Prince Harry exposed in hugely embarrassing photo with fake ‘prince’
The Duke of Sussex posing with a fellow prince at an LA gala that Meghan Markle snubbed has set off alarm bells.
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So, half the time when I open up Instagram I get served ads offering me the incredible privilege of buying a title. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that being able to change my byline to include ‘Lady’ has a certain appeal.
However, these companies are about as believable as that time in 2018 that Prince William said that peace in the Middle East was his “lifelong project”.
If only someone had told Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex and man who has long since been separated from his last clue about this title malarkey before he was funnelled, via a backdoor, into the Beverly Hilton over the weekend. The duke, you see, was being recognised at the Living Legends of Aviation Awards and there he seems to have very happily posed with a man named Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe.
It’s a title that seems, at first glance, legit given that it feels like these days there are certain corners of Instagram where there are more than a few chin-challenged sorts toting vowel-heavy Teutonic titles all busy angling for their 15 minutes.
The problem is, just because someone pops up with a grand appellation that makes them sound like their family had skin in the game back during the War of Austrian Succession doesn’t mean they are on the level.
‘Prince’ Mario-Max reportedly has about the same royal bonafides as William does in Middle East peace negotiations. (Fine, maybe Kate the Princess of Wales bought her husband his very own UN surplus flak jacket to wear around the privacy of their home of an evening but he has not exactly made much progress on this “lifelong project”.)
Mario-Max’s ‘royal’ styling comes after he was adopted by Prince Waldemar of Schaumburg-Lippe-Nachod, a second cousin of Denmark’s newest retiree Queen Margrethe, who married Mario-Maxi’s mother, Gertrude-Antonia, a former vet, in 2008.
(Mario-Max had previously been adopted by Prince Waldemar’s aunt Helga Claire Lee, Princess of Schaumburg-Lippe, who is reported to have boasted about the man who was 66-years her junior being “a boyfriend”.)
Thus you have the full measure of the man that Harry appeared more than willing to pose with and it is a nearly painfully exquisite image: Two titled men who, with differing degrees of enthusiasm, have used their royal connections to cash in to keep themselves in velvet dinner jackets. Just the necessities right?
(Harry’s wife Meghan the Duchess of Sussex had the supremely good sense to stay at home for a night that sounds like it was the equivalent of the opening of an A4 envelope.)
After that photo of Harry and Mario-Max started doing the rounds, the actual head of the house, Prince Alexander of Schaumburg-Lippe, spoke to the Mail, saying of Mario-Max: “It’s very painful for me, this guy has been harvesting our name for his personal gain. Prince Harry cannot stoop lower than appearing with him. I would advise him to stay away from this man.”
Not only is ‘Prince’ Mario-Max’s title quite the dubious tchotchke but the award that Harry was in Beverly Hills to collect sounds like it was about as prestigious as winning ‘Best in Show’ at the Basildon Dahlia Fair or being named the UK’s Celebrity Spectacle Wearer of the Year. (A very real prize whose winners include a string of otherwise squinty second-string British reality TV stars.)
While some former Living Legends of Aviation Award honorees have included Buzz Aldrin and Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who landed a passenger jet on the Hudson, there are other names on the list of inductees that are hardly as upright and laudable. Names like Elon Musk, endorser of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and Tom Cruise, a man who spends his down time working on his thetans.
When news of Harry’s Living Legends award was revealed earlier this month, some military veterans back in the UK were quick to pour cold scorn on the former Captain Wales’ commendation.
Admiral Lord West, a former First Sea Lord (head of the British navy) told the Telegraph: “He is not a living legend. There are lots of people who deserve to be called this but not Prince Harry.
“I find it extraordinary he has been picked. He didn’t carry off any great exciting feat of amazing flying skill while flying for the Army.”
Elsewhere, Admiral Lord West told the Mail, “I find the whole thing really rather pathetic.”
Over in the Sun, retired Colonel Richard Kemp, said: “A large number of military pilots, helicopter and fixed wing aircraft have carried out some extraordinary feats of valour and phenomenal aviation that I’m afraid Harry didn’t do.”
