Britain’s bruised royals remain silent as Prince Harry lets ‘magic shine’

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LONDON (Reuters) – Almost 150 years ago, the well-known constitutional writer Walter Bagehot wrote that the British monarchy needed to be revered and obscured. “We must not allow magic to enter the light of day,” he wrote.

With their six-part Netflix documentary series, series of high-profile TV interviews and tell-all memoirs, all involving intimate revelations and accusations of discord, Prince Harry and wife Meghan have not only shone daylight, but a blinding searchlight. Private affairs of the royal family.

When the dust settles, Harry’s father, King Charles, and the other bruised Windsor will wonder if any of their royal charms have been permanently extinguished.

“Charles: Heart of a King,” said Katharine Mayer, author of the recent biography.

“This is a huge state institution, it has a lot of power, it has a lot of influence, it gets a lot of money from taxpayers, and the king is head of state in 14 other areas as well – and we treat it like a soap opera.”

The crux of Harry and Meghan’s narrative is that Britain’s sensational tabloid press is a “devil” with whom members of the royal family have connived to protect or enhance their reputations.

Those like Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who have not played this game have, they say, been exposed to cruel and untrue stories that threaten their mental health and well-being.

Harry also made specific accusations against his stepmother Camilla, Charles’s second wife and queen, and his older brother William, heir to the throne.

Keep calm and carry on

So far, both of them have refused to respond.

“It’s exactly the right strategy, to rise above it,” a former senior aide to the royal family told Reuters.

“He has a lot of shots at William, and some shots at the Queen, but I’m not sure it’s going to fundamentally undermine confidence in their ability to play their roles and their validity for those roles.”

There is no question of public interest in melodrama. The series drew a record number of viewers for its documentary debut on Netflix, while Harry’s Diary ranks as the best-selling book on Amazon in the UK, US, Germany and Canada.

[1/2] A poster promoting Prince Harry’s British book “Spear” is displayed in a shop window, ahead of its official release date, with Windsor Castle reflected, in Windsor, Britain, January 9, 2023. REUTERS/Toby Melville

Its title – “reserve” – ​​alludes to the deep-seated frustration at being seen as a stand-in heir to the throne, should anything happen to William.

Royal biographer Tina Brown said Americans found Harry and Meghan attractive and “winning” in the US, while a recent visit by William and his wife Kate to Boston had little effect.

In Britain, sympathy appears divided between generations: opinion polls suggest that the elderly have little time for Harry and Meghan, while the younger are more supportive, which could point to future problems with accepting the monarchy.

Don’t let the light in

“As Walter Pagehot said in the 19th century, don’t let the daylight set in with magic, because if you do, the royal family becomes just like Hoy Polloy, just like you and me,” royal commentator Emily Andrews told Reuters.

“They stopped being special, they weren’t that different anymore. Then you wonder, ‘Why are billions of taxpayer money going to fund this family that is effectively behaving like the Kardashians?'” “.

The royal family has been here before.

In the 1990s, the collapse of Charles’s marriage to his first wife, Princess Diana, mother of Harry and William, appeared in faded color in the pages of British tabloids.

Both disclosed extramarital affairs in prime-time television interviews, and in an authorized biography written around the same time, Charles bemoaned his unhappy childhood, in which his mother Queen Elizabeth II was estranged from his father, Prince Philip, as overbearing.

But the media and the public eventually moved on—although Harry argues poignantly in his book that he had little help, at age 12, to come to terms with his mother’s death in a Paris car crash—because she was running away herself. The attention of newspaper photographers.

Buckingham Palace can also take comfort in the fact that the vast majority of tabloids have sided with the royal family: unsurprising, given Harry and Meghan’s views on tabloids and the fact that they’ve sued a number of publications.

“However, you could argue that it only reinforces the victim narrative from Harry and Meghan in America,” said the former aide.

“The only thing the Royal Family has is time. So they can play the long game – which Harry and Meghan probably can’t, as they must tell their story now.”

(Reporting by Michael Holden and Hanna Rantala) Editing by Kevin Levy

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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