This is a national occasion, not just a matter for the Royal family. The Duke of Sussex should not be there. Photo / Getty Images
This is a national occasion, not just a matter for the Royal family. The Duke of Sussex should not be there. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
The guests who had arrived at the crack of dawn to attend the coronation of George IV on July 19 1821 were suddenly aware of a commotion at the main door of Westminster Abbey. There, the King’s estranged wife, Queen Caroline, was demanding entry. She had arrived by carriage at 6am and, popular in the country, was greeted with applause. However, the soldiers and 20 hired boxers guarding the door were in a state of agitation because they had been told to keep her away.
The commander asked for Caroline’s ticket only to be told that, as Queen, she did not need one. After various attempts to sneak in through several other entrances with her chamberlain, Lord Hood, she presented herself once more at the entrance, shouting, “The Queen … Open”. When a page looked like he might buckle, a senior official told him, “Do your duty. Shut the door”.
It was duly slammed in the Queen’s face.
I’m sorry to say that the same now needs to happen to the Duke of Sussex, if not in quite so dramatic a fashion.
Given the rancorous outpourings of recent days, it is impossible to see how he can be allowed to attend the King’s coronation, the most important day in the national calendar, not just for this year but many years hence.
This needs to be sorted out now. When asked in one television interview if he would be going to the coronation, he said the “ball is in their court”, meaning that of his father, the King, and his brother, the Prince of Wales.
King Charles is ready to show the world a new-look version of the monarchy. Photo / Getty Images
However, this is not a family affair but a state occasion, an act of national renewal. We all have a stake in it going well. For the run-up to the ceremonial on May 6 to be dominated by “will they, won’t they” speculation would be unconscionable, let alone the distraction that would be caused by the Duke’s actual attendance.
Although the Prime Minister is anxious to say nothing about this or be seen to intrude into family matters, this is also an integral part of the constitution for which he is as responsible as the King, if not more so.
There is a precedent. In 1953, the Duke of Windsor was told by Sir Winston Churchill, then in his second term in No10, that he should not go to Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. To avoid an outright ban, he was urged to tell the press that a former monarch could not attend a coronation, which was not strictly the case.
Minutes stored in the government archives, penned by Sir Norman Brook, the Cabinet secretary, recall that Churchill contacted the Duke in France in November 1952. Sir Norman wrote that Churchill said: “Advised him not to come to the coronation … he will say to the press that it would not be consistent with usage for coronation to be attended by any or former ruler.”
The Duke and Duchess duly stayed away.
It should not be necessary to tell Prince Harry that he will not be welcome at the coronation since his antics of recent days suggest that he has decided to burn his bridges both with his family and country. Yet he still talks about a possible reconciliation, which now seems vanishingly unlikely given his ad hominem attack on the Queen Consort in one interview, even if he tried to retreat from it in a later television appearance.
Doubtless all this will blow over after a while and the frenzy will abate once the Duke has fulfilled whatever contractual obligations he entered into in order to sell his book. However, we are then led to expect a contribution from the Duchess as well as other appearances on Netflix. The King and the rest of the Royal family may hope that, if they stay silent for long enough, everything will calm down. This is probably a sensible approach and one that holds open the prospect of a future reconciliation.
Yet when it comes to the matter of the coronation, which is just a few months away, any rapprochement seems unlikely and, even if it were to happen, it is still imperative to keep the Sussexes away otherwise their very presence will dominate proceedings. Even if they are placed in Row Z alongside a few ambassadors, they will still draw attention from the media which they loathe so much yet cultivate so assiduously.
Of course, being at the centre of things – or not – is what has most rankled with Prince Harry and his wife.
The very title of the book, Spare, speaks to his grievance at having always walked in his elder brother’s shadow – an inevitable fate given the position he was born to but one that he has apparently never come to terms with. Even today, he frets about his status, complaining that he was given a smaller bedroom than his brother. In which family of siblings has this not happened? Most people manage to get over it. Prince Harry’s behaviour has more than disappointed the country; many people are angry with him, not least because he seems to question the sincerity of the welcome the Duchess was given when their engagement was announced.
Prince Harry during an interview with "Good Morning America" co-host Michael Strahan in Los Angeles on January 3, 2023. Photo / Richard Harbaugh/ABC via AP
Their marriage was emblematic of a nation that had changed utterly over the previous 50 years, no longer hidebound by stuffy tradition or populated by establishment courtiers seeking to prove Shakespeare’s observation that the course of true love never did run smooth. Yet we now learn that this joyous occasion was punctuated by tantrums and tears, with the Duchess of Sussex weeping in frustration on the floor after a clash with the Duchess of Cambridge, as she then was, over the dresses for bridesmaids.
For all the brouhaha and hurt caused by the Duke, there are no constitutional implications, which may annoy him even more. He seems to think he can reform the institution of the monarchy but he is far enough removed from the prospect of kingship for it not to matter unless there were to be some unimaginable tragedy.
There are calls for his titles to be removed; but he remains the son of a king and the brother of a future monarch so it would be churlish to do so. It is odd, nonetheless, that given his disaffection with the institution he wants to retain them, though presumably they still carry some cachet in the gilded West Coast world he and his wife now inhabit in the US.
Even though, by convention, there is a role for royal dukes at the coronation, inviting Prince Harry is surely no longer tenable or sensible.
As in the case of Queen Caroline, the door needs to be slammed shut, preferably before he turns up at the abbey demanding entry.
