For a man who supposedly wants to be left alone to live a “non-working Royal” life, Prince Harry certainly is… well, everywhere.
We saw him in April, accompanying his wife, Meghan Markle, on a four-day tour of Australia. While she promoted her lifestyle brand “As Ever”, did other charitable ventures and charged £1,400 per ticket for an appearance at a luxury “girls weekend” in Sydney, her husband met war veterans, discussed Aussie sport and Indigenous culture and spoke at a mental health summit about the death of his mother, Princess Diana.
Just weeks later, up popped Prince Harry again – this time in Ukraine, where he urged the world not to lose sight of what the country is up against. He gave a speech at the Kyiv Security Conference, drawing on his own military experience and warning the impact of the war will last “for years to come”. He wanted to leave Ukrainians with the message, he said, that “the world sees you and respects you”.
And he should know. Prince Harry, it appears, is desperate to be seen and respected – how else to explain the way he keeps saying one thing and doing another?
Take, for example, his comments about how being a Royal “killed my mum” (he told a crowd in Australia he “never wanted” the job or the role, and was “very much against it”) and juxtapose that with what he said in Ukraine: “I will always be part of the Royal family and I’m here working and doing the very thing I was born to do.”
And then there are his fierce attacks on press intrusion. The Duke of Sussex recently gave evidence in the Daily Mail phone-hacking trial in which he fought back tears, saying the Mail had made his wife’s life “an absolute misery”. Meghan, meanwhile, has said that for a decade, she was the “most trolled person in the entire world” – and the couple have previously said they stepped back as senior royals in 2020 to move to California, in part to escape the “toxic” UK tabloid press and protect their mental health.
Yet this week, you guessed it: here’s Prince Harry, once again, like whack-a-mole, writing in the British press about antisemitism and Islamophobia. You couldn’t make it up.
I don’t disagree with Harry – what he says in his first op-ed in – well, forever? – is spot on: he talks about the “moral blurring” that’s taking place in Britain, as “outrage outpaces humanity” and fear and division “are amplified faster than truth”. He was compelled, he says, to speak out because “silence is absence” and he didn’t want to stand on the “sidelines”, because “that allows hatred and extremism to flourish unchecked”. He also warned of a “deeply troubling” rise in antisemitism in the UK which has led to “lethal violence” against the Jewish community.
And he put his hands up to his own historical blunders (presumably reflecting on the time he wore a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party in 2005), saying: “I am acutely aware of my own past mistakes – thoughtless actions for which I have apologised, taken responsibility and learned from.”
But it seems to me there is a certain irony in this apparent “comeback tour” filled with public mea culpas, earnestness and virtue-signalling. And even at 41, Prince Harry still seems to be the same “lost, betrayed, and completely powerless” boy he talked about being in Australia. To put it bluntly: he doesn’t seem to know what he wants.
After all, he is, at once, one of the most famous people in the world – and keeps reminding us of that fact by making bids for armed security for his visits home, provided by the government – yet insists he wants to be “left alone” to live a “normal” family life in Montecito.
He’s publicly bemoaned the way he grew up “in a goldfish bowl under constant surveillance” – and “Megxit” allowed him and Meghan to remove themselves from the palace spotlight – but they then went on to thrust themselves, very publicly and very intentionally, into a Netflix one.
From their warts-and-all reality TV show, Harry and Meghan, to Meghan’s solo cooking and candle-making series With Love, Meghan (cancelled after its second season), the couple haven’t exactly been living the quiet, homely life they professed to want. They’ve transformed themselves into documentary makers, lifestyle gurus and motivational speakers – even Middle East envoys, in Meghan’s case.
On a personal level, the Duke of Sussex has already sought to repair the relationship with his dad, spending 50 minutes with him at Clarence House last September, in their first face-to-face interaction since the King’s cancer diagnosis in February 2024; and Harry is expected to return to the UK again in July for a one-year countdown event for the Invictus Games in Birmingham in 2027.
Like an unwanted guest who keeps turning up on the doorstep, whether we like it or not, Prince Harry keeps coming back – and we better get used to it.