All is not well, it seems, in the House of Sussex – specifically with our disconsolate duke.
Here was Prince Harry, glowering and glum, at a Katy Perry show in Las Vegas over the weekend. Perry’s stock-in-trade is glitter, rainbows, and cheer – the kind of guaranteed fluff that compels even Meghan Markle to shake her mantle of perpetual victimhood and have a visibly great time.
Harry, meanwhile, looked like he’d just been given a catastrophic diagnosis. His sour disposition called to mind America’s reigning champ of churlishness, Ben Affleck. Remember his demeanor at this year’s Grammys, simmering and sulking next to his smiles-on, glammed-up wife J.Lo.
‘Look motivated!’ Lopez reportedly snapped at Affleck that night. That’s a note Harry should take. Unless, as I suspect, he wants the world to see his misery. After all, he’s been here before.
In September, a grey-suited Harry stood still as a statue at Beyoncé’s sparkling Renaissance show, checking his phone and pouting while Meghan, in a silver sequined skirt, danced and cheered from their private box at California’s SoFi Stadium.
That little vignette said it all: Harry, for all his wealth, fame, privilege and access – for all that hard work ‘Finding Freedom’ – remains at his core bitter, resentful and angry.
This is a middle-aged man who still sees the world through the narrowest of apertures, reflecting his apparent narcissism and immaturity.
This is not someone who, counter to the pre-Meghan memory of Harry, has a sense of humor or joie de vivre.
Nor someone who, unlike his late mother, finds post-Windsor purpose in helping those less fortunate, preferring to sully himself with Netflix deals and public self-pity parties.
Harry appears to be, for want of a better phrase, a colossal drag.
Look no further than his father’s historic coronation in May, Harry sans Meghan and seated third row.
Rather than conduct himself accordingly, rather than accept the olive branch, Harry refused to return to Buckingham Palace after the ceremony. He said not one word to his father or brother. Instead, he headed straight back to L.A., a whirlwind 28 hours that left the royals baffled.
As one friend of the family told Vanity Fair, Harry’s behavior left them ‘wondering why [he] had bothered to come at all.’
‘One makes one’s choices,’ the source said.
