King Charles III's cancer diagnosis and Princess Catherine's surgery have triggered Prince Harry's brief UK return, where he sought reconciliation while clarifying he won't renounce titles for US citizenship. Despite William's refusal to meet and aides fearing leaks, Harry hints at temporary duties, yet experts argue his "half-in, half-out" status, monetization of royal titles, and past attacks render a genuine return impossible. Ultimately, the episode suggests Harry's continued public feuds and loss of American platform support make family unity unlikely during this crisis. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Harry's Insulting Return Offer00:09:48
The royal family is besieged right now.
Our king has cancer.
Princess Catherine's recovering from serious abdominal surgery that will keep her away from public duties until at least Easter.
The monarchy is unquestionably still finding its footing after the death of the late Queen.
But through every crisis, one man has stood firm against the barrage, resolutely maintaining a pretty special gift for making everything all about him.
Yes, Prince Harry is back on our screens.
I suspect a lot of people shared my excitement when they heard this.
In moments, the Duke of Sussex will be hurtling headfirst 60 miles an hour down a winding track of ice in the mountains of Canada.
Well, fortunately, Harry emerged unscathed and made it back up the slopes to deliver a heartwarming message of peace and reconciliation.
At least that was the plan.
You see it on a day-to-day basis.
You know, again, the strength of the family unit coming together.
How have you processed the fact that there's so much happening back with your family?
I have my own family, as we all do.
I've got other trips planned that would take me through the UK or back to the UK.
So, you know, I'll stop in and see my family as much as I can.
Really?
Even in a small sea softball interview with American Breakfast Television, Harry is prickly and defensive, and with good reason.
Illness will bring us back together, he says, before immediately clarifying that he's staying on the opposite side of the world because actually he's got plenty of his own things to be getting on with.
But rest assured, loyal subjects, he'll still pop in when he feels like it, if he can.
Time permitting.
Later in the same interview, Harry makes a stunning admission that he's not considering becoming an American citizen.
What do you think about becoming a citizen?
I have considered it, yeah.
Yeah?
What would stop you from doing it?
I have no idea.
You know what it might be?
You have to give up your titles if you become a US citizen.
I'd say that being a senior member of the British royal family, whose only remaining relevance comes from monetising his ever-weakening royal links, is a pretty obvious barrier.
Whether the US authorities would even consider making Harry a citizen after he gloated about his prodigious drug use and his memoir spare is another issue.
And just hours after revealing that he might abandon Britain for good, Harry began his briefings all over again.
This time let it be known that heroically he's prepared to don his ginger cape and soar back to Britain, fulfilling some of the ailing king's duties while he's treated.
In a typically irritating learning or missive, Harry is offered a quote hybrid working model, the regal equivalent of meeting on Zoom in your underpants.
Prince Harry is keen to be reconciled with his father and has been telling people that he wants a return, that he's happy to step in in some sort of temporary royal role while his father's away unwell.
Obviously, the king has cancer.
He's away from public duties.
But also Princess of Wales is off.
She's recovering from abdominal surgery.
She's not going to be around until Easter.
What I've been told is that Prince Harry is very keen.
He's always wanted to have a foot back in the fold.
He never really wanted to be all the way out.
All very valiant, Harry, but there's one little problem.
Nobody wants you back.
Four years ago, Harry and Megan abandoned the royal family and the monarchy and resigned their royal duties to embark on a new life in California.
The late Queen was crystal clear at the time.
You cannot be half in, half out.
If you go, you're gone for good.
And it seems that the king himself has agreed with that.
Harry jetted into the UK immediately after hearing his father's cancer diagnosis.
No one can criticise him for that.
But he might have been surprised at the less than hearty reception.
The king's aides made Harry stay in a hotel.
He was allowed just one hasty 30-minute meeting at Clarence House, not at Sandringham, where the king flew off on his helicopter to recuperate.
Because you know why?
They were kind of worried that they wouldn't get rid of Harry and also a little bit worried that someone who's committed all the private thoughts of his family to books and podcasts and television interviews in a scathing derogatory manner might just do it all over again.
They also knew that the king is a 75-year-old man being treated for a very serious illness and needs time to rest.
