There’s a new Royalist column in the Daily Beast which I find incredibly curious. As we’ve seen throughout the month of May, the whole “King Charles would love to reconcile with Prince Harry” storyline is dead and buried. Charles threw a series of tantrums over Harry’s visit to the UK, refused to meet Harry, tried to put Harry in danger, and briefed about Harry for two solid weeks. Charles made it clear that he wants no part of the Sussexes and he does not want to see them whatsoever. Evicting the Sussexes from Frogmore Cottage was not a tempermental and temporary act of spite, it was part of a larger strategy to have the institution declare Harry persona non grata. The reaction to Charles’s latest moves have been gently criticized by the British media, which still wants to feed on the royal drama and wants nothing more than to have access to the Sussexes. Which might explain why Royalist is now claiming that of course Harry is open to reconciliation, as is King Charles, but it’s all to do with Prince William’s rage. Never forget that Charles is a dogsh-t father to both of his sons.
Talking to friends of the Windsors in recent days, it is notable that many of them, while sympathetic to the overarching Windsor complaint of broken trust and betrayal by Harry in his book, also suggest that the Windsors and their circle are now as exhausted as the Sussexes of the feud that has dominated the royal narrative for several years now.
As has been reported, it seems the major block in the way of reconciliation is coming from William. A friend of his told The Daily Beast: “Meeting with Harry is the last thing that William or Catherine want or need right now. It’s a fantasy. It’s not about apologies or who said what, it is about protecting his family. Kate is recovering from cancer, and they are avoiding stressful situations.”
A friend of Charles and Queen Camilla told The Daily Beast that the meeting between Harry and Charles after Charles was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year was a “significant step in the right direction,” but they added, “The idea that Harry and the kids are going to descend on Balmoral this summer is wishful thinking. It’s all just very sad.”
The general atmosphere is summed up in comments made by another friend of Charles and Camilla, who told The Daily Beast: “Everyone understands that William is absolutely furious with his brother, but ‘absolutely furious’ isn’t a deliverable plan for a king, which William will be, perhaps sooner than he had imagined. A king not speaking to his brother over an argument about a broken dog bowl, a costume party almost twenty years ago, or who said what about some lip gloss, will make William look petty and ridiculous.”
The friend added that Charles is “gently trying to lead by example,” adding, “A king should be magnanimous.”
The comments echo remarks made by the journalist Petronella Wyatt in the Telegraph last week who said that Charles would like to warm up relations with Harry but is being “prevented” from doing so because of William’s well-known animosity to his brother. A friend told The Daily Beast that there was some truth in the remarks, although they said that Harry’s abrasive remarks about Camila in his book were also to blame for some of the froideur between Harry and the king.
Calls for the royals and Harry to put the argument behind them were also made by the influential Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones, who urged Charles and William to “be the bigger men” and “welcome the firm’s biggest assets back into the fold.”
It’s a neat trick from Buckingham Palace to pretend that they didn’t spend the entire month raging about Harry whilst simultaneously pivoting back to William’s incandescent rage about all things Sussex. “A king should be magnanimous” – someone tell that to Charles, who evicted his grandchildren from their family home in the UK. “A king not speaking to his brother over an argument about a broken dog bowl, a costume party almost twenty years ago, or who said what about some lip gloss, will make William look petty and ridiculous.” While I agree that William absolutely looks petty and ridiculous, the fight was not ABOUT a broken dog bowl, the broken dog bowl was the result of William assaulting his brother over Meghan. Until William stops seething with hatred and jealousy that Harry fell in love, got married and moved away from the toxic family, the fundamental problems will remain. “Petty and ridiculous” is the Windsor Brand, and William is just the petty and ridiculous apple from the petty and ridiculous Windsor tree.
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