Prince Harry is adamant that Kate and William’s team were working against him and Meghan. Photo / AP
Prince Harry is adamant that Kate and William’s team were working against him and Meghan. Photo / AP
OPINION:
That bloody reindeer. In late December, William and Kate, Prince and Princess of Wales did what any proud-as-punch parents would do and happily slapped up their eldest child, Prince George’s, artwork eschewing their fridge and instead deciding to make their 14.6 million Instagram followers appreciate his youthful “genius”.
The reason we are talking about that reindeer today is not because the UK’s future king has all the artistic talent of a Gold Coast retiree doing a TAFE course but because it is the last time that Team Wales has shared anything on the platform, at the time of writing, despite Monday being Kate’s 41st birthday. And that? That is highly unusual.
For years now, the standard practice out of Kensington Palace has been that birthdays are generally marked with some sort of social media picture, either a new and suitably dull shot of the HRH in question doing such extraordinary things are sitting or standing in some bucolic setting, or they slap up a post thanking followers for their warm wishes, going so far as to use an emoji or two.
It’s generally all about as exciting as a cup of lukewarm, weak tea and a crumbling ginger nut that has been overeagerly dunked, all a bit soggy, but what is remarkable is that this year we have not gotten so much as a social media crumb from the couple. While King Charles and Queen Camilla’s Buckingham Palace outfit shared their usual sort of peppy, celebratory fare to mark Kate’s day, Kensington Palace has gone, outwardly, at least, oddly silent. And, even if the prince and princess’ Instagram account does pop something up, it will be the first time in years they have not slapped something up on the actual day.
The Palace’s birthday omission would be unusual in normal times but given the events of recent days, it takes on something of a grimmer hue. The world is, of course, in the midst of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex’s gotta-sell-em-all book tour for his upcoming memoir, Spare.
For the better part of a week now, the royal family has been buffeted by a steady stream of deeply unflattering stories emerging from the autobiography’s pages, all in the name of Harry and of his “truth”. (I’m sure the reported eight-figure cheque that came with the book deal played no part at all in his decision to go all literary turncoat …)
A poster advertises the midnight opening of a store to sell the new book by Prince Harry in London. Photo / AP
While in Spare, based on what has been revealed, King Charles comes across as a weak father who didn’t do a particularly good job at raising his sons, most notably in supporting them after the extreme trauma of losing their mother Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, the real targets of the book would seem to be Queen Camilla and Prince “Willy”.
It was the latter who, we learn, clocked our story’s brave hero Harry; who, he told ITV’s Tom Bradby, had “the red mist” during that altercation and who, along with Kate, encouraged him to wear a Nazi uniform to a dress-up party in 2005.
Perhaps the most damaging claim made by the 38-year-old now California resident is that, after they had agreed they would never set their press offices against one another, that Willy did exactly that, essentially chumming the Fleet Street waters for his brother.
So far the royal family has responded by doing what it does best – no, not hiding German relatives with disturbingly sympathetic views of the Nazis or demolishing Battenberg cakes at tea time – but saying nothing. The message they are clearly trying to send is that it is business as usual; they are all pluckily getting on with the job of HRH-ing as they try and sit out the Sussex media squall.
However, the biggest clue yet that all might not be tickety boo behind closed doors is the Waleses’ official Instagram account and the decision to not share a single, solitary thing on Kate’s big day.
This is the most notable sign that Harry’s various book provocations might have found their mark, in private at least.
Sure, none of Aitch’s claims might even begin to constitute “bringing down the monarchy” stuff (no one is going to start rattling the can for a republic because Kate was reluctant to share her lip gloss with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex) but what Harry has done is stage a serious attack on the royal family’s character, making them out to be a bunch of unpleasant, self-serving poshos willing to do whatever it takes to win the press game.
Prince Harry is adamant that Kate and William’s team were working against him and Meghan.
Camilla, in her campaign to get the British masses to stop lobbing bread rolls at her in supermarkets, Harry writes in Spare, “sacrificed me on her personal PR altar” and accused her of leaking details of her first meeting with Prince William. (Interestingly, that has been disputed by the Telegraph which has reported that it was Camilla’s aide named Amanda McManus, married to a media executive, who accidentally leaked the details of Willy’s first meeting with the now Queen.)
William, meanwhile, is reportedly painted as an aggressive bully, willing to use his fists and, according to the duke, to “parrot the press narrative” about Meghan after he called her “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”. (Side note – given that Willy would have known Meg for at least two years at that point, including sharing an office and staff with her, surely any opinion he had of the duchess would have been based on first-hand experience and not the witterings of Fleet Street?)
And then there is Kate, with whom Harry was once so close.
Over the years there have been a steady stream of heartwarming stories about the duo, including the princess inviting her brother-in-law around for roast dinners after breaking up with girlfriend Cressida Bonas. She was the woman that Harry is widely reported to have called the “sister I’ve never had” and there are a sea of photos of the duo giggling together at family events. It’s all Hallmark stuff.
However, Spare reportedly bins the legacy of all of those cosy kitchen suppers in exchange for making Kate out to be a princess in the most pejorative sense possible. Notably, Harry throws in his account of what happened during the Great Bridesmaid Dress Contretemps of 2018, the incident that fired the starting gun on the tsunami of stories that followed about Meghan and Kate’s crumbling relationship.
Kate, William, Prince of Wales, Harry and Meghan walk to meet members of the public at Windsor Castle, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Photo / AP
The duke writes, days before his and Meghan’s May wedding that year, Kate had complained to the former Suits star after daughter Charlotte had been left in tears after trying her frock on. Kate went on to insist that “all the dresses need to be remade” and said she had discussed the situation with her “own wedding designer”.
Harry writes: “Meg asked if Kate was aware of what was going on right now. With her father. Kate said she was well aware, but the dresses. And the wedding is in four days! ‘Yes, Kate, I know …’”
This selfish Kate might be a bad look but, again, we are hardly talking monarchy-rattling stuff; a 1000-plus years of the Crown are not about to be imperilled by one peevish, petty prince and his publishing deal.
However, there is also, we can’t forget the personal element here too. It is hard to look at the revelations that Harry has chosen to shove out into the public domain and to not see that as a betrayal of the trust and of the privacy and confidence that William and Kate might have expected.
This week, the Wales’ kids go back to school and on Friday, UK time, the prince and princess are slated to undertake a joint outing. It seems highly unlikely there will be a blink, handshake or smile out of place, despite the tempest that has been unleashed by the world’s most famously unhappy prince since Hamlet.
It’s almost as if Harry has been willing to, ummm ... sacrifice his brother and sister-in-law on the Sussexes’ personal PR altar. Now where have I heard that before?
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
