Prince Harry... and The Queen

 

"Feelings Aren't Facts"

In an article in British newspaper The Telegraph, titled "Harry and Meghan's 'truth' has been exposed for what it is and I feel vindicated," and subtitled "Strip away the grievance, the victimhood and the drama, and what remains? A couple of former royals with a fading brand," Associate Editor Camilla Tominey shares her thoughts about Prince Harry and Meghan:

Confirmation that the Duchess of Sussex is in the UK, after all, with her children Archie and Lilibet arguably tells you everything you need to know about the world according to Harry and Meghan. After a huge drama over accommodation and security, the family, who have been in Europe, have just met with the King at Highgrove despite Harry’s well-documented security concerns.

Meghan did not attend yesterday’s Invictus Games event with her husband in Birmingham as originally planned. Buckingham Palace insists no imagery will be released of the royal reconciliation but don’t be surprised if carefully curated footage eventually emerges of the family of four, perhaps visiting Princess Diana’s grave at Althorp, the Spencer family seat.

The Sussexes thrive on drama. It’s the only real currency they have left, which goes some way to explaining Harry’s endless will-he-won’t-he Buckingham Palace invitation saga. I wouldn’t be surprised if behind-the-scenes footage is already being shot to appear on a television near you in the not too distant future.

Having been on the receiving end of Harry and Meghan’s “truth”, I admit to feeling rather vindicated following Mr Justice Nicklin’s judgment in the Prince’s case against Associated Newspapers Ltd. Dismissing all 97 claims made by seven claimants, including Harry, Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, that the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday had carried out unlawful information gathering against them between the late 1990s and 2015, the judge was unequivocal.

In his devastating 436-page ruling, he rejected not only the most lurid accusations, but also concluded that the claimants had failed to prove any unlawful activity at all. Accepting the denials of Associated Newspaper journalists “who gave lawful explanations for the sourcing of the disputed articles and incidents”, he added: “Suspicion, even understandable suspicion, is not proof.”

What the judgment effectively said is that feelings are not facts; there is only ever one version of the truth – the one that can be proved, with evidence.

The court defeat leaves Harry et al potentially facing a £50m legal bill which may or may not be covered by the estate of Max Mosley, a man with a well-documented history of fascist politics and orgies. But the reputational cost for the Sussexes could be even greater. The judgment drives a coach and horses through their carefully cultivated narrative of victimhood.

Harry has long maintained that he and Meghan were hounded in the same way his late mother was. During the trial earlier this year, he became emotional while describing the impact of the coverage on those closest to him, saying Associated Newspapers had made Meghan’s life “an absolute misery”.

So why, then, did the couple’s media team allegedly provide Charlotte Griffiths, editor-at-large of the Mail on Sunday, with details of a meeting between Sussex representatives and a senior royal aide in 2025?

Griffiths says a close adviser arranged lunch with her at The Ivy in London during the summer of that year. She maintains information shared there led to several stories about the couple, including front-page reports suggesting efforts were underway to repair relations with King Charles.

If true, Harry and Meghan were doing precisely what they accuse others of doing: briefing the press.

Then there was last week’s accommodation saga. How exactly were reporters learning about rescinded palace invitations if not from Sussex sources? This, from a prince, who once grandly told his ITV chum Tom Bradby that members of the Royal family got into “bed with the devil” if they tipped off the media “to rehabilitate their image”.

Griffiths’ evidence also seems to suggest another uncomfortable inconsistency. Harry has long claimed to have had little to do with journalists. Yet the trial revealed flirtatious Facebook messages exchanged with Griffiths in 2011 and 2012, referring to a hedonistic weekend spent with Harry and his friends.

In those messages Harry happily disclosed personal details, including that he was “stuck in Cornwall doing Army stuff”. Again, Harry’s words to Bradby come back to haunt him. “If you need to do that, or you want to do that, you choose to do that. Well that is a choice,” he explained. Yes. Harry. If only you’d taken your own advice.

