One sentence reveals the full impact of Prince Harry’s betrayal
In a highly unusual TV appearance, one royal let slip just how hard things have been since Harry and Meghan fled.
COMMENT
Prepare yourself – I have some very exciting news. Well for me anyway because for the first time since … ever … I am here to tell you that the unruly member of the royal family who is making waves today is none other than Taft hair spray’s biggest customer, Princess Anne!
Yes, she of the titanium-strength, backcombed ‘do of your nightmares, she of the hundreds of official engagements so boring I’m surprised her security detail don’t all slip into catatonic states (lighthouses! Sewerage treatment plants! Recycling centres!) – and the only person who asked brother King Charles if she could have the leftover Buckingham Palace curtains so she could whip up a new suit on her Singer. Her.
This week the 72-year-old gave a TV interview to Canadian broadcaster CBS and her no nonsense approach to children, horses and contempo casuals clearly extends to her willingness to be frank about that whole monarchy business even when on camera.
Asked about Charles’ famous desire to ‘slim down the monarchy’ her response was just as blunt as you would expect, with her saying: “Well, I think the ‘slimmed down’ was said in a day when there were a few more people around.
“It doesn’t sound like a good idea from where I’m standing, I would say. I’m not quite sure what else we can do.”
And while at this point I would love to devote the rest of this piece to celebrating the Princess’ straight-talking and what exactly she has been doing in those lighthouses, the fact is, her admission has actually revealed something much, much bigger about the royal family.
Welcome to the stage Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and professional unhappy man.
Because what the Princess Royal’s comment really lays bare is the full, devastating toll that his and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s binning of the royal family in 2020 has had.
To understand this situation, let’s go back in time to 2012. Gangnam Style had infected our brains, Isabel Marant had just invented the horrible wedge sneaker and Girls had hit screens.
It was also Her late Majesty’s Golden Jubilee, which saw her and Philip stand up for four hours in the rain as they made their way down the Thames in a royal flotilla in a moment that wholly captured the rigid backbone of duty in the couple.
Then came Trooping the Colour and out onto Buckingham Palace balcony came only a fraction of the usual throng of titled sorts the world had been used to seeing. Gone were the Yorks, the Gloucesters, the Kents, Prince Edward and his family and the dozens and dozens of extraneous cousins and dynastic hangers-on who usually fill out the scene.
This pared back ensemble was reduced to only the Queen, Philip, Charles, Queen Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, William, Kate and Harry.
The message here would not have been clearer if Charles had rented a billboard at Piccadilly Circus or bought advertising airtime during Corrie: This was the future of the royal family, a lean, mean hand-shaking machine.
And the future looked golden: A dashing Prince and his new wonderfully middle-class, Zara-loving bride and Harry, the adored younger son who had managed to charm the pants off the nation.
When Meghan Markle turned up on the scene four years later, it looked like the Duke had also found his perfect other half, a woman who would instantly and dramatically increase the appeal of the monarchy to modern British society while looking bloody brilliant in a tiara to boot. Huzzah!
I don’t need to tell you how that dream crashed and burned and the tears, interviews, the book deal and the Netflixing that has followed in a tidal wave of finger-pointing and never-ending grievance-airing.
What Anne’s comment from that interview (“when there were a few more people around”) really drives home is that in ditching the royal ancient regime to try and climb the greasy Hollywood pole, what the Sussexes have done is deal a serious blow to Charles’ ability to actually run a functioning Firm.
Any business needs staff, it needs people to do the work and Harry and Meghan, in throwing the Harrods towel in to hang out in Hollywood, have deprived the King of 50 per cent of his young staff.
Which is to say, Megxit has, accidentally, managed to hobble the monarchy.
When Charles was busy coming up with his ‘slimmed down’ idea what he was really doing was looking for a way to trim the fat from the outer edges of royalty, those Dukes that only the editor of Debrett’s and His Grace’s tailor could name and not the core, fundamental members in the top handful of spots in the line of succession i.e. Hazza.
What is coming into focus now is that the Sussexes’ leaving has had the unintended consequence of truly and utterly stuffing up the King’s Weight Watchers version of the royal family. His Majesty wanted to get the royal family into trimmer shape and instead, through a confluence of events including Prince Andrew being dickish Prince Andrew, the deaths of the late Queen and Philip and Megxit, Charles has been left with a ’90s waif of a royal family that is all protruding rib cages and jutting bones.
If you want to understand just what a disaster the King has on his hands, consider too what the royal family looked like at two particular moments.
In July, Prince George, future King and current Lord of Recess, will turn ten.
When Harry was the same age, in 1994, the working members of the royal family and who were on the balcony ranged from the 30s (Prince Edward and Prince Andrew), to the 40s (Prince Charles and Princess Anne), to the 50s (Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, and Princess Aexandra) to Queen Elizabeth at 68-years-old and 73-years-old Philip taking out the top spot.
Contrast that with the royal family that surrounds George now looks like, such as when he appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony with his Gan Gan and other relatives during her Platinum Jubilee last year.
Of the adults, all bar Waleses and the Edinburghs are years if not decades past the official UK retirement age.
(Nowhere in sight were Prince and Princess Michael of Kent retired from what duties they took on last year but not confirmed.)
The problem is, there is no one to take their places and to take on the dull but essential parts of royal work – the army barracks openings, the rural tree plantings, the roundabout ribbon cuttings.
Meanwhile, Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh’s children Lady Louise Windsor and James, the Earl of Wessex, will not be working members of the royal family. (Last anyone heard, Louise had a summer job at a garden centre ahead of going to uni.) Nice professional careers and large houses in Fulham where they will pay their own rates lie ahead for these two.
The only people on that balcony who are very likely to end up as official flagwavers for King and Country are William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales’ three children, George and his siblings Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
Imagine being William and Kate and one day having to tell your son and most likely your other son and your daughter that they have no choice over their futures – no say over what they do with their lives or where they will live or even what religion they practise.
They might never have to worry about money or being sacked but they are staring down the barrel of an entire lifetime where they will be expected to devote themselves to an institution which if they walk away from, could well entirely fall over.
To me, that sounds like an unbearable weight.
These days, Harry and Meghan might have ‘found their freedom’ but those left back in the UK, for a handful of small children and elderly sorts with bad teeth? Do they have now or will they ever have any ‘freedom’?
In the words of Anne to her wannabe kidnapper Ian Ball in 1974: “Not bloody likely.”
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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