The self righteous claim that the King won’t speak to him because of his court battle hasn’t stopped the Duke of Sussex appealing twice
This week the courts rejected your latest appeal. Your response? To blame The Firm, bleat about a “good old fashioned establishment stitch up” and melodramatically argue that although your father is battling cancer and you don’t know how much time he has left, the UK isn’t safe enough for you to bring his grandchildren, Archie and Lilibet here to see him.
What, even Sandringham? I know for a fact that if you’re travelling from LAX and you change at Amsterdam, you can fly straight into Norwich airport. There’s even a lovely family-run cafe and bakery in the terminal, so you can meet the King there for a latte and a seeded bap if you don’t want to risk the A147.
Where there’s a will there’s a way Harry. The grandstanding is getting tedious and there’s precious little dignity in a 40-year-old father-of-two behaving like a stroppy teenager because his dad won’t wheel out a motorcade every time he nips out to the vape shop.
Why, I’m not sure there’s a violin tiny enough to accompany the tragic tale of a lovable freckled boy, born into the most prestigious royal family on the planet who dramatically turned his back on family and friends for love, bought a £12 million mansion and then discovered civilian life is a bit rubbish.
Harry, I strongly suspect your gripe is less about security and more about status. Back home in Montecito, you and Meghan are surrounded by billionaires, who are notoriously difficult to impress, even if her homespun trad wife series has been recommissioned by Netflix and her As Ever raspberry jam is whooshing off the shelves faster than a Eurofighter Typhoon. And no, you can’t have one of those at your beck and call.
Back here in the Old Country you still have traction, soppy fools that we are. Call it prodigal son syndrome but when you told the BBC “I would love reconciliation with my family” we almost believed you – until you magnanimously spoke of “forgiving” them, even though it was you who blew the bloody doors off in Spare, leaving everyone from Queen Camilla to the Princess of Wales peppered with shrapnel.
Oh and that self righteous bit about the King not speaking to you “because of this security stuff” – it didn’t stop you appealing the original court’s decision twice, did it now?
Sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a child’s ingratitude (magnified a hundred times when it’s on telly) and yet Charles, a loving if flawed father, craves rapprochement. The rest of us, not so much. I would be astonished if your brother the Prince of Wales ever speaks to you again.
When someone is fortunate enough to be born into privilege, how it shapes them is a mark of character. In William we see a sense of duty. In you Harry, a sense of entitlement. As ugly as it is shameful.
Harry. How has it come to this? What in the name of Dieu et mon droit were you thinking when you sat down with the BBC to air your grievances about your elderly, ailing father, King Charles?
Maybe you’ve lived in the US for too long to remember that prime time is no place to resolve family disputes – just ask Jeremy Kyle. And where were the wise heads, respectfully advising you there is no more unedifying spectacle than a petulant prince, bellyaching about the unfairness of his lot?
They are long gone, of course. And with them the admittedly archaic but nonetheless fail-safe “never complain, never explain” mantra that has stood the House of Windsor in good stead for generations.
Instead we have watched in genuine dismay your descent from happy-go-lucky rebel to querulous victim as you embraced the tell-all, sell-all culture in a modish bid to be heard and feel seen. But monetizing pain – in your memoir Spare, on your Netflix series – isn’t always the best route to catharsis.
If it were, you wouldn’t still be burning with such a sense of injustice or so mired in self pity as to be unable to swallow your pride, regain some perspective and stop pestering the courts with your obsession over taxpayer-funded security when you visit the UK with your family.