Over the weekend, the Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah – a favorite of Prince William – had a very odd column: “The King’s freeze on Prince Andrew and Prince Harry has backfired.” Suddenly, we’re back in 2019 and every time there’s a sh-tty story about Prince Andrew, the papers immediately attack the Sussexes. Six years later, they’re still running the same old tired play. I’m just saying, it wasn’t surprising that in the same newscycle where we learned of Virginia Giuffre’s suicide, there were tons of attack pieces on the Sussexes. Nikkhah’s piece was a slightly new twist to the storyline because she suggests that King Charles might want to actually speak to Prince Harry, if only to keep tabs on Harry’s movements. Don’t be silly, Roya – I’m absolutely positive that the king has hired people to keep tabs on the Sussexes full-time. Some highlights from this piece:
Andrew kept trying to trash Virginia Giuffre: Andrew, and the royal family, hoped that the multimillion-pound settlement he agreed with Giuffre in 2022, without admitting liability, had closed the door on the scandal. But the duke, eternally obstinate and self-righteous, couldn’t quite leave it alone and attempted to trash her reputation again as recently as 2023, when a friend of his told me Andrew believed the unsealing of legal documents involving Giuffre would “demolish” her story and clear his name. It didn’t happen. Imagine thinking it was a good idea to try to smear Giuffre again after settling with her. Despite the settlement, the duke, and by association the royal family, can never escape this saga.
BP tries to conflate Andrew & the Sussexes: Buckingham Palace adopted the mantra: “The Duke of York is no longer a working member of the royal family.” It’s a phrase the Palace has wearily repeated for many of the controversies from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex since they left these shores five years ago for their shiny new life in California. But how is that tactic working out for the monarchy, Your Majesty? By keeping the defrocked princes at such an arm’s length, he has ensured one stumbled into the path of an alleged Chinese spy and can never escape his murky past, while the other wages war on the media, criticises his kin for not joining the crusade and continues to battle with His Majesty’s Government and courts over his security in the UK. That means the King, who is 76 and still receiving weekly cancer treatment, has not seen his younger son for more than a year, nor his two grandchildren, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, for nearly three years. That must surely be suboptimal for both Charles and Harry.
Charles should keep tabs on his brother: Is a change of tack needed? Andrew’s Easter jaunt with the family may signal Charles has clocked that instead of trying to turf his brother out of Royal Lodge, he should keep tabs on him over a cup of English breakfast after church — it’s preferable to discovering his latest mishap from another heap of embarrassing headlines. Those always distract from the rest of the family’s public work, which is one of Charles’s pet hates.
Charles should keep tabs on Harry too: Let’s be clear — Harry is certainly no Andrew, though they share a stubbornness that raises hackles in the royal fold. If Charles is changing course with Andrew, he could also try giving it a go with Harry, who has let it be known that calls to “Pa” go unanswered and he now learns about his father’s health from the newspapers….But if the King doesn’t want to be surprised and upstaged by the self-styled “Spare”, as he was when Harry unexpectedly popped up in court and in Ukraine this month while Charles was beavering away on his Italian state visit, then he should give thought to answering the odd California call, if only to find out what his second son has brewing in the Montecito pipeline.
Arm’s length isn’t working: Of course, it is all so much easier said than done when there are years of accumulated hurt and mistrust on both sides. As any of us with tricky families know all too well, breaking the “out of sight, out of mind” cycle is rarely, if ever, appealing. But Charles would do well to stay more in the loop with Andrew, however unpalatable it may be, because keeping the Duke of Hazard at arm’s length clearly hasn’t worked. It isn’t working with Harry either.
The thing is, I’ve always got the sense that Charles does speak to Andrew and not just in the keeping-tabs way. Andrew is still welcomed at family events, Andrew stayed at Balmoral last summer (and he probably will go there again this summer), and despite the public posturing, it’s clear that Andrew and Charles are mostly fine with each other. It’s a different story altogether between Charles and the Sussexes. Charles does not give a sh-t about Harry, Meghan or the children. He does not care about their safety, he does not want to see them, and he doesn’t want them in the UK whatsoever. He doesn’t even care enough to keep tabs on them at a personal level, and he would prefer if Harry simply spoke to staff. Charles treats his younger son worse than his human-trafficking brother.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
