Clue palace in panic mode over Harry, Meghan
Some strange things have happened in London this week - and they could suggest The Firm is starting to panic over what Harry and Meghan might do next.
On Friday, the Queen made her third appearance in as many days while enjoying her annual week at the royal palace in Edinburgh, proof of either the power of her indomitable spirit or that MI5 has come up with some miraculous elixir for her that would probably be illegal in race horses.
Either way, there Her Majesty was, smiling her brightest smile and working her way through her extensive brooch collection during various ceremonial outings, Queening as hard as she could Queen.
It has been a miraculous one-woman renaissance and would be our story today, if not for the fact that concurrently, something particularly strange has been happening 670km south in the vicinity of Buckingham Palace and Prince Charles’ Clarence House.
The first clue that something might be afoot came when a senior royal aide decided to, seemingly out of nowhere, spill some warm and fuzzy details about Charles’ recent meeting with his son and daughter-in-law Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1.
“It was fantastic to see them. It was wonderful to have them back in Britain,” the Telegraph reports the source saying.
“The Prince, of course, hasn’t seen his grandson Archie for a bit of time and so it was very, very, very special to have some time with him.
“He hadn’t met Lili, his granddaughter, and so to meet her was very emotional, a very, very wonderful thing.”
“What grandparent wouldn’t think that was a good day all around
(Six ‘verys’ in four sentences — that has to be some sort of effusive record.)
The whole thing reads like the sort of frothy briefing an LA publicist would give a supermarket tabloid, not the sort of fare that normally comes from the royal houses.
Ask yourself this: when has a royal mouthpiece ever voluntarily gushed before?
However, the interesting question here is not why has Clarence House come out all touchy feely like, but why now?
It has been nearly a month since the Sussexes revved up the private jet and hightailed it out of London after being humiliatingly cold-shouldered by the royal family during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Celebrations. In fact, the only time that the couple and Charles were seen in public together, for a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s, the 73-year-old very obviously failed to acknowledge the duo who were seated off in the wasteland of lowly ranked cousins.
Clarence House, out of the blue deciding to cast Charles as a loving grandpapa to the Sussex kids, basically selling him as bouncing baby Lili on his knee while turning a blind eye to Archie squashing, Duchy of Cornwall oat biscuit crumbs in his Axminster rugs, is a real puzzler.
Next comes Mystery Comment Number Two, from, you guessed it, a senior royal aide after this year’s Clarence House financial reports, out on Friday, confirmed that Sussexes had repaid the full $4.2 million of Sovereign Grant money spent on Frogmore Cottage. “Great credit to them,” our talkative aide said. “They said they wanted to transition to financial independence and that has now been achieved.”
Last but not least some strange things were coming, or in fact, not coming out of the mouth of Buckingham Palace. Their annual report, also just out, confirmed the extraordinary decision to essentially bury the findings of the inquiry into allegations that Meghan had bullied royal staff members (claims the duchess has vehemently denied). Nor would the “policies and procedures” changed following the probe being revealed.
The whole chapter has been swept under the carpet and, the Telegraphs reports, “Both sides are understood to be hopeful of drawing a line under the episode.”
So how to make sense of these three instances of the royal family suddenly going out of their way to play so nicely Harry and Meghan? Have senior royal aides suddenly been reading Deepak Chopra or did someone get a Gandhi quote-of-the-day desk calendar? Why all this sudden Zen peacemaking and random Sussex love-in?
The answer may have something to do with a set of photos published this week by the Daily Mail showing Meghan, Harry and a woman who looked like their longtime friend, actor Janina Gavankar, leaving the $144 million estate of Oprah Winfrey. The shots show the trio in deep conversation and their expressions did not appear to be those of people who have just enjoyed an hour of oat milk latte sipping as they gossiped in the summer sunshine.
The obvious and immediate question was, are Harry and Meghan considering a second interview with la Winfrey, less than 18-months after their first bomb throwing outing?
Because the possibility that they might be considering going another round with the billionaire TV host, along with the fact that Harry’s memoir is set to be published in coming months, suddenly casts all of this out-of-character make nice in a very different light.
Basically, are they trying to mollify the duke and duchess; a strategy of appeasement via senior aide?
What is intriguing is the turn up for the books we are seeing. During the Jubilee, Harry and Meghan were resoundingly put in their place by the Palace with only the occasional concession to their former senior status. The royal house looked intent on sending a very clear message during the four-day knees up about just where the Sussexes now ranked in the pecking order. That cannot have been an easy pill to swallow.
Fast forward only a month until today and the tables look like they might be turning, with Harry and Meghan looking like they are holding some pretty powerful cards.
Whether the Sussexes were in fact discussing a second interview with Oprah this week to air a fresh set of grievances or what those pictures show is just some neighbours popping around to borrow a cup of organic coconut sugar, a Range Rover full of bodyguards in tow, we don’t know.
However, it doesn’t really matter. Whether it is in the coming weeks or months or years down the track, the very possibility any time that Harry and Meghan feel like they need to get something off their chests about his family or The Firm, they can let forth.
This interview sword of Damocles now hangs over the house of Windsor and will do so for the foreseeable future, a situation that is partially of their own making.
The problem is that the royal family has left the Sussexes in a position where they really have nothing left to lose. They no longer receive any funding from Charles’ Duchy of Cornwall, they no longer get a freebie and instead pay rent on their Windsor home Frogmore Cottage, and they have had all of their official patronages and military roles stripped away.
Their frigid treatment during the Jubilee was proof that no one back in London would seem to have forgiven them or will be forgiving them any time soon for their sensational exit or their decision to turn up on global TV screens and to charge the Palace with institutional racism and of treating them so cruelly.
In this context, the question for Harry and Meghan becomes, why not indulge in Oprah mark two? Why not tell the world how sad and hurt they were to be shunned by his family? How painful it was to be relegated to second-row, second-tier status during the Jubilee? Why not try and use an embarrassing situation to generate some sympathy for them?
It’s not as if it would be hard to paint Charles et al as all a bit emotionally constipated and the meanies in this situation.
All of these arguments hold for the reality-like series they have reportedly been filming for Netflix. Will they try and tiptoe around the royal family’s feelings or really let loose?
Ditto, Harry’s book. What is to stop him going hell for leather and really airing every dirty piece of laundry he has encountered in his 35-years as a card-carrying member of the Firm?
Some reports earlier this year have suggested that there are fears that he might take aim at his stepmother Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. If this is the case, that would only add more weight to this week’s placatory moves from Clarence House and Buckingham Palace being all about trying to neutralise some of the potential sting in Harry’s tale (Sorry, I can’t resist a pun.)
Still, it’s hard not to wonder if this damage control is too little too late. Feelings would seem to have been hurt badly, Harry has books to sell and the duo has a streaming giant bleeding hundreds of billions to keep sweet.
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For now, it’s a watching brief but with all of the opportunities in the near future for duke and duchess to indulge in the penchant for truth-telling and journey-sharing, are a few warm words here and there really going to be enough to prevent them from coming for another prime time pasting?
The way things are going, we might just end up seeing Charles pop up on Instagram live singing Kumbaya with Camilla on tambourine. Desperate times call for desperate — and mushy — measures.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media writers.
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