The other main image from the actual awards came courtesy of fellow aviation Living Legend Lauren Sanchez, the woman soon to be known as Mrs Bezos. She shared a photo taken at the event showing the duke, host John Travolta, herself and Mr Creatine Amazon himself, Jeff Bezos, a man who would appear to be working dutifully to make himself look like a jacked up thumb.
Gawwwd.
How has Harry sunk to this? To willingly make the roughly four-hour round trip drive from his Montecito home to Beverly Hills so that he can receive a meaningless award during an evening of mutual ego-masturbation and dry chicken breast mains, all in front of a crowd of wrinkle-free foreheads?
We have just passed the fourth anniversary of Megxit, the day that Harry and Meghan channelled their inner Oppenheimer and dropped a homemade A-bomb on the Buckingham Palace back lawn. In those first days, weeks and months it looked like they had the whole world, cheque books open, tongues lolling, at their feet. The biggest conundrum they seemed likely to face was going to be where to stay when they were convening their own working group at the UN or which emoji to send Machenzie Bezos and Melinda Gates in their group chat.
But my oh my, what has instead come to pass is far – farrrrrr- off course from that glorious vision of Davos-jetting and such brave, do-goodery that the Dalai Lama would be on the blower asking for pointers. The duke and duchess are the epitome of best intentions come a bit undone, their ambitions seemingly having been hobbled by the vicissitudes of having to do paying work and lacking the well-oiled infrastructure of the Palace.
The problem of Harry these days is a bit like in the 13th century when the King of Norway gave King Henry III a polar bear because gift cards hadn’t been invented yet. The poor creature was kept at the Tower of London and would be taken for swims, on a chain, in the Thames. It hardly sounds like a charmed existence because that polar bear simply didn’t belong paddling around upstream from the Palace of Westminster. Having been removed from its natural habitat, no one quite knew what to do with it.
The same goes for the Duke of Sussex now. Put the man in front of a crowd of veterans or in a room full of people talking about mental health and wow-wee. He’s not only brilliant but a natural.
However seeing Harry in that Beverly Hills ballroom or being ferried about California in a small convoy of bulky SUVs to have sugar-free mimosa brunches at Oprah’s is a bit like that polar bear. Do we really think, to borrow a phrase from the duchess, that Harry is thriving?
The answer might be, bloody hell yes. Harry might be joyfully bounding out of bed every morning now to greet each fresh day with vim, vigour and new ideas for animated series.
Only thing, he doesn’t exactly project those vibes when he’s in public.
Seeing Harry and the Not-A-Real-Prince Max-Mario comes with a bit of eekk-inducing foreshadowing. The duke might have long since gotten into bed with corporate America but Max-Mario is something else entirely. He has appeared on German Celebrity Big Brother, had a cameo on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills while briefly dating one of the show’s stars and once, according to the Mail, did some “semi-naked modelling of lederhosen-style swimming trunks”. At one point Mario-Max sold a “wealth elixir” on the home shopping network for $163 for a pop, which sounds like some epic 21st-century-style snake oil business.
I’m not suggesting that Harry would ever resort to such cheap, desperate ploys to curry attention or to line his Dior pockets but the duke has shown a willingness to lend his name and title to a series of commercial endeavours.
Even leaving aside Netflix, Spotify and Penguin Random House (along with Apple+ which made his 2021 mental health series The Me You Can’t See), the Sussexes have hooked up, commercially speaking, a speaker’s agency, a Wall Street investment firm, a San Francisco a multi-billion dollar start-up (where former employees told the Daily Beast that the royal did “zero things” and was a “distraction”) and gotten into the wellness game via the duchess’ investment in Clevr, a vegan instant latte business.
Which is to say, other money-making options beyond just content appear to be very much on the table for the Sussexes.
Hopefully Harry’s brief intersection with Mario-Max will serve as something of a cautionary tale – that not only should he be careful of the company he keeps but also that there is a line when it comes to money making.
In short, beware, especially of anyone who turns up to a meeting with some “lederhosen-style swimming trunks” for him to try on.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Prince Harry exposed in hugely embarrassing photo with fake ‘prince’
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