He doesn't need to be part of the ongoing Sussex psychodrama.
Now compare and contrast the dignified behaviour of Prince William, who's been taking care of his wife and only just returned to public duties.
Last night he attended the BAFTAs and glided around the place with the gravitas and decorum that he always does.
No vainglorious narcissism, no attention seeking, no self-pity.
Of course there was no meeting at all last week between Harry and his brother.
Harry's supporters, apparently there are some of them somewhere, felt that was spiteful.
Really?
They must have had the recall skills of a goldfish or President Biden.
Don't forget that this time last year the royals were still reeling from Harry and Megan's Netflix show which condemned Britain and the monarchy as irredeemably racist and tortured the reputations of their closest family members.
It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that simply weren't true and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in.
Harry went on to maul his own brother in that show and smeared his own father, the king, as a liar.
The monarchy was directly accused of destroying two of its own to protect itself.
Even the late Queen was appallingly presented as a dupe, manipulated by sinister courtiers in a dark plot to smear the poor Sussexes.
As if that six-hour onslaught of sycophancy and sedition wasn't enough, along came the memoir.
Across 416 pages of pure poison, the Prince of Privacy revealed toe-curling details about excruciating and deeply personal disputes with his family, including this about his brother.
He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor.
I landed on the dog's bowl, which cracked under my back.
The pieces cutting into me.
Well, we all laughed, of course, but you think William laughed at that?
The man who will be our next monarch would laugh at being ridiculed and mocked in that manner by his own brother?
Is it really any wonder that Prince William wants nothing to do with him?
The Prince of Wales is now facing up to the massive responsibility that awaits him as Britain's next head of state, but his own brother has gone out of his way to shatter his reputation and that of his wife.
Why on earth would he want to reconcile with someone like that?
It's been a relentless one-way attack.
That was a low point for Harry, but Harry, well, he can always find a way to go lower, digging deeper and deeper until he finds the gutter.
He called Camilla, the new queen and the love of his father's life, dangerous and a villain.
Reportedly, he refused to even be in the same room as her when he came over on his mercy mission last week.
Harry's also boasted about his drug use and losing his virginity.
He revealed the number of people he killed in Afghanistan, breaking all normal rules of how the military behave.
He spilled details from intensely private conversations with the king who'd begged him not to make his final years a misery.
We don't need to wait for history to judge how he's getting on with that.
And as the global media, he supposedly loathes, gorged on the red meat he'd toss them, Harry did precisely what any dignified member of Britain's proudest institution would never do.
He taught with TV studios with lurid tidbits for clapping seals.
Can you explain how it is that the royal standard got frostnipped?
We've taken quite a leap from grief and trauma to my Todger.
Todger, that's a very gentle word.
Is it gentle?
Todger.
Sounds like a nice nickname.
Was that befitting of a member of the royal family?
Can anyone seriously take Harry seriously as a councillor of state shouldering the burden of a thousand years of history as Britain's representative across the world?
Harry and Meghan are not exactly turning down the gas on their flamethrower.
Client journalist and professional lick spittle Omid Scoby, published a book in which he accidentally outed the king and princess Catherine as racist an implausible, ludicrous claim which unwittingly, did more damage to the Sussex racism smear than anything else.
And they jetted to Jamaica to attend a movie premiere, just as king Charles revealed, is being treated in hospital for an enlarged prostate, posing for smiling photographs with a Jamaican prime minister who literally wants to abolish the monarchy.
For Harry to now claim he's ready and willing to serve his country and his king is frankly, an insult.
We all know what this is really about.
Netfix is reportedly planning to pull the plug on Harry and Meghan's hundred million dollar deal.
Their series caused a lot of media outrage, but did even crack the top 200 shows on the platform.
Last year, Spotify cancelled Meghan's Dreary podcast.
Without their royal links.
The brutal reality is that Harry and Meghan are of no interest to anybody and that's why they're rebranding yet again to double down on their dubious royal status.
Their previous website Archuel, inspired by their son Archie, now automatically redirects to Sussex.com.
A glossy picture of the couple dominates the main page, overlaid with a text to the office of prince Harry and Meghan, the duke and duchess of Sussex.
