We've come a long way from the silly headbands of happier times. Photo / Getty Images
We've come a long way from the silly headbands of happier times. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion
OPINION:
One of the often-overlooked job requirements for a working member of the royal family is a willingness to always be A Good Sport.
A Good Sport about proffering up your newborn baby to a greedy, eager world within hours of the birth; A Good Sport about being made to play cricket and rugby in heels; A Good Sport about donning a slightly ridiculous get-up when required.
Back in 2017, when there was just the three of them, Kate, William and Harry performed all kinds of silly stunts to promote their laudable Heads Together project. Photo / Getty Images
For example, being A Good Sport when some palace aide has the bright idea to make three HRHs don matching Bjorn Borg-esque headbands for a dignity-defying photo op. I present you with this treat of an image of William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with Prince Harry grinning like three eager step-parents at their first school sports day.
It was 2016 when the three royals came together in aid of Heads Together, their just-announced mental health initiative which is, to this day, one of the greatest achievements any of them have notched up.
What made Heads Together so potent an undertaking wasn't just the idea of uniting varying charities but that the three young royal stars were all personally tackling the stigma surrounding the issue. (In a statement at the time, Kensington Palace said that this was "biggest single project Their Royal Highnesses have undertaken together".)
This week the world watched, horrified, as the Taliban reclaimed Afghanistan. On Wednesday, Harry issued a joint statement with the Invictus Games Foundation, urging military veterans to "offer support for one another" before, the following day, the Sussexes' put out their own personal statement.
All of this is firmly established history. And all of this is what makes one particular move Harry and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex have made in recent days particularly eyebrow-raising.
"As we all feel the many layers of pain due to the situation in Afghanistan, we are left speechless," they said, yet still somehow found a way to put out an overly stylised statement that looked like an intern had been left too long to play around with the fonts.
"We also urge those in positions of global influence to rapidly advance the humanitarian dialogues that are expected to take place this fall [autumn] at multilateral gatherings such as the UN General Assembly and the G20 Leaders' Summit," they wrote. (Not sure who's going to tell the couple they no longer have any real claim on statesman/stateswoman-status having bailed on official public life and having about as much diplomatic sway as a Real Housewife who's strayed into the UN foyer.)
We've come a long way from the silly headbands of happier times. Photo / Getty Images
But where things start to get a tad sticky is the handy resources section they included, following their statement on their website which offered up a selection of charities to support and mental health resources. On this front, their suggestions were the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Loveland Foundation and Project Health Minds.
Very conspicuously not on the list? You spotted it, I'm sure. Heads Together.
Why oh why wasn't the very successful mental health organisation Harry himself helped co-found on the list?
Accidental or a planned approach?
In the light of the events of more recent times, given the brotherly feuding, the score-setting TV outbursts and thin-lipped leaking to the media, the question is, was the decision to not include Heads Together simply accidental or a more pointed move?
Was this down to a simple consequence of having an all-American team of functionaries and aides myopically focused on all things Stars and Stripes? Or a more calculated omission?
Harry and Meghan appear to have turned their backs on anything related to their former lives in Britain. Photo / CBS
In fact, none of the three of the three mental health organisations suggested by Team Archewell were British. (There can be no real question any more about which side of the pond their priorities lie.)
It is a curious situation given it was under the British flag that Harry so bravely served two tours on the frontline in Afghanistan. It was while being airlifted back to the UK in 2012 after his second tour, and alongside several badly wounded soldiers that he made the decision to dedicate himself to supporting veterans and to raise awareness of the "invisible injuries" they suffered.
His full-throated dedication to this cause, more than his baby-charming skills and cheeky chappy antics, is what endeared the royal to not only the UK but the world.
So, given all of this, why not include Heads Together? Does Harry's staff seem to think that when he entered US airspace in 2020 it was a sort of tabula rasa moment and all that came before was no longer of any consequence?
If Harry and Meghan had taken the couple's Afghanistan statement as a moment to include Heads Together, it would have sent a very powerful signal – that, when they trotted out of Westminster Abbey, about 89 months ago, he had not turned his back on his homeland. (Well, it feels that long ago to me …)
That even though his relationship with his family might have entered such fraught territory that they need their own battalion of blue beret-wearing peacekeepers, he still values and takes satisfaction from the very good work he did under the royal banner.
Prince Harry served in Afghanistan in 2012. Photo / Getty Images
On a personal level, Harry's relationship with his brother and sister-in-law might look markedly different today than it did five years ago when they gamely wore those headbands, but why not take a moment to recognise that the three did great work together? To take a moment to be proud of what he had achieved as an HRH would not for a second make him a traitor to his new life with Meghan or the painful personal journey that got them there.
The inclusion of Heads Together would have been read as a tentative gesture of goodwill towards the palace. We're not talking a marked thawing of tensions but it would have been so refreshing to see a cooler, more mature head prevail. (For once.)
