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“They’ve got to...make it about their mother”
The early signs do not augur well for Prince William and Prince Harry reuniting joyfully this Thursday for the unveiling of the statue of their mother at Kensington Palace, where they grew up.
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William is still “reeling” over Harry and Meghan’s allegations in their bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview, including the as-yet-unsolved mystery of a royal racist, as well as claims about William and Charles feeling “trapped.” (William said, “We’re very much not a racist family” when asked about the former.)
“William is still angry about it,” a close friend of both brothers told the U.K. Sunday Times. “It’s despair, as well as anger.”
The brothers will make separate tributes on Thursday to their mother.
“Neither are offering an olive branch,” a close friend of both brothers told The Sunday Times. “I fear it will be the same as at Prince Philip’s funeral, a nod of recognition, and that’s about it.” However, another friend told The Sunday Times to expect the best: “It will all be lovely.”
“They’ve just got to get out of whatever moods they’re in and make it about their mother,” another source opined. Another source thought, “On the day, it will be difficult to separate the statue from the occasion, which is now loaded with all sorts of unwelcome baggage.”
A source close to the brothers in 2017, when the statue was commissioned and they were closer, told The Sunday Times: “I remember being with them when they commissioned the statue, looking at all the maquettes together. And then all the unity around the 20th anniversary documentaries. They watched each other’s interviews, they wanted to hear what the other was saying. They were so close. It’s so sad to see it come to this.”
Prince Charles will not play a role in Thursday’s ceremony. “He does find it terribly difficult,” a friend told the paper. “These moments have the potential to resurface old wounds, and it brings back memories for him; happy, sad, regretful. Since Diana’s death, he has felt it’s best to keep those memories to himself and leave his sons to it.”
With Meghan back in California, it seems unlikely Kate will be at Thursday’s ceremony either. The Sunday Times says William may visit the statue privately with her and their children.
Prince Harry landed back in the U.K. on Friday, and is quarantining at his former home, Frogmore Cottage.
Queen’s invite to Harry and Meghan
The queen, as ever, emerges as the supreme royal chess player. According to the Mail on Sunday, she’s invited Harry and Meghan to the Platinum Jubilee celebrations next June. If they say yes, that means a role in the Trooping the Color ceremony, but questions remain about whether they will be invited to appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the roaring-down-the-Mall RAF flypast.
A source “with knowledge of the jubilee plans” told the Mail: “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been invited and I’m sure the Queen is very much looking forward to seeing them there. The balcony moment will be decided much nearer the time but there’s a limit to how many family members should be on it, and I would have thought that working Royals who contribute to the family would be higher on the list than the Sussexes.”
So, it’s an invitation and a snub all at the same time. How very royal family.
Harry may reconnect with friends this week
With Prince Harry back in the U.K., the Mail on Sunday says his old friends, many of whom were “cut off” by him since his wedding to Meghan Markle, hope he will reconnect with them after a “lads’ lunch” he organized when he was last in the country for Prince Philip’s funeral.
“After the wedding Harry cut everyone from the U.K. off,” a source told the paper. “But now he’s at last showing signs of wanting to reconnect with his old life. His friends are really excited, they think that the old Harry is coming back out of his shell. It sounds like he’s starting to realize that he doesn’t have to abandon his old life to enjoy a new one in California with Meghan. The two worlds he now occupies are not mutually exclusive for his friends, though they may well be for his family.”
“William was conspicuous by his absence from the April lunch, which was arranged specifically to include some of the male guests and ushers from Harry’s wedding party,” the Mail reports.
Come here, son, we have something to tell you....
How do you tell a kid he is going to be king? William and Kate did so in “a controlled moment of their choice,” around the lad’s seventh birthday, the writer Robert Lacey has claimed.
The Mirror reports that Lacey’s re-issued and updated book, Battle of Brothers, says: “William has not revealed to the world how and when he broke the big news to his son. Maybe one day George will tell us the story himself. But sometime around the boy’s seventh birthday in the summer of 2020 it is thought that his parents went into more detail about what the little prince’s life of future royal service and duty would particularly involve.”
Lacey contrasts the measured and deliberate release of information to George with William’s experience, writing about, “William’s unhappiness at the haphazard fashion in which the whole business of his royal destiny had buzzed around his head from the start.”
When William called Meghan “that bloody woman”
Another revelation from Lacey’s book in the Mail this week. Lacey writes that William was advised to try and be sanguine about his difficulties with Meghan by a friend who “pointed out to him that everyone has a difficult sister-in-law.”
Lacey writes: “William’s response was to nod his head in sage acceptance. Then suddenly he broke out angrily. ‘But look at the way that bloody woman treated my staff—merciless!’”
Prince Charles to stick to Zoom
Prince Charles intends to carry on Zooming. The Telegraph quotes Clive Alderton, his private secretary, saying: “When COVID restrictions finally disappear, I think we might just retain some of these methods of working...We became very used to and increasingly comfortable with mobile devices propped up on piles of books as messages are recorded or Zoom calls were joined.”
A source close to the Prince told the Telegraph that “video conferencing with heads of state and government” was “absolutely brilliant,” adding, “It’s been really striking that they all turn up, which is fantastic. The technology works. There was a real concern the first time we did this that the IT would glitch in the middle—half of the presidents and prime ministers would be frozen on the screen.
“Not a bit of it, it was absolutely brilliant. So I think we’re going to do more of that. What it’s made us realize is that a blend of these things is going to be the right answer going forward.”
This week in royal history
July 1 has a double significance. Princess Diana was born that day in 1961—meaning, as has been widely repeated in recent days in the run up the great statue reveal, she would have turned 60 this Thursday. And in 1969 on that day, Prince Charles’ investiture as the Prince of Wales took place at Caernarvon Castle in Wales.
Unanswered questions
Just how will the statue unveiling go down on Thursday? How will Harry and William do? Can Diana’s spirit calm the troubled waters of fraternal angst?