The website has nothing to do with king and country or the royal family, and Harry and Meghan have no royal duties to speak of.
They never put a shift in.
They're brazenly exploiting the institution.
They simultaneously profit from trashing and we're all being taken for the ride.
The late queen was right, they can't be half in, half out, and they're out.
They sold their royal souls for life as reality stars, trading every private cough and splutter for cash.
The king should now return the favour and strip them of their tenuous titles and end this Sussex circus for good.
Well, to debate all this is my royal pack, the uncensored contributor, Paula Ronadrian, the royal editor, Sarah Hewson and, from New York, the columnist Maureen Calliger.
Exploiting The Royal Institution00:04:04
Well, welcome to all of you.
Um, all right, let me start with you Sarah, to set the scene here for what's really going on behind the scenes.
Lots of messages seemingly being communicated to the media.
Mixed messages, I think very much mixed messages.
Um, what do you read into it?
What should we read into it?
It's really hard to read between the lines here, but there were reports over the weekend that prince Harry has made it be known that he would be willing to make a temporary return to the royal fold to try and relieve some of the pressure on the royal family, while his father do, we believe I mean, it looked well sourced to me yeah, I think.
I mean, I think it's probably very likely that he has said at some point and perhaps in some ways we could say it's laudable he said, look, if you're really struggling, I can come back.
I will do that.
You know what I think, but it's not going to happen.
You know what I was struggling with.
Using the word struggling was his explanation that you know these kind of family uh, situations where someone's very sick can bring everyone back together, when he, according to the other members of the family, is single-handedly responsible for all the fallout out in the first place.
But it seems to me from his tone and his language that he is now seeking some kind of rapprochement.
It's much more conciliatory language that we're hearing from Harry.
No more demands for an apology from the family before any kind of thing.
But from what I've read, and it looked pretty well sourced again, an emphatic no thanks.
Yeah, particularly no way back.
Particularly from Prince William.
I think that's the biggest mountain that Harry has to climb.
It may well be that behind the scenes there are cordial conversations taking place with his father.
And that is what he's talking about when he says, you know, this can bring families back together.
And so it should.
You know, his father has cancer and has always wanted Harry to come back.
There's a big difference between family relations and then Harry making an official comeback as a working member of the royal family.
The terms of the Sandringham Summit were absolutely clear.
All in late Queensland.
You can't be half in, half out.
Whether you're in or out.
Let me bring in Maureen here.
I mean, Maureen, I've got to say, whenever we try and find people in America to defend Harry and Megan, it's almost impossible.
Nobody wants to come on and defend them over there.
What is the mood about them over there?
Well, it piers, this is, again, it seems like we talk about this all the time whenever I'm lucky enough to do your show, the feeling of Americans, and we have absolutely had it.
And the temerity of Harry to go on an American morning breakfast program, GOOD Morning America, and use a sort of trumped up event a year out promoting the Invictus Games to happen next year to soft pedal some sort of possible reconciliation with Prince Charles and then to later leapfrog off of that with a story.
placed in the Times OF London with this bombshell claim that not only did Harry want to return and was willing to help out, what an offer, but that the palace might be open to that as well.
It's been really a remarkable two weeks in terms of just the timeline of events and the series of humiliations that Harry and Megan have suffered from the breakneck 24-hour trip to London, to the UK to see Charles and to get only 30 minutes to hear later from Charles's staff that they quote, couldn't wait to get rid of him because they were afraid he would never leave,
to William not seeing him nor speaking to him, to William then saying emphatically and Charles' office briefing emphatically, there is no way back for these two.
Hypocrisy After The Wedding00:08:34
And when you couple that with Megan's rare quietude this week, she was seen but not heard from on GMA in America.
She was barely mentioned in the Times of London and when she was, it was at the bottom of the piece.
I actually think there's quite a lot of intrigue happening right now and it will still, it will continue to unfold in the coming weeks and days.
Yeah and I'm afraid the cynic in me says that this is all because their life in America is not going as well as they hoped.
The millions have been stemmed by them being turfed off platforms like Spotify because they were effing grifters according to one of the executives there and produced terrible content.
