Inside Prince Harry’s sad 28 hours in Britain

Even though the Duke of Sussex went to Buckingham Palace, what he did during his flying UK visit speaks volumes about the state of familial relations.

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Last Friday, as William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales, were surprising fans waiting along The Mall in London, less than an hour’s drive away, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex was facing The Last Supper.

Having flown in earlier in the day on a commercial flight from Los Angeles, Harry was reportedly drive directly to Frogmore Cottage, his and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s official UK home. (It’s a house that’s testament to what can be achieved with only an eight-figure budget and the services of London’s most in-demand interior designer.)

So, while the Waleses soaked up the people’s adulation, grinning and bearing their way through endless selfies that day, Harry was facing what might have been a lonely, final dinner-for-one in his soon-to-be ex-home. Was there a microwave pizza involved? A takeaway and a can of lager? A cold bowl of baked beans, the only thing left in a denuded pantry?

The Princess of Wales meets wellwishers during a walkabout on The Mall. Picture: Toby Melville/WPA Pool/Getty Images

Prince Harry flew all the way to London to spend Friday night without his family. Picture: Dan Charity/WPA Pool/Getty Images

Now that Aitch is back on US soil, having survived the gauntlet of his father King Charles’ coronation, new details have emerged about how he spent the 28-hour trip.

Maybe pour yourself a soothing milky drink at this juncture – (go on, add a belt of something stronger) – because things are about to get all so very sad.

Going into the coronation weekend, the chances of Harry and his wider family enjoying any sort of warm, tender moments involving hugs (or even handshakes) was about as likely as Princess Anne giving up her beloved subscription to Farm Equipment magazine. (You just know she’s a woman who appreciates a well-priced tractor.)

The story of how things got so bad is well-trodden, much-covered territory. In the past six months, courtesy of the mésalliance of the Sussexes and Netflix, they have made one of the most voluble attacks on Buckingham Palace since Thomas Becket was mouthing off about Henry II.

Then, of course, came Spare, Harry’s memoir of sausage-indignities (literal and figurative), the whole book a lengthy testament to Charles’ shoddy attempts at parenting.

The reaction of his family has trickled out since then. A friend of William told the Daily Beast that the Prince “absolutely hates” the Sussexes and “feels utterly betrayed” by them; Queen Camilla was ‘hurt’ by Harry’s claims, her best friend the Marchioness of Lansdowne recently revealed to the Sunday Times, while one of King Charles’ closest intimates Lord Nicholas Soames said during a recent radio interview that the Duke’s treatment of his father had been “a terrible blow” for His Majesty.

Prince Harry is out of favour with most immediate members of the royal family. Picture: Andrew Matthews/WPA Pool/Getty Images

Though Harry, but not Meghan, had accepted an invitation to the coronation, with the Duke and the King having had a “heart to heart”, per the Sun, elsewhere Sussex cheerleader Omid Scobie told morning TV recently that father and son had not “discussed the details and the points that Harry wanted to go into”. So … just his flight details then?

All of which is to say, Harry was always in for a pretty grim weekend given he was about to come face-to-face with the relatives he sacrificed in the name of catharsis, mammon and Netflix’s share price. (Penguin Random House too.)

But what none of the reporting leading up Pa’s Big Crown Weekend recognised was just how much empty time Harry would end up spending on his sweet Jack Jones.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that the King had decided to evict the Sussexes from their home on the royal Windsor estate, reportedly around 24 hours after Spare landed. (Revenge is a dish best served via cold real estate moves?)

Therefore the weekend’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trip back to the UK in all likelihood was his final time staying there – just him, a few stray odd socks and an unread copy of Radical Forgiveness. (That is unless of course Frogmore’s possible next tenant Prince Andrew has him around for a demoted dukes drinking session in the years to come. What a sight that would be.)

