At yesterday’s DealBook Summit, Prince Harry had some very special messages for the deranger contingent online and in the British media. He was asked directly about the latest storyline of “Harry and Meghan’s professional SEPARATION” and he said, in part: “Apparently we’ve bought or moved house 10, 12 times. We’ve apparently divorced maybe 10, 12 times as well. So it’s just like, what?’ It’s hard to keep up with, but that’s why you just sort of ignore it. The people I feel most sorry about are the trolls. Their hopes are just built and built, and it’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,’ and then it doesn’t happen. So I feel sorry for them. Genuinely, I do.” He also said, with his whole chest, that he enjoys living in America and raising his children here, and that he feels like his mother would have wanted him to live this life. Well, one of the trolls is still trying to make fetch happen. Richard Eden at the Mail wrote a column based on some quotes from an unnamed courtier, a courtier who pays way too much attention to what the Sussexes are doing:
Catherine’s appearance by Prince William’s side was a reassuring display for monarchists alarmed by the health problems that have beset the Royal Family this year. Queen Camilla’s disclosure that she had not fully recovered from pneumonia was not what they wanted to hear after King Charles’s ongoing treatment for cancer. The Waleses’ joint display offered a stark contrast to Prince Harry’s latest solo appearance across the Atlantic.
When the Sussexes moved to California in 2020 they were expected to become a ‘power couple’ with their own ‘court’ of admiring celebrities desperate to share their limelight. Instead – as was evident last night when Meghan did not join Prince Harry on his visit to New York – they are pursuing increasingly separate working lives.
He was in the city – his second solo visit in little more than two months – for a party to celebrate the opening of an art exhibition, called Friend, at the Ki Smith Gallery, to raise money for Sentebale, the African charity he founded with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho. Meghan’s absence was notable because Sentebale – which helps children come to terms with having HIV or AIDS – is a cause close to Harry’s heart. Nor did she accompany him when he visited Lesotho with the charity in October. Last night, the prince’s wife was more than 2,000 miles away, attending the Paley Honors Fall Gala in Los Angeles in support of her friend, filmmaker Tyler Perry.
A royal source told me this week: ‘William and Catherine know that their strength is as a couple. It’s surprising that Harry and Meghan seem to believe that they are stronger apart when it comes to their engagements. Yes, the Prince and Princess of Wales will do things separately, but they will be together when it matters.’
Keep in mind, before all of Kate’s health drama this year, royal sources regularly briefed the British papers in 2023 regarding William and Kate’s plans to step out solo more often, that Kate no longer wanted to travel and she especially didn’t want to undertake more than the bare minimum of “royal work.” Those stories were always presented as a good thing, a wise thing, a sign of maturity from William and Kate, who seem to feed on each other’s laziness. But now that Harry and Meghan are booked and busy, sometimes on different coasts, it’s all hushed tones and palace intrigue for a couple who left that dump five years ago. This all has the feel of Prince William’s obsessive nature too – more than anyone else, it feels like William has been trying to make a Sussex divorce happen. It’s creepy as hell. Also: note that Eden can’t even bring himself to admit that Harry was also in NYC because he had been invited to speak at the DealBook summit.
Photos courtesy of Getty, Avalon Red, Backgrid.