Coupled with his lack-lustre guest editorship of the UK's radio news show Today, Prince Harry has been slammed by the British media for being a "nice-but-dim Windsor bore".
After the Queen, Harry is Britain's favourite royal, loved for his cheeky playfulness, his ability to connect, his ten years as a soldier and for driving forward the Invictus games.
His bad boy days of regular scuffles with photographers, of dressing as a Nazi for a friend's fancy dress party and of naked, wild romps in Las Vegas after playing strip billiards, are long gone. Committed to his causes, the Prince now rarely puts a foot wrong.
But his clumsy comments over Christmas have attracted deep condemnation.
He has been criticised for revealing his politics during the Today editorship — something verboten in the royal world — and has shown them to be "little more than brain-dead millennial waffle".
Writing in The Sun newspaper, commentator Damian Thompson said the editorship "had more than a whiff of French queen Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess" while Harry pontificated "about the wonders of nature and the wickedness of waste".
"The royals (with the exception of the Queen) have always been blind to the hypocrisy of wagging their green fingers at us before hopping on to a private jet," Thompson wrote.
Harry was slammed, too, for his sycophantic interview with former US President Barack Obama and for picking his own father, the Prince of Wales, as his two top guests.
"Harry didn't sound in the least eccentric or independent-minded. He spoke in the same right-on jargon as a B-list celeb," wrote Thompson.
Meanwhile commentator Jan Moir, writing in the right-wing Daily Mail, could hardly have been more excoriating for the usually perfect Prince's faux pas over Meghan and the royals at Christmas.
Interviewed at the end of his editorship Harry spoke of spending Christmas at Sandringham with the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family.
He was asked if there were any family traditions that had to be explained to his fiancée and he replied: "Oh, plenty, I think we've got one of the biggest families that I know of, and every family is complex as well.
"No look, she's done an absolutely amazing job. She's getting in there and it's the family, I suppose, that she's never had."
The claim immediately brought scorn from Meghan's publicity-hungry half-sister, Samantha Grant, who reacted angrily to the newly engaged Prince's comments and vented her anger on Twitter.
And Moir is right behind her – warning that the unintended slight to Meghan's family was a "howler" of gigantic proportions.
"Rule No 1 for any new husband is never, ever to publicly state that your family is somehow better, happier and more loving than her family, even if you believe it to be true. Especially at this time of year, when kinship loyalties and festive one-upmanship can create tension, hurt and misery," Moir wrote.
"By this time next year, Prince Harry will be a husband — hopefully one who understands that his family is not the only family in his marriage. And maybe he will also realise that while Christmas is a time of jolly and holly, it is also a time of compromise and tact," she added.
Meghan's half-sister had earlier rebuked Harry, tweeting: "Actually she [Meghan] has a large family who were always there with her and for her.
"Our household was very normal and when dad and Doria divorced, we all made it so it was like she had two houses.
"Meg's family (our family) is complete with sister, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the glue of our family, our amazing completely self-sacrificing father. She always had this family... Marrying merely extends it."
