Prince Harry ‘not invited’ to King Charles’ first Trooping the Colour as monarch
Never before has a sovereign not invited one of their children to take part in one of Buckingham Palace’s most important traditions.
Oh, that royal family, they love a tradition.
The late Queen loved her yearly rituals, always keeping her Christmas decorations up until February, and resolutely spending every single damn summer holiday in Scotland, where it rains at least 250 days of the year.
Come June, there is another stalwart of the Buckingham Palace calendar: The Fainting of the Soldier.
Every year at the sovereign’s official birthday event Trooping the Colour - aka the 260-year-old military parade that sees thousands of soldiers, horses and musicians put on a positively North Korean-esque display of precision marching - at least a couple of participants keel over in the heat.
During this weekend’s practice run, called the Colonel’s Review and now overseen by Prince William, the usual happened with a couple of hardy members of the military fainting in the 30 degree heat.
James Calford, 18, the youngest soldier in the Welsh Guards taking part this year told the Telegraph that it was “like being stood in a sauna with a 200kg dumbbell in your left hand”.
So, come next Saturday when the actual event takes place, it’s entirely likely that a few members of the dozens of regiments taking part will succumb to the conditions.
Except that this year’s outing, King Charles’ first as monarch, will mark a serious deviation from the norm and a sad milestone: The “first time” that His Majesty’s younger son and daughter-in-law and number-one cause of regal hair loss Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are “not welcome.”
The Daily Mail’s Richard Eden has revealed that “Prince Harry and Meghan have not been invited to the King’s Birthday Parade. It will be the first time in Harry’s life that he has not been welcome at the monarch’s official birthday celebrations.”
A source told Eden: “I’m afraid it’s a reflection of the state of relations at the moment.”
For the first 35-years of Harry’s life, taking his place on the Palace balcony in the summer heat to idly wave at the masses and enjoy the vroom, vroom of an RAF fly-past was an immutable fixture in his diary. In fact, the duke made his debut appearance at Trooping before he had even hit his first birthday.
The last time that Harry and Meghan took part in Trooping was 2019, when they did their level best to look like they were enjoying themselves. (Reader: They did not succeed.)
Then came that funny time when the world stayed at home in our trackie pants, marinating in existential fear and Dettol, which saw Trooping reduced to a clutch of soldiers doing a bit of parading about the Windsor Castle grounds where the late Queen and Prince Philip spent lockdown.
Then 2022 rolled around and Trooping was BACK! As London’s milliners celebrated and got back to the business of knocking out deliciously over-the-top chapeaus for the upper crust, the Sussexes flew back to the UK for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations and her birthday parade.
This time, no longer senior members of the royal family, they instead joined the extended gang of Windsors who watch the event from Major General‘s Office at Horse Guards Parade. Somehow, Fleet Street’s intrepid snappers got a charming shot of Meghan in her $2530 Stephen Jones with a couple of Princess Anne’s granddaughters.
While Harry and Meghan were not allowed out onto the Palace balcony afterwards, as is now standard for non-official representatives of the crown, they were still a part of things. They were, as Her late Majesty went to pains to point out more than once, “much loved” members of the family.
However, no more.
If Harry has been in recent weeks trundling out to their Californa letterbox, day in and day out, wondering where his invitation to his Pa’s official birthday do might be (only to find their Titanium American Express card bills and his returned letters to George Clooney), then he is in for serious disappointment.
With the passing of Her late Majesty in September last year, so too does it seem that the Sussexes’ annual invite to Trooping will, for time being anyway, be permanently lost in the post.
The way things stand right now, it’s hard to see how they might ever make their way back into the royal good books or for Meghan to any time soon need Stephen Jones to create another stunning topper for her.
Last week saw Harry enter the witness box in the London High Court, the first senior member of the royal family to do so since 1891, a landmark moment that it sounds like no one back at the Palace was cheering on. He was there to give evidence in his lawsuit against the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), alleging hacking and unlawful information-gathering and came out with both barrels firing, pugnaciously labelling the UK government as being at “rock bottom.”
That sound you can hear? Bad teeth being repeatedly gnashed in the vicinity of Buckingham and Kensington Palaces.
Let us all appreciate the irony of an unelected member of the royal family taking aim at the elected government of a country that he has spent approximately one month in out of the last three and a half years. Clearly self-awareness is not something that the duke has picked up along with all those beaded necklaces and a taste for Twinkies since decamping to the US.
Even if Harry had decided to not launch that needless political salvo, relations between the 38-year-old and his family are about as warm and fuzzy as those between North and South Korea. (Thank heavens neither side has managed to get their hands on any thermonuclear devices, although I wouldn’t put it past Camilla. She’s a resourceful one.)
The emotional DMZ that exists between the Houses of Windsor and Montecito seems unlikely to be breached any time soon, with Eden writing in the Mail that Harry “is said not to have spoken to his father or brother while he was here.”
Nor is he reported to have seen them, even though Harry was staying at the Sussexes’ Windsor home Frogmore Cottage for the final time (the relinquished keys currently in an envelope under the mat, I’m guessing after they were evicted by Charles) and was only walking distance from William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Nor did he or Charles undertake the roughly half-hour walk between the Palace and the High Court, with the King having arrived back in London after his Romanian sojourn (all hand-pressed apple juice and lengthy countryside rambles). Did His Majesty make time to see his errant progeny? You already know the answer.
Clearly, the King and William had about as much interest in seeing Harry as Camilla has in joining a WhatsApp group started by Melania and Ivanka Trump. (Name: ‘Power Vimeen.’)
Little wonder about the lack of outstretched hands and warm hugs, given that Harry and Meghan have taken a family rupture and proceeded to wring every dollar and iota of public sympathy possible out of it.
Come next weekend, when the 1,400 soldiers, 200 horses and 400 musicians take to The Mall, the remaining frontline members of the royal family will proceed onto the balcony for the arduous business of gracing the masses with their presence. There will be the Wales family, complete with their three adorable kidlets; Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and their slightly blasé teenagers; and the seven other card-carrying HRHs who are all long past British retirement age, their wrists no doubt slathered in Voltaren gel in preparation for all that waving. (Panadol Osteo, Your Royal Highnesses?)
But not only will the Sussexes not be a part of the day in any way, shape or form but neither will their little ones Prince Archie, four years old, and two-year-old Princess Lilibet.
In another universe, one where Harry and Meghan decided to stick with the business of royaling, the duke might finally have been made a royal Colonel such that he could actually take part in the parade on horseback alongside Willy. Also, the King’s youngest grandchildren would by now be taking their places on the Palace balcony too.
Go back to the adorable shots of a tiny Harry on the Palace balcony in the 80s, and he was always surrounded by his cousins with the late Queen slightly sternly presiding over the gaggle of youngsters.
Depressingly, that’s an image we may never see repeated with the current crop of tiny princes and princesses. In fact, all of His Majesty‘s grandchildren have never been photographed or appeared in public together. Ever. And, with relations between Crown Inc. and Montecito as dire as they are, we may never will. I suppose the Separation of the Cousins is another miserable tradition we can now add to that.
Daniela Elser is writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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