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To all intents and purposes, it was a roaring success. When Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, stepped out in Nottingham on October 15, the photos showed them being greeted by adoring fans.
Granted, the gathered crowds weren’t of the size they had enjoyed back in 2017 when they visited the city shortly after announcing their engagement, but the photo opp still delivered a stark message: that the Sussexes are determined to be public figures, no matter the wishes of King Charles.
“There’s no denying that the reaction from the crowds when Meghan and Harry were doing their walkabout was incredibly positive, and there are a growing number of courtiers who are telling the King he’d be foolish not to take advantage of that goodwill and find a way to bring them back to serve the Crown,” an insider tells Woman’s Day.
And yet, Harry and Meghan’s royal-style visit to a community recording studio and community kitchen leaves Charles with a very real dilemma.
For it flies in the face of the ruling made by his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth, who declared in no uncertain terms that there could be no “half-in, half-out” arrangement for Harry and his former Suits actress wife.
It could also be perceived, as royal expert Tom Sykes writes in his substack The Royalist, as a “defiant rejection” of the letter – written by the King himself – that informed senior stakeholders in the UK that his youngest son and his wife were “akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests”.
Indeed, Sykes says the question of whether the Sussexes should be described as “working royals” had become a “strange new battleground” in their campaign to be public figures.
A source close to the couple expressed how much they dislike the phrase in comments to the Sunday Times.
“‘Working members of the royal family’ is a really lazy phrase. He hates it, she hates it. They are not ‘working’ for the institution, but they are members of the royal family, and they work. Their days are built around their family life and their work. She’s running a business seven days a week,” the source told the outlet.
“Things like Nottingham aren’t done in the name of the institution or the crown, but Harry is the son of the King, he is still a member of the royal family, he’s just not a member of the institution. It’s misleading to call them ‘former royals’. It has an impact on how they’re perceived and the way people talk about them.”
Harry and Meghan, Sykes claims, are “determined” to go about reestablishing themselves as “current members” of the royal family, “which is precisely what the Palace does not want”, he writes, “because it leads to the establishment of a rival court”.
“If they are going to insist on going around doing public events, presenting themselves as members of the royal family, when the King has specifically asked them not to represent themselves in that way, that is a pretty serious problem,” Sykes goes on, adding that the Palace, from what he has heard, is in “a state of dismay”.
And Harry’s estranged brother Prince William, it appears, is among the most dismayed at the turn of events.
“William and his supporters are telling the King that this has to be the absolute last straw,” an insider tells Woman’s Day.
“He can’t believe his father is allowing them to bulldoze their way around Britain doing whatever they please.
“There’s every reason to believe they’ve got more of these appearances planned, so it’s not a problem that’s going to go away and William is saying it’s time his father put a stop to it by finally stripping them of their titles.
“But the King is very reluctant to go that far, it would almost certainly trigger an all-out war with them and that’s the last thing he wants.”
Sykes says that those at the Palace simply “do not know what to do”.
“The feeling is that there is nothing further they can do without the King giving the authority to come down harder, to let it be known to the Sussexes that they are risking their titles,” he writes.
“But the Palace is very nervous about even modest steps such as removing them from the royal website, because they do not want to look vindictive, and they are worried that it will stoke the flames and make things worse.”