And that in their desperation to try and maintain their very high standard of living and their celebrity status, which is all they have now out there, they've now flipped Archerwell, the charitable organisation named after their son, to Sussex.com, which seems to me a flagrant abuse of all the accepted practice with the royals.
do not explicitly exploit your royal titles like that.
So you put it all together and the jump on the plane where clearly he wasn't expected or particularly welcome, it turned out, and you left, I think, with a really cynical taste in the mouth, which is this is all about preserving their brand.
Paula.
Preserving a brand, Piers, yes, you are very cynical.
What has happened is that a son has discovered that his father is suffering from cancer.
And in his dash to be by his side, he did whatever he could to get there, to spend that time with him.
Now, I have also read that Prince Harry's time was limited by the men in suits, however they're referred.
That was from fly as Harry.
Charles and Camilla were just getting a helicopter to Sandringham, right?
The king is the king.
If he wanted to spend longer with his son, he'd flown all the way from Los Angeles, he'd have spent longer with his son and the chopper would have waited.
That's the real world.
So this idea that actually Charles was furious and would have liked to just carry on for hours or even get on the chopper and come with us, son, which is what I would do to my sons because they still talk to me and don't trash my family on television every 10 minutes.
That's the real world.
So I think you're accepting that you've read that story as well and that you are choosing to ignore that story and to focus on the story of suits.
I'm calling your suits bullshit on that story.
And we can't do that.
But we know the chopper took off.
Because what's important.
To Sandringham, well, he was just going to rest.
What's important is to recognise that Prince Harry, he has, hasn't he, sent out that fig leaf?
And he's saying to everybody, I want to.
That is true.
That is true.
But I would say to that, the fig leaf has been snapped in half and whacked back.
I mean, that's the reality of what happened here.
And that's something.
So I don't dispute that he wants to send out a fig leaf.
What I do think is true is whilst Charles is his son, he may think, you know what, I just need to suck this up and just put up with it and let him back.
William is utterly implacable.
I mean, I'm told no way, after what Harry did to his wife with that book, not a chance.
And so what do we do about that?
Do we define the lines even more?
Do we dig the trenches even further?
Or do we support this family?
I think we strip the title.
I think, you know, the easiest thing?
When I saw the Sussex.com stuff, I was like, really?
You're even going to do that?
You're going to make it that transparent.
I come from Sussex.
I've spent more time in Sussex in the last week than they have in their lives.
So do you not want them to earn money, Peter?
I don't want them to exploit royal titles for personal financial gain.
No.
He's a member of the royal family.
Doing no royal duty to justify exploiting the titles.
No.
He would like to be able to help.
Okay, Sarah, this comes to the nub of this debate, doesn't it?
Because, yeah, I'm sure he does want to, because I'm sure he's seeing, particularly, I think, from the Platinum Jubilee balcony scene onwards, you're either one of the stars or you're not.
Well, and interestingly, the position that Megan would have wanted to be in, not playing second fiddle, actually, they'd be right there now.
If they'd stuck around, they'd be right there, right at the same time.
I totally agree.
But to me, they blew it, but they blew it in such spectacular fashion.
Look, just put yourself in the heads of this family.
Putting aside their royals, right?
You've got these two in America repeatedly, not just once, but from Oprah Winfrey onwards, repeatedly trashing them in the most vile manner in public.
A tabloid newspaper can do it.
I've done it as a tableau editor over the years, but always had the likes of Harry immediately piping up, attacking the papers for being intrusive and so on.
Fine, he's entitled to that view.
But what's he been doing that's any different, honestly?
Forgive me for interrupting, but we're acting as if Harry just woke up one morning and decided that he no longer favoured his father, no longer favoured his family.
That's not what happened, Piers.
We are talking about a lifetime in terms of Harry thinking and believing that he has been mistreated.
Actually, we're talking about a timeline that really begins when he meets Meghan Markle.
And again, the cynekim.
So we blame the woman.
Well, we blame the outside.
I've got to say, if one of my sons came to me, don't do him a disservice by denying him that.