As I recall, when he wasn’t complaining about invasions of privacy, he and his friends were voluntarily sharing extraordinary amounts of their lives on public social media. They also kept returning to the same London nightclubs – Boujis, Amika and others – only to express outrage when photographers captured them stumbling out in the early hours.

In Spare, Harry never named me but described me as someone who “always made me ill”, adding: “She’d always, always got stuff wrong.” In reality, I got two rather significant stories right. First, that he was dating Meghan Markle, an exclusive I broke in October 2016. Second, that there had been an altercation between Meghan and Kate during a bridesmaid dress fitting that left Kate in tears.

Until that second story, I had enjoyed a perfectly good working relationship with Harry. Even after revealing his romance with the American actress, he personally invited me to cover parts of his Caribbean tour that weren’t open to other journalists. The truth – the whole truth, not the Sussexes’ version of it – is that they have always been entirely comfortable with publicity, provided it is flattering. Write a negative headline, even an accurate one, and suddenly it becomes a media witch hunt.

The reality was summed up perfectly by Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, after the verdict, which echoed South Park’s now infamous World Privacy Tour parody about the couple.

“There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes not just the biscuit, but the whole tin.”

He has a point. Harry and Meghan haven’t simply aired their family’s private business without offering anyone a right of reply. They have turned it into a lucrative business model.

And they will continue to do so. Because strip away the grievance, the victimhood and the drama, and what remains? A couple of former royals with a fading brand.

That, surely, is the real truth. (This is the article in its entirety.)

Some Thoughts From The BBC

In an article titled "Prince Harry and Meghan: Will they or won't they, and will we care?", Sean Coughlan of the  BBC ponders the Sussexes upcoming trip to the UK:  

If coverage of the Royal Family can seem like a soap opera, it's never more so than when Prince Harry is in town. Brother against brother. A son seeking reconciliation with a father. Competitive sisters-in-law. A grandfather wanting to see his grandchildren. And now, will they or won't they be here?  

We can expect to see all those storylines when Prince Harry and possibly his wife Meghan and their children Archie, aged seven, and Lilibet, aged five, return to the UK this week. A detailed plan of the visit was initally issued which included the Duchess of Sussex - but because of concerns over security, she and the children won't be at the start of the trip in London, but might be elsewhere in the UK later in the week.  

The purpose of the trip is to get ready for the Invictus Games and to attend charity events. There are five days of engagements which begin on Tuesday in London before moving on to Birmingham, which will host the games for injured military veterans next year. Whether fairly or not, the focus will be on family tensions and whether there are any signs of bridges being built between the returning Sussexes and their royal relations. 

This latest chopping and changing over whether they are coming won't have helped that cause of reconciliation. You can almost imagine Palace officials rolling their eyes and muttering, "Nightmare". But Harry has always been intensely sensitive around the safety of his family. But if the security concerns can be overcome, and Meghan and the children do come for part of the visit, it will be the first time the Sussexes will have all been together in the UK since Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in 2022. That seems like another era, as well as another reign. From inside Team Sussex, the mood seems determined despite the uncertainty. It's understood Prince Harry is looking forward to seeing his friends and family and that nothing is going to sour his chance to support his Invictus "second family".  

But there always seems to be drama, not to mention psychodrama, wherever the Sussexes go. This time round, while they're in the UK, we're expecting the result of Prince Harry's court case against Associated Newspapers over allegations of unlawful information gathering. The outcome could add another flavour to events - although Meghan will not now be in the UK when the ruling is published. That will be followed by the cliffhanger of whether Meghan appears later in the week - and whether the King will meet his grandchildren. On Prince Harry's previous solo visit, in September 2025, the attention was on his meeting with his father, King Charles, held privately at Clarence House. 

Now the speculation is about whether there will be a meeting that brings together the King, Prince Harry, Meghan and the children - and whether there will be a family photo to capture the moment. From the Sussex perspective, a picture would be a sign of their legitimacy as part of the family. But you can also imagine Palace officials worrying about how such a photo might be used. They don't want to see it boosting jam sales in Montecito. 

