King Charles’ coronation: Opinion - It took guts for Prince Harry to show up

OPINION

It takes strength to walk through Westminster Abbey balancing a five-pound crown made of solid gold on your head – but it takes a particularly special kind of fortitude to make that journey in a simple black morning suit, knowing that most of the 2000-strong congregation are watching your every move and waiting to see you stumble.

All eyes were on the Duke of Sussex as he arrived for his father’s Coronation, but if the 38-year-old was feeling the pressure, he was damned if he was going to show it. As he made his way into the Abbey, only the medals on his collar hinting at his decade of service in the armed forces, Prince Harry made a point of grinning and nodding at various members of the congregation as if he hadn’t a care in the world, or a recently released memoir under his belt. A chance visitor from outer space would have glanced at proceedings and had no idea of the months of fevered speculation about his attendance.

Body language experts and lip-readers were drafted in, en masse, to try to reveal something scandalous from Harry’s briefest of visits to the UK. Perhaps mindful of this, Buckingham Palace had seated him slap-bang behind his aunt, the Princess Royal, who was wearing a giant hat complete with exotic red feather, the plumage of which blocked almost all view of his face.

There was another impediment to staring at the Duke, given that he had been placed three rows back, next to Jack Brooksbank, the husband of Princess Eugenie, and Princess Alexandra, a cousin of Elizabeth II who hasn’t had a royal engagement in more than a decade. “He isn’t a working member of the royal family,” came the refrain, again and again, from officials at Buckingham Palace, as they explained this punitive seating plan.

Buckingham Palace seated Harry slap-bang behind his aunt, the Princess Royal, and her large headwear.

A working royal he may not be, but Prince Harry will always be the King’s youngest son, his “darling boy”. It seemed petty, then, to welcome the Duke as if he were a distant relative, especially when you consider his crime: standing up for his wife when he felt nobody else would.

Much has been made of the Duchess of Sussex’s decision to stay at home in Montecito, with one tabloid recently running a front-page splash shaming her for doing so. The narrative of the lone Duke has not been helped by images of him walking solo down the nave of the abbey, flanked by his cousins and their husbands. But the truth is that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s marriage is as strong as ever, with Harry determined to do everything in his power to protect the mother of his children from the dreadful pain she felt back in 2019, when she said that endless negative press attention left her feeling suicidal.

Sadly, the media narrative has changed little since then, with recent headlines suggesting that the Duchess’s current quietness is because she is busy behind the scenes trying to launch her own brand. The truth is a little less exciting than that: the only thing that Meghan is trying to do right now is protect her mental health, by keeping a low profile.

Is it any surprise, then, that the Duchess chose not to throw herself into the lion’s den of the Coronation? That, on the day of her son’s fourth birthday, she felt a better use of her time would be to stay in the safe haven of her California home, where she could concentrate fully on Archie and Lilibet, and the lovely life they have created away from prying eyes? And yet despite her physical absence, Prince Harry went into Westminster Abbey with the full support of his wife behind him.

He managed that well, in trying circumstances that few of us would fancy being tested under. Broad smiles and impassive faces were the order of the day – Prince Harry has, after all, had a lifetime of coaching on how to appear as if all is well in public. And yet it must have been bittersweet for the Duke to be apart from his first-born child on his birthday, while watching his nephew, Prince George, act as page boy alongside the new Queen’s grandchildren, Gus and Louis Lopes and Freddy Parker Bowles, and her great-nephew, Arthur Elliott. Spare indeed.

As ever, Beatrice and Eugenie were there to support their beloved cousin. There had been talk of Prince Harry perhaps making the family lunch, an invitation extended by the King as an apparent “olive branch”. But that peace offering was surely only ever about optics, with the team at Buckingham Palace knowing full well the Duke’s priority was getting back to the US to see his son so he could wish him a happy birthday in person.

And so by the time the new King and Queen stepped on to the Buckingham Palace balcony to watch the fly-past, Harry was already on his way to Heathrow, to catch a plane back to California. There, he could carry out his most important duty of the day: that of a dad tucking his son into bed, on the joyous occasion of his fourth birthday.

• Bryony Gordon is a feature writer and columnist for the Daily Telegraph