Possibly a bit creepy, but I’d
love to have been inside Prince Harry’s head as he wrangled two children and
his thoughts on the flight from London to Montecito after the Platinum Jubilee
knees up.
Family reunion done, what
was the girl dad (his words – I know) formerly known as working
prince thinking? Was he wrapped with his walk-on role as Invisible Man No. 1 –
the one he so visibly sought – or was he thinking “Bugger, maybe I’ve stuffed
this up”?
The jubilee shebang raised
home truths. The Queen will win a comedy BAFTA for her killer “for later” line
in the Paddington Bear video. Louis Cambridge is who you want on your charades
team. Rod Stewart should only sing his own back catalogue. And Harry and Meghan
truly are persona non grata.
The Sussexes were once the
coolest couple and hottest ticket. That prince and the showgirl romance. Their
glamour and energy. The cachet of the Queen anointing them Commonwealth
ambassadors. They made Kate and William look like mum and dad earnestly handing
out scroggin on a Sunday hike.
But the gathering of the clan
for its matriarch’s 70 years on the throne proved not just that the monarchy is
stronger than its parts and only one member is truly irreplaceable, line of
succession be damned, but that Harry and Meghan have lost all currency.
Gone: reputation, relevance,
responsibility. Two years after they struck out for the shiny gold of
California, the Sussexes’ status as indiscreet private citizens lumped them in
London with relegations and rejections.
No carriages for them. They
were stuck in a room with cobwebbed rellies and kids at Trooping the Colour.
The Cambridges were a no show for their daughter Lilibet’s first birthday
party. And the Queen is said to have refused an official photograph with her
namesake great-granddaughter lest it be used for commercial gain: “Not a
chance.”
Still, the Sussexes carried
off with heads high the hypocrisy of celebrating with the family they decried
to Oprah as racist, cold and anachronistic. In full-blown Dior and with a Mona
Lisa resting face, Meghan duchessed beautifully at the couple’s only public
appearance at a thanksgiving church service.
She was eye catching but
seeing Harry was more fascinating. Here was the future king’s son, Britain’s
cherished lost boy, in a worse seat than the York princesses and their real
estate developer and tequila merchant husbands, unacknowledged by his father
and brother.
It had to hurt. It hurt old
cynic me. But turns out self-imposed exile and grassing on your family have
real-world consequences. Including a fun PR war between the Cambridge Five and
the Montecito Four which was a sideshow of the Jubilee.