Prince Harry and his brother Prince William didn’t meet up during Harry’s flying visit. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/AFP

Just imagine what Friday inside Frogmore must have been like for Harry. While his family was busy in London, he had a whole afternoon and evening to spend in a house full of memories. There have been no reports suggesting he might have caught up with friends (though obviously could have and eluded the Fleet Street bloodhounds) or his family.

In 2019, Harry and Meghan moved into Frogmore and not long after welcomed their first child, Prince Archie. That image of Harry on his lonesome for the last night of their tenancy, his family thousands of kilometres away, really does tug a bit at the heartstrings.

When night fell, Harry would have had his final Frogmore dinner, possibly on his own, while only a brief walk away, his brother, sister-in-law, nephews and niece gathered around the kitchen table for a cosy supper of partridge cottage pie and after-dinner hugs. (Creative embellishments, moi?)

Let’s hope the Duke didn’t get any baked beans on the carpets that no longer belong to him.

Friday was Prince Harry’s last night at Frogmore Cottage. Picture: GOR/Getty Images

Come Saturday morning and it was time for the main event. Dressed in a bespoke Christian Dior morning suit, a fact that the fashion house wasted little time trumpeting on social media, he was picked up around 9.30am, and was driven by black BMW into central London, according to the Telegraph. Around an hour later, he arrived at the Abbey at the same time as Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie and their husbands, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and Jack Brooksbank, and his uncle Prince Andrew.

After wishing the Archbishop “good luck” it was time for his long, lonesome walk down the aisle to his seat, left to face it all while his wife reportedly “protected her peace” at home.

Prince Harry cut a sad figure as he arrived for the coronation. Picture: Aaron Chown/AFP

Inside, his reception was about as enthusiastic as that of a Bible-toting Mormon at a sambuca-fuelled key party and thus he was left largely left to make small talk with The Husbands. (Here is a taste of the scintillating conversation courtesy of a lip reader. Harry at one point seemed to reference the time he was flying out, saying “about quarter to four” to which Jack ‘Tequila’ Brooksbank aka Mr Princess Eugenie commented “So soon?” It’s like the Algonquin Circle 2.0.)

Prince Harry blocked by Princess Anne's feather hat at the coronation. Picture: Sky News

By the time the lengthy ceremony was over and the Archbishop of Canterbury was contemplating putting his feet up and enjoying a celebratory Cornetto, the Duke was already beginning the long journey home to Montecito and his hummingbird feeder.

But first he had a stop to make – and we now know, thanks to the Telegraph again, that he was in fact driven from the Abbey to Buckingham Palace where he spent “less than half an hour”.

Wait, I hear you say, this could change everything! Maybe there was some sort of sweet family moment – Charles’ other son delivering a touching private homage of his own in some downstairs palace hallway!

Sadly not.

According to the Telegraph, the pit stop was for “logistical reasons” and because “it allowed him to take a moment out of the public gaze following the two-hour Abbey service”.

(Did a brow need to be mopped? Deep breaths taken?)

And like that it was over, with him off to Heathrow’s Windsor Suites, the costly paid-for VIP service available to anyone willing to get their credit card out.

Like his previous trip to the UK in late March when Charles was “too busy” to see Harry, this time around the Duke did not, based on the reporting, see his family for a second or moment outside of the Abbey. There was not even any sort of catch-up with his cousins including Eugenie and Jack who are the only Windsors to have visited the Sussex outpost in California.

During what may well have been Harry’s final time participating in a royal event until his father’s funeral (told you this was going to get sad), the fact that no opportunities were taken to have a conversation, from either direction, has to qualify as a shame.

If the gulf between the Duke of Sussex and his family seemed big during the queen’s funeral last year, it now looks chasm-worthy.

When the various powers came together to end World War I at Versailles, they enjoyed a decadent menu of French fancies – from flambéed this to cream-drenched that. If a good dessert could help end the Great War, imagine what a member of the royal family turning up with some Nandos and a bottle from the off-licence could have achieved here.

Maybe that Friday night dinner really was The Last Supper, not just for Harry and Frogmore, but for any chance to quietly, gently begin to broker some sort of family peace.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.