David Yelland, former editor of the Sun and presenter on BBC Radio 4's When It Hits the Fan, says "the politics around that photo are so complex that it almost certainly won't happen. The photo we really want to see is the King with the grandchildren," he says but he thinks there would be too many arguments about who was in charge of the picture and how it was set up. "You start to think about the negotiations between the two sides. Who stands where? Is Meghan in the photo? Where's the King? Is Camilla going to be in the photo? It would be easier to get a photo of Putin and Trump together after a meeting than it would be to get photos of these people in the same room at the same time," Yelland says. 

Even without a photo, a meeting seems likely if the children do come to the UK, not least because King Charles, with his own health challenges, would want to see his grandchildren. Prince Harry will want to reconnect with his family on his mother's side too - and there has been speculation about a stay at the Spencer estate at Althorp. This would also mean the possibility of a poignant visit to the grave of Princess Diana, bringing his children to the island burial site of the grandmother they never had the chance to meet.  

Inevitably, much attention will be on Meghan, who hasn't been seen in the UK since the late Queen's funeral - and whose involvment in this trip seems to be in the balance. How the public would respond to her is a question that might never really be answered, as even if she does apper, it's likely to be within the confines of a pre-planned event. She remains a figure that polarises opinion. According to a recent YouGov survey, 20% of the public have a favourable opinion of her, the lowest point in her popularity in a survey going back to 2017. "There's definitely a sharp drop. I think she's also in the past talked about how she's one of the most trolled people in the world," says PR expert and When It Hits the Fan presenter, Farzana Baduel - which means Meghan has to contend with the "level of hate that is directed at her". 

Winning round the UK public is going to take more than a summer visit but a return might be a tentative start. Meghan has campaigned on issues that would likely connect with the public, such as trying to tackle online harm to young people. But royal commentator Pauline Maclaran says the UK public remains unsympathetic and "probably somewhat unfairly" blames Meghan for the couple's departure from royal life. 

Everything she has done since the famous Oprah interview and the Harry and Meghan Netflix show seems only to fuel dislike of her," says Prof Maclaran. "I believe she was always in a very difficult position, coming into the Royal Family as a bi-racial American and an independent woman." 

Fans of Harry and Meghan will be enthusiastic about the trip, but there is also an inescapably negative side to the fascination with the couple, particularly on social media. 

"We talk about the amount of money that Meghan makes making jam, but a lot of people on social media on the west coast of the US are making a lot of money out of hate," says former tabloid boss 

A rapprochement between Prince Harry and Prince William seems even less likely. They remain on very different trajectories, with William's life heading remorselessly to the point where he will take to the throne. 

"My sense is that the King wants to have a relationship with his grandchildren and so there is a reasonably good chance of some sort of family reconciliation on the back of this visit," says royal commentator Richard Palmer.  

"But it's still a very different matter when it comes to Harry and William. I don't believe there is any relationship whatsover between the brothers at the moment and little prospect of one developing," says Palmer, who has been on trips with both brothers.

"People close to William used to talk hopefully about time being a great healer. But time has moved on, William has become more unwilling to reconcile with Harry. He tells his friends he just doesn't think about his brother."   

Buckingham Palace isn't saying anything about Prince Harry's trip. It seems to approach such visits with a sense of wariness, like when an unpredictable neighbor is calling round. They'll be politely welcoming, while not being devastated when they leave. 

There might also be an eyebrow raised at how much Prince Harry's trip to the UK resembles a royal visit - like the events that Harry and Meghan seemed so keen to escape. 

They went to the US and stopped being working royals, but they are now returning and seem to be working at being royals.  

Take Me Home, Country Roads, Updated

I admit, this made me cry. I know I'll age myself by admitting that John Denver was one of my favorite singers when I was in high school and college, and I've always loved this song. 

Did you grow up listening to John Denver?  I did.  

Update on July 6: It turns out the man who co-wrote Country Roads with John Denver was also the writer of another 70s hit, "Afternoon Delight." Very cool. 

The Washington Post explains; read it here.  

And one more thing: I wish John Denver had lived to see this happen.