If one of my sons came to miss it, dad, great news, I'm going to marry an American divorcee who's five years older than me, and she wants nobody from her family at the wedding apart from her mother on either side, right?
And has just disowned her dad, et cetera, et cetera.
To be fair, I'm going to say that.
I'd swerve this one if I were you.
Her father had staged the photographs, etc.
And let's remember the mood around the time of that wedding.
There was a huge sense of optimism about what she could bring and that Harry had finally found someone who could hold their own and could deal with it.
I wrote a piece on the wedding day myself about what a breath of fresh air it was to see a non-white wedding with a woman from a biracial American background.
Everyone loved it.
This idea that the media were out to get Meghan Markle out to get them as a couple totally invented revisionism.
I remember it.
All the papers were ecstatic.
Absolutely ecstatic.
She was this fantastic, glamorous actress.
Straight out of Compton.
Harry had been wedding.
But then all the hypocrisy started.
The title that didn't suit the country.
Let me bring in more in, because it seemed to me the tipping point was after the wedding when all the hypocrisy began.
All the preaching about carbon footprint and climate change as they used Elton John and George Clooney's private jets like a taxi service.
Preaching, I get this, on the day of the half a million dollar baby shower, sending out a tweet about poverty on their Twitter account as they're literally having a half a million dollar baby shower with a bunch of celebrities in New York and then flying back on the Clooney jet, et cetera, et cetera.
And I remember, because I was writing a column at the time about all this, a growing sense of disillusionment from the public that this lovely couple who seemed so well suited and so good for the country seemed to be getting into a place where they wanted to be constantly having their royal cake and eat it.
100%.
And that goes full circle to, as you pointed out, the relaunch of the Sussex.com website, which is a complete abrogation of what Her Majesty the late Queen told them.
There was to be no monetizing of their royal titles.
That was why, per the Sandringham Accord, you are either in or you are out.
One of the two.
So they relaunch this website with Megan's royal coat of arms.
Again, either the royal family has mistreated you to the point where you are suicidal and asking for help that you are denied, or you are so proud to have married into this family that you are boasting your coat of arms online.
Why Harry Cannot Be Trusted00:07:22
You are running an incredibly lengthy CV in which you, without a shred of irony, say that one of your top priorities as whatever kind of philanthropist or activist she's spinning herself to be prioritizes quote-unquote family care.
And if we really want to get down to the nuts and bolts of it, this is why Harry cannot be let back in and cannot be trusted.
Kate is ill.
What is ailing her is a very closely guarded piece of information.
That is their right.
Harry and Megan remind me of the fable of the scorpion and the frog.
The scorpion asks the frog to float him across a river.
The frog says, you're a scorpion.
You will bite me and kill me.
And the scorpion says, it would make no sense.
I can't cross the river without you.
Halfway through, scorpion stings the frog.
The frog says, why did you do that?
The scorpion says, it's my nature.
I can't help it.
That's Harry and Megan.
Paula, we have the scorpion and the frog, a perfect metaphor.
Perhaps if Harry were here, he might say that he's been stung so many times that he couldn't take the pain.
Sure, he would.
He'd be whining about that.
And that's why he spoke out.
Well, I mean, you use the word whining, but of course, he is somebody who has, he says he has suffered significantly and that it's impacted on his mental health.
So I think the term whining...
Let me ask Sarah on that point.
So I wrote a column for The Sun tonight about William, right, who I think has been amazing.
You've got to put yourself in his shoes for a moment, right?
So he loses his two beloved grandparents and mentors for potentially one day being king.
His wife has been seriously ill.
His father, the king, has cancer, which apart from anything else, may mean that he himself has to consider potentially acceding to the throne earlier than he would have ever wanted to do.
He doesn't speak to his only sibling who's been trashing him in public, left, right, and center.
And they both suffered the same trauma when they were kids of losing their mother, which was a trauma.
I knew Dinah.
I loved Dinah like we all did.
It was awful, horrific, the whole thing.
But I don't see that William has had to go through any worse than Harry.
The only difference is that rather go down the path of running to America and fleecing his titles for hundreds of millions of dollars whilst constantly trashing the institution that bestowed them, William has chosen silence in public, dignity, decorum, and duty.
