King Charles and Queen Camilla’s successful US tour this week underscored just how idiotic and ill-conceived Prince Harry’s behavior has been over the past six years.
He was not invited to any of the high-profile events in Washington — where the royal couple attended a state dinner and Charles addressed Congress — or New York City, where the king and queen laid flowers at the 9/11 Memorial in the morning and partied with celebs at night, despite living in America himself.
In a different world, there would have been a place for Harry, a natural-born people person. But he has pretzeled himself into an untenable position with his mad ranting about how the royal institution tried to “destroy” him when he stopped playing their game — and all the tears from his wife Meghan Markle over her alleged treatment within the palace walls.
As one royal insider told me, it boils down to consistency.
Charles has spent his life working in public. He has suffered slingshots and arrows in the form of critical headlines that slammed him for being unpopular and out of touch, and embarrassing ones during the breakdown of his marriage to Princess Diana and his affair with Camilla. But he overcame it all and has now risen to the occasion, smoothing the troubled relationship between Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Harry, meanwhile, is a flip-flopper. Despite railing against the royal family, he hypocritically still uses his Duke of Sussex title to ensure he can make cash, as seen on his and Markle’s recent faux-royal tour of Australia, complete with paid speeches and appearances and the duchess launching a shopping page for an AI-powered fashion platform.
What is so annoying to me, having covered the saga of Harry and his wife for years, is the loss of Harry’s potential to be beloved and taken seriously. He has the empathy of his mother, Princess Diana, and shares much of the same beliefs as his father, who cares about the environment and young people.
He is also just as good an orator as Charles. I watched him give a powerful speech about the dangers of children and online content at a Clinton Foundation conference in 2024, and he deserved the standing ovation he received.
The Sussexes continue to struggle to work out who they want to be, having all but shuttered their Archewell foundation and lost their exclusive Netflix deal. Meanwhile, the royal family has been more focused, commanding and lovable in recent month.
After the highly embarrassing arrest of the former Prince Andrew and his entangled friendship with predator Jeffrey Epstein, the king made it clear he will stand up for victims of sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, Prince William, Harry’s estranged older brother, and his wife, Kate Middleton, are the glossy faces of the family, carrying out everyday commitments around the UK. This week, the future king and queen released a sun-dappled photo of themselves and their three children to celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary — and put a more relatable face on the royal family.
Harry wants to be a statesman. He thinks it’s his birthright. Before he walked away from his responsibilities, it was.
But on a surprise visit to Ukraine last week, he insisted he still considers himself to be a working royal —despite having resigned as one back in 2020.
“I will always be part of the royal family,” he told ITV while in Kyiv, adding that he is “working and doing the very thing that I was born to do.”
But quasi-royal appearances do not a working royal make. Harry has been shown up by his 77-year-old father who, despite still being treated for cancer, conducted a stream of meetings and events this week which showed that he is a statesman to his very bones.
Charles got 12 standing ovations during his speech to Congress from both sides of the aisle and managed to tactfully tell President Trump he should stay in NATO.
In 2021, Harry, looking awkward and uncomfortable as he sat alongside his wife, famously told Oprah Winfrey: “My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave. And I have huge compassion for that.”
Harry, I think you may be the one who is trapped — because you cannot seemingly decide to get out of your own way. If you really do embrace your history, your family, there may be a place for you in the royal world after all.
