Yesterday, we discussed the curious Telegraph story about Prince Harry allegedly telling his close friends that he missed his Army life and while he didn’t “blame Meghan,” he still wonders what could have been if he was still living the life of a protected prince/soldier. The piece was suspicious as hell, especially because it had echoes of previous hit jobs on Harry, which (in my mind) were orchestrated by Prince William. This has been one of William’s go-to smears on his brother for several months now, that Harry is, at heart, just a dumb soldier who went AWOL from the royal family as he fell into Meghan’s enemy territory. It seemed unlikely to me that Harry or his close friends are calling up the Telegraph to talk about how Harry misses the Army, that’s all I’m saying.
To make this situation even more curious, Richard Kay at the Daily Mail has jumped on board and expanded on the Telegraph’s exclusive. You might remember that Prince William has gone to Kay a few times over the past couple of years to get “his side” out. Notably, William ran to Kay about the Rose Hanbury rumors, and William also ran to Kay immediately following the Sussexit announcement in January, in one of the nastiest pieces I’ve ever read, in which William tried to gaslight his brother about everything. Isn’t it curious then, that Kay picked up this already questionable exclusive from the Telegraph about how Harry is so unhappy and bewildered in LA? Methinks Willileaks rides again.
You can read Kay’s piece here – it’s just a regurgitation of the Telegraph piece, with an exhaustive account of Harry’s Army career, and a dash of “where did it all go wrong” and “why did he have to move to America?” Here are a few parts from Kay’s piece:
How intriguing, then, that this cri de coeur should come now, five weeks into his and Meghan’s new locked-down life in Los Angeles. And how poignant. It is hard to escape the sense that he has somehow just woken up to what he has given up in the land of his birth.
It has to be said that at one level the [Telegraph’s reported] comments demonstrate an extraordinary lack of self-awareness from the Prince. It was Harry, after all, who walked out on the royals, not the other way round. But what about those sad reflections that suggest he hankers for those days in service? It is certainly the case that the Army delivered some of the happiest and most stable periods in the prince’s life. Of all the unintended consequences of Harry’s decision to step back from royal life, the loss of his military connections was surely the most heartfelt.
Ever since he left that sense of purpose and structure that the Army provided, something seems to have been missing. Of course he has found happiness with Meghan, but he also appears to be somehow less contented. His friends will doubtless insist that this is all the fault of a mischievous Press and is the reason he decided to sever links with tabloid newspapers.
All the same, there is something unsettling about watching the Harry of today compared with the Prince of only a year ago. Photographs of him in Los Angeles with a bandana wrapped around his face – his Covid-19 protection – while distributing food packages but walking a few paces behind his wife could not be more of a contrast with Harry the immaculately turned-out soldier. Are they of a man who has perhaps lost something of his focus?
The truth is, these royal reporters and commentators cry about how they’re totally over the Sussexes but they can’t keep Harry and Meghan’s name out of their mouths. The truth is that no amount of gaslighting and bullying-from-afar will turn back time and get Harry to somehow rejoin the Army and marry some white English woman. And I feel like it’s gotten quite creepy to see William’s favorite journalists harping on and on about this.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red and Backgrid.
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