Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it.
Having spent the past year or so publicly criticising his family, the press, and the British people, the Duke of Sussex now tells us: “It never needed to be this way.”
That’s one thing I agree with – it didn’t.
But who was it who decided to leave the Royal Family and escape first to Canada and then California?
Who wanted to vent their spleen with an Oprah Winfrey interview followed by a Netflix series?
And who is now bringing out a book called Spare with 400 pages dripping in revenge and resentment?
Throughout this whole sorry saga, the late Queen, King Charles, and the Prince of Wales have maintained a dignified silence in the hope Harry and Meghan will run out of ammunition and begin a new life not based on slagging them off.
Their reward has been a constant barrage of accusations from the Montecito moaners.
When it suits them, Harry and Meghan turn up – for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee or her funeral – to share in the popularity of the institution they seem to despise.
But once back at their mansion on the West Coast, the brickbats come thick and fast, with never a single admission that they share any of the blame for this tragic family breakdown.
And yet Harry now says, “I would like to get my father and brother back”, as if nothing has happened.
If the Sussexes are the “villains” in many people’s eyes, it is because they have behaved so badly, putting the Queen under immense strain in her last years and trashing her memory and legacy.
The King may be a forgiving father who will still invite his son to the Coronation.
But don’t be surprised if some members of the public give them a hostile reception.
- Comment by Phil Dampier, Royal author
