Harry, the Prince of Hubris, is now just a joke in Britain

He might have Americans fooled, but his own people see this unroyal royal for what he is.

He has been in the rarefied air of California for only two years but Prince Harry – the man who with his American actress bride upped sticks and flounced off across the Atlantic for “privacy” – has once again shocked Britain.

For there is something both weird and deeply delusional about his latest pour-my-heart out chat with a handpicked American broadcaster, this time NBC breakfast host Hoda Ktob on the sidelines of the Invictus Games in The Hague.

Harry wanted to tell everyone, in particular the Netflix film crew that is following his every step to extract some return on the $US100m broadcast deal that is bankrolling his lavish lifestyle, that he is a prince, with a grandmother who is the Queen.

And, incredibly, he had actually spoken to her.

For most people, speaking to the older generations is normal, but Harry’s life is anything but. He doesn’t communicate with his brother, Prince William. The relationship with his father, Prince Charles, is so strained there were nondisclosure conditions imposed on a short 10-minute recent get together. And he has never even met his father-in-law, Thomas Markle.

So viewers are then expected to believe that Harry – who didn’t even bother to turn up to Westminster Abbey for the Queen’s cherished and important family get-together at the memorial service for his grandfather Prince Philip on March 29 – is now the Chief Defender of Her Majesty.

After all, it was only a year ago that he trashed the Queen’s parenting skills, and accused her ­relations of being racist and of the organisation she heads of being dysfunctional.

But now the 37-year-old reports, with a straight face, about his meeting with the Queen at Windsor Castle 10 days ago. “She has always got a great sense of humour with me and I’m just making sure she’s protected and has got the right people around her,” he said.

He later added, just in case someone may have missed those very important cues that his royal connections are so solid that he is in charge and making decisions: “We have a really special relationship. We talk about things that she can’t talk about with ­anybody else.”

But Harry was really speaking to the home grown audience, his American people who don’t understand those annoying things like royal protocol and British stiff upper lip, and what does it matter that a grandmother, now 96 and increasingly immobile and frail, has never seen her youngest great-grand child Lilibet named after herself, now toddling around?

Prince Harry is interviewed by Today host Hoda Kotb. Picture: supplied

He avoided answering a direct question about missing his father or his brother.

Later, ingratiating himself to Americans, as the money has to keep flowing, he insisted: “You know, home for me now is, you know, for the time being, it’s in the States. And it feels that way as well.”

But there is a problem. Just a few weeks ago, Harry told a British court, through his lawyer, something very different, that the United Kingdom “is and always will be his home”.

It brings back Meghan’s own legal contretemps in the UK’s Appeal Court where she had to apologise for making a misleading statement. Meghan had originally told the court she hadn’t contributed information to the authors of a biography when it was later revealed she had asked her communications adviser to pass on specific details to them.

Harry has been arguing in this latest legal stoush that Scotland Yard should provide royal-level bodyguard protection for himself and his family when he is in Britain, insisting that it is unacceptable to bring over his US security team because they don’t have access to the British intelligence.

Once the legal proceedings were under way Harry then offered to pay for the police protection, but Scotland Yard says their policing is not for sale.

This security uncertainty, and quite possibly a realisation that he and Meghan could face a public “unwelcome”, means Harry is unclear about being in Britain for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June. As a royal non-royal, he could attend family events such as being on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, but he couldn’t attend national events such as the Trooping of the Colour.

He said: “I don’t know yet, there’s lots of things – security issues and everything else. So this is what I’m trying to do, trying to make it possible that, you know, I can get my kids to meet her.”

The Sussexes attend the 2021 Salute To Freedom Gala.

Yet this is the quandary the Sussexes have created: How does a royal, who runs away from being a royal, but needs to exploit being a royal, fit in?

Harry, with dollops of hubris, insisted to Ktob his focus was very much the same as it has ­always been: providing a life of service. “Because of the circumstances, we’ve now moved that life of service to the (United) States and we’ll continue doing what we were doing before. So in that regard nothing has changed for us. It is just a little bit more complicated to have to sort of restart.”

In the US, Harry and Meghan’s work supporting a Texas women’s shelter, promoting vaccine equity and helping establish community relief centres earned them a National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People President’s Award, joining the ilk of Muhammad Ali, LeBron James, Rihanna, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice.

At the award ceremony, Harry also spoke about sharing with Meghan “a life of service, a responsibility to combat injustice and a belief that the most often overlooked are the most important to listen to”.

But apart from telling everybody else how to behave – we often hear from the Sussexes the word ‘’compassion’’ – what do they actually do?

At the Invictus Games, where Harry is the founding patron of an organisation co-ordinated by experienced officials from the London 2012 Olympics and the military, the couple arrived to sprinkle celebrity stardust.

This was their first European trip since fleeing from the royal family. Meghan showcased her favourite designers with a Valentino, Cartier, Manolo Blahnik and Aquazurra wardrobe estimated at over well over $US50,000 for the four days. At one event, she painted the word peace and a Ukrainian flag. Harry was more modestly attired, often in a polo and jeans and, having done two tours in Afghanistan, appeared his most content when surrounded by military people.

The website of their company Archewell says their production arm, in conjunction with Netflix, currently has two projects. The Heart of Invictus featuring some of the wounded veterans who compete, and Pearl, an animation about a girl telling the stories of inspiring women of history. But nothing from the couple has yet been broadcast and Netflix is under pressure having lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers this year.

The Sussexes’ $US25m podcast deal with Spotify has produced just a single Christmas half-hour special back in 2020, but a new series showcasing Meghan conversing with various historians and experts uncovering stereotypes of women is due to be released in coming months.

During the NBC chat, Harry moaned about the difficulties of having to work from home with young children, but he was comforted by the spirit of his mother Diana around him.

Harry revealed: “My mantra now every day – and it’s a dangerous one because I need to make sure I don’t have burnout – but it’s trying to make the world a better place for my kids, otherwise what’s the point in bringing kids into this world?”

How strange then with family so important to Meghan and Harry that on both sides of their families there is so much division.