‘No way’: Prince William executes Prince Harry revenge

The Prince of Wales played a key role in the decision to block the Duke of Sussex’s olive branch.

COMMENT

Looking at images of Prince William at this week’s BAFTA Awards, him all suave in a blue velvet blazer, Richard III’s most famous line comes to mind: “I can smile, and murder whiles I smile”.

Or more accurately, the Prince of Wales can smize and schmooze and murder while he schmoozes.

As William was gladhanding the filler-plumped faces of the filmmaking elite, it turns out that he was also brutally crushing his younger brother Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex’s hopes of staging a royal comeback. Talk about multi-tasking.

Is William a smiling assassin? Picture: Jordan Pettitt / POOL / AFP

The big news of the week is that after four years on his tod in the United States, exercising First Amendment rights and learning to love chia seeds, the duke had kindly offered to pop back and to do some helping out around Buckingham Palace while King Charles is being treated for cancer. Who needs a ‘get well’ edible arrangement when your son is willing to officially inaugurate a new medical waste disposal centre in Stoke-on-Trent?

The palace’s reaction was on par with Princess Anne’s when a wannabe kidnapper tried to drag her from her call on the Mall, her famously responding with a stout, “Not bloody likely”.

Now, on Tuesday, we have learnt the key role that William played in dousing Harry’s royal return dreams.

It was not just His Majesty who has made the call but Mr BAFTA too.

The Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes has reported that the notion of the Duke of Sussex taking on official duties has been “unequivocally crushed” by both the King and the prince.

A friend of the royal family told Sykes: “William and his father are totally united on this. There is no way they are going to re-royal Harry after what he has said.”

King Charles and Prince William are said to be united regarding Prince Harry. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Prince William does not want his brother back doing royal duties. Picture: Jordan Pettitt / POOL / AFP

Then over at the Daily Mail, royal editor Rebecca English has reported: “His Majesty is ‘firmly of the opinion’ there is no way back for the Duke of Sussex as a working royal ‘in any way, shape or form’.”

William, English writes, ‘shares’ this hard line stance.

“The Prince of Wales and the rest of the royal family are in ‘solid agreement’”, according to the Mail, that Harry cannot pitch up and do part-time royalling, no matter his hankering to tour Wolverhampton’s new netball courts.

This unilateral stance on the duke comes after Charles’ stance on his vexatious younger son has clearly softened in a personal sense, while the Prince of Wales’ remains granitelike.

The last couple weeks have seen Harry being a Very Good Boy indeed, automatically triggering the mandated round of forcedly optimistic stories in the press about reconciliations and green shoots and other empty platitudes.

Let us count the ways.

Harry spent tens of thousands of dollars to fly to London for a visit with his father King Charles, thinking, according to the Sun, that they would enjoy a meaningful tête-à-tête tucked away at His Majesty’s ‘how’s the serenity?’ 29-bedroom weekender, Sandringham.

Instead he got to awkwardly perch on the edge of a rosewood chaise while he spoke to the King for 30 minute before having to find himself a hotel room for the night.

Prince Harry flew across the Atlantic to spend 30 minutes with his dad. Picture: HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP

The duke flew back to California the next day and then managed to do something largely unprecedented, which was to keep his trap shut. Unlike previous instances where details about private family conversations have somehow nearly immediately filtered into the press, this time what exactly the two men discussed remains a firm secret.

When Harry was interviewed by Good Morning America late last week while in Canada with wife Meghan the Duchess of Sussex to promote the 2025 Invictus Games, he remained equally tight-lipped, a new and strange development. Unlike in 2022 when Harry told the US Today show that he had visited the late Queen to “[make] sure that she’s protected and got the right people around her”, this time, when asked about his father, Harry simply said “That stays between me and him”.

The Duke of Sussex also told GMA that his father’s cancer fight could help ‘reunify’ the royal family and that despite the brevity, he was “grateful” to have had time with his Da recently.

Hot on the heels of this shocking new-found willingness to respect his family’s privacy came the return to royal work plot twist precisely no one saw coming. Harry, the Times reported on the weekend, is “willing to return to a temporary royal role in support of his father during his illness.”

Prince Harry is said to be “willing” to return to royal duties to help out while his dad is sick. Picture: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images

It seems like no sooner than jaws were being picked up off floors across south Ken, the Harry comeback plot twist was over before it had even started, with sources from the royal camp pouring cold water over everything.

When William took to the red carpet at the BAFTAS on Sunday night, barely 24 hours after news of Harry’s comeback offer broke, this plan was already dead on arrival.

Still, Harry, incidentally, managed to get a blow in of his own. Also over the weekend, William announced that he is funding and building $5.7 million worth of housing for the homeless on his Duchy of Cornwall land.

This news got about as much media play and public attention as the winner of the third race at Epsom and sank like a well-intentioned stone.

If Kensington Palace had been hoping for some glowing coverage of saviour William putting his money and vast estate where his mouth is then there would have been some disappointed sorts moping the Kensington Palace break room this week.

William has scuppered Harry’s comeback, Harry has coincidentally dashed William’s big reveal and the royal family still doesn’t have enough front line players to inaugurate recycling depots. And the beat goes 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.