Prince Harry photo no one thought possible

Something absolutely massive has happened to the Duke of Sussex in recent months that no one ever thought would be possible.

If we all got into a time machine and went back to July 2016, the month that Prince Harry met a certain Suits actress, and told anyone that the royal plot line would soon feature him talking about his icicley member, a destroyed dog bowl, unwillingly shared lipgloss, bridesmaid dresses, untold tears, hundreds of millions of dollars of commercial deals and the sovereign’s son living down the road from Katy Perry, we would have been labelled loony.

“Madness,” someone would have muttered while looking about the place for a discrete padded room for us.

Let me just get out my pen because it’s time to add to the list of wild twists and turns in this, the Days of Our Windsor Lives. Something shocking has happened to the owner of the world’s most famous ginger beard, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex.

He looks happy.

Doing the job I do requires spending a medically inadvisable amount of time looking at photos of members of the royal family and knowing far too much about the Chelsea Flower

Show. So, there I was trawling Getty and clicking on shots of the duke while looking for something else entirely and it hit me: Harry has started smiling again.

We are not talking about an occasional, stray uplift of the corners of his mouth or him looking less vinegary than had been, for years, his usual mien. For nearly six months now, in Canada, the UK, the US and Nigeria, every time the duke has popped up in public he has generally looked like a man who is pleased as non-alcoholic, sugar-free punch.

Dare we ask? Dare we dream? Is Old Harry back?

There was once a magical period of time, back when he was still a working member of the royal family and still had free and easy access to the Kensington Palace office biscuit tin, when the duke’s public image was as a cheerful, cheeky sort.

(We know, via Spare, that behind-the-scenes the picture was much less simple or rosy.)

Pictured in 2020, Harry does not look thrilled. Picture: Justin Tallies/AFP

Still, sent out to fly the flag for his Granny and the crown, Harry outwardly joked, japed, laughed, charmed, tickled, hugged and proved himself to be a hearts-and-minds-winning-over powerhouse. After those troubled years of his early 20s, of him stumbling out of nightclubs covered in rum and coke stains and radiating a certain wretched lost-boy-ness, the duke seemed to have found his equilibrium and the press and the public loved him.

It was to be a window that would close circa Megxit when Harry and Meghan winged it to the US to taste the sweet ambrosia of freedom and of being able to borrow as many private jets as they fancied.

Then came the duke’s lemony years when his royal emancipation saw him and his wife take to sharing their woes and hurts to their hearts’ – and bank account’s – content.

Starting with their sit down with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, pretty much every time the world saw Harry he looked like a man who had just taken a break from sucking on some under ripe citrus. With Winfrey, with ITV’s Tom Bradby, with The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert, with the Today show, the Today show again and with 60 Minutes, and across podcasts and his book, Harry came across as perpetually glum or in bad-humoured.

(It’s a damn good thing the wind did not change during his various TV appearances to plug

Spare.)

Then 2024 rolled around and it started: Harry doing events and meeting people and looking … cheerful. Genuinely buoyant and upbeat and sparkling. Even – dramatic pause – back in London. Gasp!

In February he and Meghan went to Vancouver for the One Year To Go winter Invictus training camp. And he went about the snowy slopes lit up like a 100-watt bulb.

More recently, has Harry rediscovered joy? Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage

Michael Buble laughs with Prince Harry. Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage

Absolute hilarity! Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage

The next month, in the officially released photo of him congratulating the winners of The Diana Awards, it shows him with such a big grin and baring so many teeth his dentist could probably check for cavities using only the handout image.

Well, hi there! Picture: Casey Gutteridge/The Diana Award via Getty Images

April arrived and Harry and Meghan took part in a night honour of The Kinsey African American Art and History Collection in LA and guess what was also there? You guessed it –

that smile of his.

The couple at a celebration honouring the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection. Picture: @msayles/The Kinsey Collection/Instagram

In May, back in London for a St Paul’s church service to celebrate 10 years of Invictus, and out came that patented grin of his again.

Harry meets members of the public as he departs The Invictus Games Foundation 10th Anniversary Service. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for Invictus Games Foundation

He was beaming. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for Invictus Games Foundation

The real breakthrough moment though came in Nigeria in May during the Sussexes’ three-day DIY ‘royal’ tour to promote the Invictus Games during which he trotted about the place looking like he had just gotten all six numbers in Powerball.

Harry and Meghan meet with children during their visit at the Lightway Academy in Abuja in Nigeria as part of celebrations of Invictus Games anniversary. Picture: Kola Sulaimon/AFP

If you think about it, the renaissance of Happy Harry makes perfect sense.

This year has, so far, required the Duke of Sussex to do charity and play polo (and help produce a Netflix series about polo), which is to say he has been back to doing things he loves and has been relieved of the demands of having to professionally marinate in decades of psychic family wounds and to sell books.

In other words, Harry seems able to have gotten back to doing what he did for the first two decades of his adult life. We are back to Original Flavour Harry.

And when OFH™ can give over his days to doing good and helping others and occasionally doing some stick and balling, it looks like that’s when he comes alive and his heart sings and out comes that huge smile.

I, for one, love this.

For years now we have watched as Harry of the Tortured Soul has repeatedly popped up on screens but maybe, just maybe, that is all over. Maybe the man has now gotten back to doing what he is clearly bloody good at – see above, helping people and ponies – plus throw in the joy he finds in parenting and we just might have the recipe for true Sussex contentment on our hands.

And if this is the case then my, there can be no odder or rarer or more bizarre turn up for the royal books than that. A member of the monarch’s family having found real, lasting happiness? Strange times indeed – strange and wonderful times.

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.