minds whether to attend the event of the decade.
Or, which seems far more likely, they decided they were going to come long since, but are staying schtum for tactical reasons. As Oscar Wilde once observed: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”.
Harry and Meghan in their Netflix docuseries. Picture / Netflix
What better way to hog the limelight in advance than by engaging in a performative will-they-won’t-they guessing game? How juvenile. How tiresome. How bloody discourteous.
Call me a wicked old sceptic but I suspect they are deliberately, cynically boosting their brand by reminding everyone, in actual fact, just how very integral they are to the House of Windsor.
Because let’s be clear, post-Spare (Us) when Hazza cleared out his emotional pipes, the pair were becoming increasingly irrelevant with every querulous estrangement.
But look, get a load of these crafty optics. See how the palace apparatchiks are scuttling around, crusty retainers ripping up seating plans, ladies-in-waiting (and waiting) tearing their hair out.
Dance, flunkies, dance.
Prince Harry aired the royals' dirty laundry in his memoir Spare. Photo / Getty Images
It would be quite funny in an episode of fabulously scurrilous Channel 4 comedy The Windsors. In real life, it’s a reflection of lamentably poor manners.
Harry’s grandmother, the late Queen, would have settled his hash and told him exactly what he was going to do.
He can’t even use the excuse he’s worried that if he hops across the Atlantic he might not be allowed back, now he’s fessed up to recreational drug use; he was over here not 10 minutes ago court-bothering.
Britain's Prince Harry arrives at the Royal Courts Of Justice, in London, Monday, March 27, 2023. Photo / AP
No, this is sending a message to his father that he, Harry, holds all the cards now. Except he doesn’t.
Not because King Charles no longer cares about his wilful younger son – quite the reverse.
He loves him unconditionally. And by definition, unconditional love means that every hurt is forgiven, every slight dismissed.
No matter how much Harry tries to inflict pain, his father will roll with every punch.
Only when this 38-year-old manchild grows up, will he ever understand.
As he watches his own children increase in agency and independence, he, like every other parent, will find himself gently garotted with his own heartstrings. And when his son and daughter make terrible decisions and horrendous choices (strip pool in Vegas, anyone?) the penny will finally drop. Surely, even for him?
Whether Harry pitches up to Westminster Abbey or not, the one person on the planet who will not condemn him is his father.
