In the past five years, the British press always seems extra-eager whenever Prince Harry visits. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like they’re sleep-walking through covering the left-behinds 99% of the time, but whenever Harry is in town, everything becomes sharper and brighter, sources are more eager to discuss situations at length, courtiers are more generous with their briefings, and there’s a really obvious flurry of royal activity. “Look at us, Harry, we’re busy, we don’t miss you at all, and we’re watching every single thing you do and say!!!” In addition to all of that, Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace tend to organize stories about how poor Harry is desperately homesick and miserable in his California mansion with his beautiful wife and children. Speaking of, the Evening Standard had this on Monday:
The boy is back in town. Prince Harry has come to London and is hell bent on seeing his ‘Pa’. The Great Matter though, is whether his Pa will see him? And whether there might be some fatted calf on offer? We all know the beef between King Charles and the prodigal Prince. But briefly: after storming to North America in 2020 (Canada and then inevitably LA) Harry has burnt bridges with thunderous regularity. Telling Oprah there was a racist in the family; accusing his father and stepmother of a calculated smear campaign against him and Meghan in his mournful best seller Spare and most recently telling the BBC that he wasn’t speaking to his father after he failed to intervene over Harry’s court case against the government refusing to pay for his security.
For all that, the Duke of Sussex is longing to be embraced back to the Royal bosom. There might be an element of calculation to this; the Sussexes are beginning to feel the chill of fending for themselves as non-royals. And with Netflix not renewing their lucrative contract but downgrading it to a first-option agreement, Harry must be longing to feel the sunshine of being the King’s beloved son again.
The key reason is emotional though. Rumours have swirled around the palace that the King has been given just two years to live, so it is likely that Harry, never one for admitting he was wrong, might just be regretting some of things he has said and done to wound his father over the past few years. A friend of his also says, “Spike (his nickname among his old school friends) is seriously homesick. He’s started reaching out to us more and more. It started with very long and earnest whatsapps. We actually all made a decision when we started getting them not to take the piss out of them. Something we couldn’t have imagined doing a few years before. Anyway, gradually he seems to be sounding more normal. Whenever anyone goes to America they try to see him. It never seems to be with Meghan though. We think he is beginning to pine for home”.
While one of Charles’s courtiers tells me that the King misses Harry bitterly. “Harry seems to have forgotten this but his father always absolutely adored him. He always called him ‘my darling boy’ and was so affectionate. People always seem to think that Harry inherited all his charm from his mother, but lots of the things he is good at, being attentive and always remembering people’s names, is something that comes directly from the King”.
What people don’t appreciate too is the tricky relationship that the King has long had with the Prince of Wales. Harry himself alludes to it in Spare. Describing one of his last meetings with Prince William and the King, after the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, Harry writes, “then at last I saw them. Shoulder to shoulder, striding towards me, they looked grim, almost menacing. More, they looked tightly aligned. My stomach dropped. Normally they would be squabbling about one thing or another, but now they appeared to be in lockstep – in league”. A courtier admits that William never phones his Dad directly but has to schedule a call through the King’s private office.
If I was a headline-writer for the Evening Standard, I would certainly put “King Charles rumored to only have two years to live” front and center because how are they burying that information as they fuss about Harry?? Two years from his cancer diagnosis or two years from now? Wild. Anyway, I continue to be bewildered by all of this “Harry needs to reconcile, he needs to do this or that” bullsh-t. Harry has tried to meet Charles more than halfway, and Charles continues to be horrible, short-sighted and downright evil. As for the “Homesick Harry” narrative… lol, that’s coming straight from William. That’s William’s rage-fever-dream about Harry’s misery at living free from all of this crap.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
