Harry walks in his mum’s footsteps nearly three decades later
Emotional scenes of Prince Harry walking in his mother’s footsteps in one powerful act have stunned the world.
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The word ‘iconic’ has been so grossly overused it should be banned, but, sigh, but there is no other adjective to describe the photo of Diana, Princess of Wales walking through an African minefield.
Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex has just recreated this famed shot. For the third time.
California might have deals and sunshine and more capped teeth and kale per square mile than anywhere else on Earth but fresh and powerful ideas that skew far from the royal playbook appear to be thin on the ground.
On Tuesday he landed in Angola’s capital of Luanda, met with the country’s president in a well-pressed nice suit, and attended a reception at the British embassy.
Then on Wednesday he took a series of two-person planes to reach Cuito Cuanavale, close to Africa’s largest minefield.
There, he spoke to children and replicated the famed moment when Diana travelled to Angola, only months before her death in 1997 and not once but twice (to make sure the cameras had gotten the shot) picked her way through a minefield.
She was there on behalf of The Halo Trust; since 2019 Harry has held the same post.
This new shot of Harry is a powerful image, one positively groaning under the weight of symbolism and poignancy, a photo guaranteed to garner global media play - and it adds fuel to the nation that Harry appears to be quietly angling to return to ‘royal’ life.
When the duke landed in the Angolan capital of Luanda it was with an increasing number of signs that the 40-year-old, having quit the palace in a blaze of strong words and scorched bridges, is trying to rewind the clock and to return to a pre-Megxit existence.
Exhibit one, the last week has seen his senior aides make nice with King Charles’.
Exhibit two, his reps have been meeting with the UK press (after years of lawsuits) as part of a “charm offensive”.
Exhibit three, here he is restaging one of the most famous moments in the royal canon.
Finally, exhibit four, he even did some very HRH-y presidential hand-shaking and willingly making small talk at a British embassy.
How very 2019 of him.
Gobs were left smacked on Sunday when it was revealed that top lieutenants for King Charles and Harry and wife Meghan, The Duchess of Sussexes had held a secret peace summit in London last week.
Last week Meredith Maines, the Sussexes’ chief communications officer and head of household, flew to a certain grey island to sit down with one of the King’s right-hand chaps on royal home turf - and at Harry’s reported instigation.
Somehow a paparazzo for the Daily Mail managed to be on the hand to photograph Tobyn Andreae, the King and Queen Camilla’s communications secretary, Maines, the Sussexes’ chief communications officer and head of household, and Liam Maguire, the Sussexes’ UK and Europe communications manager, arriving for drinks held at a private members club only a stone’s throw from Charles’ home Clarence House.
(Who needs a blue beret when there is the universal convening power of a triple vodka tonic?)
Initiating the face-to-face, according to the Times’ Kate Mansey was Team Sussex and Buckingham Palace “agreed to a meeting”.
Going into it, the Palace was “understandably wary” but felt it was “sensible” to open communications channels “with yet another new Sussex PR team”. (Maines took the reins earlier this year after years of headlines about the couple’s staff turnover.)
A well-placed source told Mansey that the summit was a “desperate” attempt on the part of the Duke of Sussex “to get back into the royal fold.”
The sit down, the Times reported, was “the result of years of trying on Harry’s part to reconnect with the royal family” and these drinks were “the closest he has got so far”.
(When photos of the “closely-guarded secret” meeting were published, there was “considerable surprise” and a “weary resignation” at the Palace. The Sussexes, for their part, were reportedly “frustrated” by the talks being made public, The Telegraph has reported.)
The Palace’s was reportedly not the only door that Maines knocked on, with her itinerary including seemingly making nice with the Sussexes’ long time nemesis, the British press.
According to the Daily Mail’s royal editor Rebecca English, Maines met with “a host of London-based press and television journalists” during her trip along with business and charity partners as part of a “a new charm offensive on the UK in a bid to turn around their negative public image.”
(It remains to be seen if that particular rabbit can be pulled out of a hat.)
So let us review: The Duke of Sussex has just re-enacted his mother’s most history-making, world-changing photo op, he went to a British diplomatic outpost to talk to business leaders about the cause, and his reps are cap in hand trying to thaw the vast ice sheets that have stretched, for years, between London and California.
I ask you this - what apart from the fact that the duke lives in the US, what is different about his life today than the before times?
His years long attempt to strong arm Crown Inc and to bring them to heel have come to nought, his repeated interview demands for royal apologies having been run into a Westeros-like wall of icy silence and immovability.
The 40-year-old has no paid work, as far as is known and every one of his non-royal projects has belly-flopped.
All he outwardly does now is charity and his biggest philanthropic endeavours, like The Halo Trust and the Invictus Games, date back to his royal tenure.
What was the point of Megxit, for Harry at least? Sure he has been released from the bondage of royal servitude and yet here we are, more than five years on, when he can do, say and go anywhere he wants, when he can clamber on top of any pulpit he fancies, and he looks to be quietly reverting back to living what looks like a royal life.
Consider the cost of all this. His family. Some friendships, reportedly. A nation’s adoration.
Harry first made a private trip on behalf of the Halo Trust in 2010, visiting a Mozambique minefield. In 2019, during his tour of southern Africa with Meghan he travelled to Angola and donned safety gear to walk through a minefield.
When he was last in Angola in 2019, it was as a representative of the Crown; soon he reportedly won’t even be a representative of Netflix.
Sure, the Duke of Sussex remains as committed as he ever to doing good but his ability to have an impact, to make a dent in the Zeitgeist, feels vastly diminished and dimmed as opposed to when his HRH preceded him as he travelled the world and the Sovereign Grant happily picked up the tab.
In January 1997, a Halo Trust staffer drew their logo on a pillow case, cut it out and stitched it onto the front of the body armour.
The next day, the Princess of Wales landed in Angola with about 90 international journalists and TV crews and created one of the most powerful images of modern royal life.
Such was her truly awesome power to mobilise feeling and action that on September 1 of that year 100 nations gathered in Oslo for a historic convention to ban landmines.
She had died the day before.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Harry walks in his mum’s footsteps nearly three decades later
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