For a royal couple best known for maintaining an iron grip on their sunny public profile, do I detect a little disquiet in Sussexland?
Prince Harry is making his way from America’s west coast to the UK for a five-day visit on his own. He had initially wanted his wife, Meghan, and their two children, Archie and Lilibet, to accompany him on what is first and foremost a promotional trip for next year’s Invictus Games – but also so they could be reunited with their grandfather, whom they last saw four years ago, before King Charles underwent gruelling treatment for cancer.
But for reasons that are not yet fully clear, but which seem to involve an impasse about the British taxpayer providing police protection for the Californians, the Duke has decided at the eleventh hour to travel alone. The full family reunion will simply have to wait – if it ever happens at all. I now fear that the King will never see his grandchildren again.
For this morning, there was a fresh row. Harry’s team finally put to rest the burning question over where exactly the Duke would be staying during his visit, the BBC declaring that he had accepted the King’s offer to stay at Buckingham Palace – an offer first made several weeks ago, and one which Harry had been formally declined as recently as Saturday, a day after the palace’s original deadline.
However, just minutes after the announcement, the palace replied that the formal acceptance of the invitation had not been received in time. As the royal household requires a minimum period of notice for staffing provision, the prodigal Prince could now not be accommodated at the King’s official London residence.
I look forward to seeing Premier Inn or Travelodge’s billboard ads declaring “You can always stay with us, Harry… and for less than a princely sum”, or someone’s missing a trick.
Less impressive are Harry’s lacklustre attempts to rebuild bridges with his estranged family – the same family he wrote about to devastating effect in his score-settling memoir Spare. If you can detect an air of childish brinkmanship in the way he now conducts himself… well, I think you’d be right.
And that resentment is all one-way (isn’t it always with Harry?). Charles has made no secret of his keenness to heal old wounds: in his first speech as King, he extended a specific olive branch, saying: “I want… to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.”
There was a fleeting solo meeting with Prince Harry in September last year, but the King hasn’t seen the grandchildren he longs to get to know or his daughter-in-law since Boris Johnson was prime minister.
In the intervening years – during which Harry has mostly hovered supportively in the background as Meghan arranges crudites on platters – each time a UK family visit has been mooted, Harry has demanded levels of state protection that Vladimir Putin might consider a bit over the top.
Ravec, the government and royal committee committee that determines risk to public figures, has deemed royal protection levels void as Harry is no longer a working royal. He argues that his family are major targets.
But if Harry’s concerns – some might say paranoia – mean he only ever travels alone, his father may never see his grandchildren again. King Charles, who will turn 78 in November, maintains as active a public and working schedule as his cancer treatment permits, committed as he is to an endless stream of dutiful public and charitable appearances. He can’t jet off to California to collect eggs from the rescue birds in Archie’s Chick Inn.
Surely Archie and Lilibet deserve a relationship with their other living grandparent, having been denied one with Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle? Her jam-making can surely look after itself for a few days…
It’s time to wake up, Harry. Charles is your family, too, and he won’t go on forever. In fact, spurious security worries are nothing compared to how you’ll feel once it’s much too late to change your mind.