Well, he didn't have much choice, did he, because of the position he had.
Actually, he did.
He could walk away.
Well, Edward, when he fell in love with an American woman, walked away.
But I think Maureen's point about Kate's illness at the moment is a big factor of why there was no meeting between those brothers, if ever that was going to be on the cards.
Because he is so protective over his wife, and there is no trust there.
There is no trust that anything, any conversations that happen aren't going to be briefed out.
Harry even wrote, just to remind everybody, Harry even wrote about private conversations with his father and his brother at Prince Philip's funeral space.
Yeah, in the grounds of the storehouse when his father apparently said, don't make my last years a misery.
Think about that for a moment.
Revealing conversations you had with your father and your brother at your grandfather's funeral.
In a book.
But it's why I said I thought Harry's tone has shifted because that interview on Good Morning America was actually pretty guarded.
He talked about being grateful for the time he had.
He also talked about wanting to be American.
But it wasn't a high priority.
Yeah, you know why?
Because if he wants to be an American, he has to give up the titles.
Yes, you can't.
First thing you have to do, and Maureen, I'll bring you back in here.
First thing you have to do if you take out American citizenship, you give up all your titles if you're British.
And so Harry would go back to just being Harry and Megan.
And by the way, good luck to those two with their empire commercial plans if they don't have the royal stuff to exploit.
Yeah, I mean, we saw that in America.
And the first thing I thought was, well, so much for just Harry.
You know, he's never going to give those titles up.
Megan clings to them as well.
It is exhibit A in terms of their rampant and unceasing hypocrisy.
My favourite detail from the Whistler trip was that the head of the Invictus event there was instructed to call Harry and Megan sir and ma'am.
I know.
So if anyone thinks these two are just going to get back down with the rest of American civilians and Megan's going to forfeit showing up in a glamour shot with a $3,000 Hermes coat while she's meeting wounded warriors.
I mean, these two continue to dig their own holes.
It is unlike anything I've ever seen.
I mean, here in America, I consider it one of the greatest pieces of performance art we've got going.
And you know what?
I think they lost most Americans, Sarah, when they came up with this obviously cock and bull story about being chased around New York 100 miles an hour for two hours.
Anyone who's been in New York knows that's impossible.
The traffic doesn't move.
You were dying to get in there.
Well, I was...
It's the point about the dining out on the royal connections.
They were heavily criticised for the use of the Sussex name.
They're going to take it as a family name.
Look, Harry was Harry Wales.
George and Charlotte and Louis, before they became the Waleses, were the Cambridges.
There's nothing new about that.
Why do you want your kids to have a royal title when you believe the monarchy as an institution has caused you such irreparable damage?
Well, I agree with that, but I also find it interesting that Archie and Lilibut will be known as Sussex, because actually it's a far less royal sounding name for an American market than Mountbatten Winter.
Yeah, but it goes for their Duke and Duchess, right?
So I understand that Harry's issue was with the institution.
And I know that you keep referencing that he's trashing his father and trashing his brother.
But I think we also need to be fair.
Not referencing it, that's what he's done.
I think we also need to be fair.
It's right that Harry hasn't hidden behind the and a royal source reports because we know that that's what happens.
Very often stories are in the papers about the Windsor House or the Sussex House or the Cambridge House and it's a royal source is reported.
Now, Harry doesn't have that to hide behind, but to suggest that there are stories put out about Harry doesn't have what?
A royal source.
Please do me a favour.
Please do me a favour.
What I'm saying is what I'm saying is that we're not hiding behind the story.
How do you think People Magazine?
How do you think People magazine knew about his fig leaf?
The stories come out.
You know how?
You can't suggest that nobody is putting out stories against him.
Because his own people are brief just as much as the palace.
Okay, so you're accepting.
You're accepting again what I'm saying then.
I think you should accept, I probably know a little bit more with respect about the way this all works.
Having been part of the media for 35 years.
I'm asking you.
I can tell you he and his wife use the media just as aggressively as anyone at the palace does on the other side.
I can tell you that.
That's my point.
I'm grateful.
We're going to leave it there.
Thank you all very much indeed to my pack and to Maureen over in New York.