As Rebecca English reported in the Daily Mail, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are going to lose all of their remaining royal patronages. Note: they will not lose any of their personally established patronages. Harry will lose his honorary military titles/patronages but obviously he will keep Invictus and he is still free to work with veterans’ charities and the like. Meghan will likely lose her patronage with the National Theatre (something given to her by the palace) but she will probably keep her patronage with Mayhew. The point of the Daily Mail story was to show the world that the Queen is petty AF and she’s taking punitive action against the Sussexes, but not necessarily because of the Oprah interview. Liz is just incandescent with rage generally, I suspect. Anyway, now the Times reports that Harry is suddenly super-upset about something which he’s known was going to happen for months.

The Duke of Sussex is said to be upset after the Queen agreed that he should lose his royal patronages and honorary military appointments. An announcement is expected in the next weeks confirming that he is to be stripped of a range of official positions, including his cherished role as captain general of the Royal Marines.

As part of the deal with the Queen, Harry and Meghan were allowed to keep their patronages for the time being. However, Harry had to put on hold his military appointments, although no decision was made about whether he would be replaced. As well his role with the Royal Marines, which was previously held by the Duke of Edinburgh, Harry is honorary air commandant, RAF Honington, and commodore-in-chief, Small Ships and Diving, Royal Naval Command.

“His military work is one of the most important things to him,” a friend was quoted as saying. “Of course he wants to keep them.”

The Palace has long maintained that it would not be possible for the couple to be both half in and half out of the royal family. A source said: “There was no choice. The reality of not being able to have their cake and eat it is finally dawning on him. I am sure it is really painful for him. He is very upset to be in this spot. But they have made some choices. They have lots of exciting things to work on, and that can be done with everyone’s best wishes. But you cannot confuse representing the institution and the head of state with the sort of commercial operations that they intend to run.”

A former senior naval officer said: “I think people would not wish to upset Her Majesty. Nor can I see how, if the rumours that Harry wishes to live in America and even become an American citizen are true, his wishes could possibly be acceptable.”

It is thought that an announcement will be made before the review period closes at the end of next month. Their positions with two Commonwealth organisations are understood to be more of a grey area. The duchess is patron of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, and both are respectively president and vice-president of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, an organisation set up by his office in 2018 to mark the Queen’s 92nd birthday.

A Commonwealth source said: “I think for them the novelty has worn off. In the early days they thought the Commonwealth could be their thing. But I don’t see any appetite for maintaining that engagement.”

[From The Times]

So… Harry has known that he’s going to lose his patronages for months, in January the “one year review” was basically cancelled, he didn’t even call to set up an appointment for the fakakta review, and he’s building a lovely life for himself in California and someone, somewhere said “I bet Harry would love to keep working for the Firm in some capacity, especially when it comes to representing the military” and that was the jumping-off point for this story. It’s just an excuse for a royal source to whine and project all of this bullsh-t onto Harry. Also: The Times should be pretty careful with their implicit accusations that Harry and Meghan aren’t doing anything for the Commonwealth – Harry has truly sued over that kind of thing. Last thing: I think Harry is more than happy with his California cake and he’s eating it too. (Therein lies the problem for these dumbf–ks.)

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, WENN.