Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images
Just as every Us Weekly reader knew somewhere deep in their soul that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were not perpetually on the verge of rekindling their romance during the decade following their divorce, royal watchers are aware on some level that most reports about King Charles and Prince Harry’s reconciliation efforts are fiction.
Thus, it was surprising to see actual photographic evidence backing up the latest report that the two sides are trying to reconcile. Over the weekend, The Mail on Sunday published photos of King Charles’s and Prince Harry’s senior aides holding a “secret peace summit.” There were multiple shots of the aides heading to a private club in London on Wednesday and sitting down for drinks on a patio. And the accompanying report was chock-full of details about the reps and their agenda:
’There’s a long road ahead, but a channel of communication is now open for the first time in years,’ said a source. ‘There was no formal agenda, just casual drinks. There were things both sides wanted to talk about.’
Harry was represented by Meredith Maines, his chief communications officer and head of his household in Montecito, California, who flew in from Los Angeles.
She met Tobyn Andreae, the King’s communications secretary, at the Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL) a three-minute walk from Clarence House, the monarch’s London residence.
Also present was Liam Maguire, who runs the Sussexes’ PR team in the UK.
So did Prince Harry’s seemingly boneheaded plea for “reconciliation” during a tell-all interview in May actually work? Or was it that jam peace offering Meghan Markle reportedly sent King Charles? Could the recent chatter about Harry inviting his father and his more decisively estranged brother, Prince William, to the next Invictus Games actually true? The mind boggles!
But just days later, royal gossip is back to business as usual. Now the two camps are bickering over who leaked the details of the meeting to the Mail via anonymous quotes to the press.
“The leak has jeopardised the fragile peace operation, creating further suspicion and distrust on both sides and potentially sending them back to square one,” according to The Telegraph.
The Sussexes quickly denied responsibility. And while they have not directly accused Buckingham Palace of leaking, the Daily Beast noted that’s exactly the sort of behavior Harry has complained about:
Neither side would comment on the record to the Daily Beast but a source in Harry’s camp forcefully denied that they had leaked details of the meeting to the paper, which photographed the encounter. They stopped short, however, of directly accusing the king’s office of leaking the details.
Given that one of Prince Harry’s main grievances about his family has been the claim that his father’s aides have planted stories in the media about him, the publication of the photographs in the Mail is likely to infuriate him.
A “source close to the Sussexes” told the Mail on Monday that all parties were “frustrated” that the story got out. However, in the same story a “royal expert” posited that Harry and Meghan had more to gain from the leak, so Charles and William must be suspicious:
Phil Dampier told MailOnline: ‘Both The King and Prince William always fear that they can’t trust Harry and Meghan not to put any talks they have into the public arena and this will confirm their worst fears.
’To me it looks as though Harry wants to portray himself as the one who is trying to patch things up. If talks fail he can say he tried.
’But I don’t think these tactics will work and the fact this summit was leaked will put any reconciliation process back by months’.
The two sides fighting over their attempt to stop fighting certainly isn’t a good sign. But at least Team Harry and Team Charles were willing to meet. And Meghan sells a wine now, so that’s one more tool to help the royals broker peace.
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