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Days ahead of their mooted return to the UK, it’s been reported Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are holed up in their new $12 million villa in Portugal enjoying a European vacay with the kids.
Their holiday home is said to occupy a spot on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, in a small town some 130km south of the Portuguese capital Lisbon.
Sounds peaceful and idyllic – which is perhaps just one reason that Harry is now said to be considering whether to whisk his wife and children, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, to his home country for less than 24 hours later this month, just long enough to ensure a quick visit to see his father the King.
It wasn’t always meant to be such a blink-and-you-miss-it trip. King Charles has reportedly offered the Sussexes accommodation at a royal residence while Harry and Meghan attended events to promote the Invictus Games in 2027.
While the acceptance of royal lodgings would mean the family would automatically receive police security, Harry was said to have been left furious after his request for 24/7 taxpayer-funded protection during the trip was refused by the UK’s VIP security committee Ravec.
A source close to Harry went so far as to claim the rug “was pulled from under their feet at the 11th hour” – however royal expert Tina Brown, a friend of the late Princess Diana, begs to differ.
“What rug? The only rug under the Sussexes is a flying carpet on which the two of them circle the globe in a cloud of persistent delusion,” she wrote in a post for her Fresh Hell substack.
“Harry is apparently ‘distraught’ at the development, which isn’t a development at all but the same stance Ravec has taken for the last six years, and was under review again. Until Ravec gives another verdict, the status quo is unchanged.
“If Harry thought that bringing his children would force Ravec’s hand he was, as he is so often, hopelessly misguided,” Brown continued.
“Right now, the palace is in a crouch position about increased scrutiny of royal finances, thanks to the Andrew Windsor-Mountbatten scandals.”
Indeed, Brown continued to say it was “baffling” that Harry and Meghan were showing a “repeated tendency to make premature announcements before the underlying facts have been nailed down”.
“Indeed all their troubles of the last six years have stemmed from their magical thinking that something they want will become instant reality, starting with Megxit itself,” Brown wrote.
So what do the experts think will eventually come to pass in just a few days time? Will olive branches be extended and reunions arranged?
Royal commentator Alison Boshoff claimed a meeting between the Sussexes and King Charles will indeed happen, but there will be “no cameras, no subsequent Instagram posts, no revelations in interviews afterwards”.
“Charles has let [Harry] know that he is really looking forward to seeing his grandchildren,” a source told her, as reported in the Daily Mail. “Harry is looking forward to the visit and to building bridges. That is what everyone wants.”
“According to friends of Harry, a new idea has taken hold, which will see him and Meghan free to flog jam and make speeches for cash when they are in America, but treated as cherished members of the Royal Family when in the UK,” Boshoff wrote.
However, while News.com.au previously reported how it had been a “real point of great sadness” for Harry that he had been “unable to bring his wife and kids back to the UK safely to reconnect with friends and family”, it appears that some at the palace simply don’t care.
“Harry doesn’t understand that the family conflict has turned into something more lethal for him than anger — a cold war,” Brown wrote on her substack.
“Except for his father, who would dearly love to reconcile with his younger son, his relatives have moved on.”
And perhaps none have moved on more so than the heir to the British throne – Harry’s estranged brother Prince William.
Brown summed up the situation candidly in her substack.
“An old friend of William’s shared with me that, whenever he spent time with him in the years since Megxit, William’s sense of betrayal by Harry was a constant theme but, during a recent long conversation, Harry’s name never even came up,” she wrote.
Does his silence say a thousand words?
