I’ve lost count of the number of British articles and commentary pieces angrily discussing the Spencer family. As we saw, the Spencers came out for Prince Harry and Invictus on Wednesday, with the Earl Spencer, Jane Fellowes and Lady Sarah McCorquodale (Harry’s uncle and aunts) coming out to the Invictus service. The Earl Spencer’s heir (Harry’s cousin) was also there, as were at least two other Spencer cousins. The British media had already gotten their prewritten narratives straight from Buckingham Palace: Solitary Harry, shunned and alone. They had to backtrack and admit that, actually, Diana’s side of the family came out for Diana’s youngest.

The Ephraim Hardcastle column in the Mail admitted that “Team Sussex” see the Invictus service as a win, because the lack of Windsors ensured that Harry carried the event on his own, and he did it well. The Windsors ended up emphasizing that Invictus is Harry’s baby, and the Windsors ended up looking spiteful, cold and petty. The Mail’s Jan Moir wrote an overwrought piece about it too, here’s the only important part:

Just when it looked like the Sussexes didn’t have a friend in London, just when it seemed as if Prince Harry would be shunned by his entire extended family every time he came to the UK — a one-man pestilence to be avoided like a contagion, sidestepped like a puddle, dodged like a bullet — something remarkable happened. Enter the Spencers.

And Prince Harry could not have been more delighted to see them. Inside the great cathedral, in almost biblical scenes of redemption, he hugged the Spencers, he kissed them, he fell upon their necks like the return of the prodigal son.

Indeed, we haven’t seen Harry looking so happy in public since he trundled down the waterslide at Thorpe Park, all those years ago. Yet underneath the bucolic bonhomie and the cheerful smiles, a thunder of advancing hooves could be detected, if you listened hard enough. For the Spencers were a cavalry galloping to the rescue.

One wonders what King Charles and Prince William might think about this high-profile intervention, which has the potential to cast them in a cold and unflattering light by comparison; the perennial bad cops to the Spencerian good cops.

Yet who is snubbing who in these endless, exhausting skirmishes of transatlantic royal snubs and non-speaks? The truth is that if his father and his brother won’t see him nor support his pet causes when he visits London, then Prince Harry has only himself to blame. Who could ever trust him again?

[From The Daily Mail]

Charles and William look cold, petty and mean BUT IT’S HARRY’S FAULT. How dare the Spencers not spend years smearing and marginalizing the Sussexes, to the point where the Sussexes had to set the record straight? How dare the Spencers support Diana’s beloved son instead of attacking him and scapegoating him? Did the Spencers not get the memo that Harry was supposed to look SOLITARY in the UK? How dare the Spencers remind everyone that Harry still has deep family ties in the UK, Spencer ties which go back centuries.

The Telegraph also did a piece on the Spencers showing up – man, they are SO mad. This piece is just history and it’s really obvious stuff too, like “the Spencers love Harry” and “Harry has gotten a lot of quiet support from the Spencers for many years.”

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