It’s hard to make sense of the chaotic messaging coming out of Buckingham Palace unless you understand that King Charles’s court is riven with factionalism.
The most difficult issue is Harry, about whom the court is divided between hawks and doves.
The hawks, led by Sir Clive Alderton, the king’s personal private secretary, believe that Harry’s behavior is unforgivable and that the monarchy will be harmed if Harry and Meghan are reinstated by the king. William sides with them. They are described by Harry as the “men in grey suits.”
The doves, led by former diplomat Theo Rycroft, Alderton’s deputy (who is expected to succeed him one day), are aligned with the king’s wish to reconcile with Harry and let bygones be bygones in service of the Victorian myth of the model family.
The return of Harry and Meghan with their children in July is shaping up to be a disaster for both sides unless they can find some common ground.
The story so far
Let’s walk through what has happened. The sequence of events is itself revealing.
The story first broke via Bronte Coy, a reporter for News.com.au, who is also closely affiliated with The Sun (she was hosting The Sun’s podcast on Wednesday, on which I was a guest, and on which she broke the news).
The original framing of Coy’s story makes its source pretty clear. The emphasis was on Harry’s “great sadness” at being unable to bring his wife and children to his homeland, his desire to show them where he grew up and introduce them to his wider family.
It was framed entirely in emotional terms, which is exactly the way the Sussex operation likes to present things.
There was no reference to what virtually everybody else immediately observed: that Meghan’s sudden volte-face seemed a bit desperate, and that without a $100m Netflix deal in her back pocket, she was now ready to forget the alleged horrors of her time in the U.K., and come back and make nice with the king and the institution in order to get the all-important photographs.
Late on Wednesday evening, The Sun reported that the king had personally intervened to make the whole thing possible, offering his own resources to guarantee the family’s security during a planned July stay.
This was a “workaround” for the security problem that Harry has spent years litigating and losing in the courts.
On Friday, the Telegraph filled in the details. The workaround was that Harry and Meghan would be given a royal residence to stay in, placing them inside an existing security envelope. The security problem that Harry had described as an insurmountable obstacle to bringing his family to Britain was solved by his own father handing him a set of keys.
Pool/Reuters
This was essentially the doves’ and Harry’s take.
On Saturday, as public irritation built, the hawks in Charles’ court launched an extraordinary broadside at the doves in The Daily Mail.
A source [hawk] described by the paper as being close to the Palace called the trip “emotional blackmail” and an attempt at “manipulation” of the Royal Family.
According to this source [hawk], there was “no meeting planned” between the king and the Sussexes. The king, the source said, could find himself “very busy” when the Sussexes are in town.
And then comes the key (hawk) quote: that the timing of the announcement “feels like emotional blackmail.”
We may think that Harry is emotionally blackmailing Charles; William may think it; Alderton may think it. But Charles’s decision to give his son’s family the privilege of royal lodgings when they visit the U.K. shows that he thinks nothing of the kind.
The fact that his own office is effectively briefing the Mail against him—saying he is weak, being manipulated, and the subject of emotional blackmail—is a graphic sign of the massive fissure the failure to deal coherently with the Harry issue is causing at the heart of the monarchy.
The Royalist has been reporting for some time that the “emotional blackmail” framing originates primarily from Prince William’s circle.
Sources close to William have told me directly that they regard the Sussexes’ use of the children as leverage in the security dispute as emotional blackmail.
Charles, for all the frustrations and humiliations he has endured at Harry’s hands, is fundamentally a father who wants his family reunited. This is the same impulse that drove him to spend the first three years of his reign trying to rehabilitate Andrew, inviting him to Christmas, to Easter, to every royal event, until he was finally forced (largely under pressure from William) to expel his brother from the family.
Charles’s instinct is always toward reconciliation. It is part of what makes him a sympathetic man, and a vulnerable monarch.
William’s position is clearer, and far more in tune with public opinion. His household is smaller and more unified. His team reads social media, understands polling, and knows that the overwhelming majority of the British public thinks any reconciliation or re-platforming of Harry is a terrible idea.
And then you have the courtiers. Harry thinks pretty dimly of Alderton, whom he described in his book Spare as “the Wasp” and whom he regards as the embodiment of the “men in grey suits” he believes have spent years working to undermine his relationship with his father.
Alderton sits on RAVEC, the body that decides Harry’s security arrangements. Whether you view Harry’s suspicions as legitimate or paranoid, there are powerful figures within Charles’s own household who believe that reconciliation with the Sussexes is a strategic mistake.
What happens next?
But in the end, the king’s will is done, and he is handing over a residence and thereby facilitating security. Harry has backed himself into a corner with his wild public statements about his security. Without a royal palace to stay in, he cannot bring Meghan and the children to Britain without a massive loss of face.
A new poll published in the Telegraph shows that support for the monarchy has dropped to 55 percent, a decline of 11 percentage points in just three years. Only 60 percent of the public think the king is doing a good job, while 71 percent approve of William.
That gap tells you something important: people are not idiots. They know Charles made a terrible mess of the Andrew situation and that now he is making a mess of the Harry one.
The idea that William and the king enjoy nothing better than hunkering down together for brainstorming sessions at Windsor is simply not credible.
The roots of this tension date back to William’s childhood and his feelings about how his father treated his mother, Princess Diana. The Sussex question has brought their differences into sharp relief, because Charles and William want fundamentally different things.
This also explains the absurdity of the palace’s positioning. In one breath, a palace source tells the Mail that the trip is manipulative. In the next, another source says the king wants to see his grandchildren. In a third, the palace insists there is “no meeting planned” and that the king might be “very busy.”
Do they really expect us to believe that Charles would do this much damage to his own reputation (providing a royal residence, facilitating security, effectively reversing the Frogmore Cottage eviction) and then not even meet the family?
That would be the worst possible outcome: all the political cost of enabling the visit, with none of the emotional benefit. It would be strategically insane.
Of course Charles is going to meet them. There will almost certainly be a photograph of the king with his grandchildren, Archie and Lilibet. And that photograph will be the thing the Sussexes wanted all along, because it places them back inside the frame of royalty, the one thing that gives their brand any commercial value.
This is not a story about one trip in July. It is about establishing a pattern for the rest of King Charles’s reign.
If Harry is given a royal residence this summer, what happens in September when WellChild comes around, and he is back in Britain again? Should he leave a toothbrush there?
What about the Invictus Games in Birmingham next year? The soil is being prepared, the seeds have been planted, and the July trip is the first shoot. The infrastructure for regular Sussex visits to Britain is being put in place, and once it exists, it will be very difficult for a future King William V to dismantle.
The Sussexes went to California, monetized their position, made millions, launched a lifestyle brand, and are being invited back to stay in a royal palace.
Meghan has made it clear that the clothes she wears will be available for purchase through affiliate links on her website. The Sussex integration of commerce with the royal institution is happening in plain sight, and the palace appears either unable or unwilling to prevent it.
The people around William understand how bad this is. Some people around Charles understand it too, which is why the briefings are so contradictory, and the hawks are trying to present the visit as something the king has been pressured into. The other faction is prepared to accept the political damage.
As a father, Charles’s behavior is perfectly understandable. Anyone would want to see grandchildren they have not seen in four years. But as a king, at a time when public support for the monarchy is declining, it is a strategic error to be seen giving in to the very emotional blackmail your own courtiers are complaining about.
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