King Charles, Queen Camilla, Kate Middleton: Prince Harry court case catches royal family in trap

Buckingham Palace’s remaining roster of frontline HRHs was out and about charming the public, hugging babies and generating photogenic moments up the whazoo (that’s the technical term).

Should have, that is.

Instead, Kate, the Princess of Wales comforting a grief-stricken mother and King Charles reliving his coronation greatest hits have ended up as little more than wallpaper, with the week dominated, Godzilla-like, by only one story: He’s baaaackk ….

You would be hard pressed to find a single person not in a vegetative state or taking part in a month-long monastic retreat who is not aware that Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex is currently waging war on the British media, with it being the turn of the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) to be in crosshairs. (Does this make Aitch the Lancelot of the Law? The Robin Hood of the High Court’s Rolls Building?)

He alleges that MGN engaged in unlawful information gathering and hacking; they say, nuh huhhh.

This week, of course, he pitched up back in London to take the stand and thus every eyeball, every journalist and everyone with a working Twitter account and requisite sense of outrage has ended up getting caught up in the ensuing melee.

Kate, what? Charles, who?

On Tuesday and Wednesday in London, the duke followed in the footsteps of his great-great-great-grandfather Edward VII to take to the stand, proving that all that Californian air has done nothing to dampen his gift for the hyperbolic, claiming that the British government has hit “rock bottom” and declaring that editors and journalists “have blood on their hands.”

An interesting line from a man who admitted to having killed 25 Taliban fighters in his memoir earlier this year.

But as far as the UK media was concerned, there was really only one royal story worth talking about at length, and it had nothing to do with Kate doing some grade-A caring in the vicinity of cameras or Prince William opening a $130 million state of the art cancer centre or the King ambling about the Romanian countryside for what he considered a “holiday” or the 90-year-old Duchess of Kent undertaking her first official engagement in five years.

In hindsight, His Majesty should have just given everyone the week off and booked them all on an all-inclusive Mallorca beach break. The people and Fleet Street would have not have noticed until someone spotted all the unread newspapers crowding the Clarence House steps.

Because unless Camilla had announced that she was done with the whole Queen caper and had decided to join an all-female community in the Pyrenees, I’m not sure anything could have knocked Harry’s self-appointed Arthurian courtroom quest off of the front page.

If this had all been a one-off, so be it.

However, it is obviously not and therein lies a seriously thorny problem for Kate, Charles, Camilla, William and anyone who earns a pay cheque with a coronet on it.

So long as Harry, fuelled by self-righteous anger, the ghosts of his miserable teenage years and too much cold brew, is busy having loud and expensive courtroom fights, the palace is a bit buggered.

Not because they are all not plugging away and doing genuinely valuable work, with the monarchical outfit evolving from ceremonial stiff sorts who were handy with a plaque to a much more engaged, nearly activist lot all doing battle for their various causes.

Rather, because do-goodery and earnest hard graft are always going to come second best in terms of public and media attention when shoot-from-the-hip, sue-first-and-ask-questions-later Harry is wielding his tranche of barristers and willing to spend millions on personal holy wars.

So long as the duke’s wellspring of hurts remains about as deep as the Mariana Trench and so long as he is keeping London’s star legal players in enough billable hours for them to ponder a second tennis court, the royal family’s diligence and dedication is going to get lost in the wash.

Kate, her husband and her in-laws are now stuck in a catch-22. Because really, what can King Charles do?

Right now a betting woman would wager that Buckingham Palace is about as pleased with Harry’s courtroom scrapping as they were that time Prince Andrew tried to rent out his back lawn to the Fyre Festival organisers.

However, His Majesty has few, if any, levers he can pull to try and rein in his son.

The Sussexes now earn their own crust, having commercialised family hostility to the tune of tens of millions at least. (Though it’s a business model with a decidedly uncertain future).

Their professional lives are now dictated by whatever cause du jour they fancy and how fast one of their staffers can put something out on their website stuffed full of right-on adjectives and a dash of empowerment speak.

In March this year, it was revealed that Charles, in a not particularly sanguine move, had demanded that they hand back the keys to their UK digs, Frogmore Cottage. Never again shall the dulcet sounds of Harry playing Grand Theft Auto or Meghan yelping at having missed out on the last size eight Gabriella Hearst jumper ring out across the Windsor estate.

The only card that the King has left to play is the Sussexes’ ducal titles, but exerting pressure on them to stop using them is far from risk-free. It could make him look punitive and would likely only resuscitate the claims from some quarters of unconscious racial bias.

On the other hand … how can Charles et al let this situation drag on?

Harry and Meghan are claimants in seven cases. We are a helluva long way from the finish line. It could be years before these lawsuits are over; years during which the royal family’s days and nights of royaling with gusto could be largely passed over and ignored by a press and public hooked on the narcotic Harry Show.

(The New York Times has reported that: “People who know [Harry] say he did not expect, when he brought the suits, that they would take so many years”. See, watching too much Law & Order can have unfortunate side effects …)

A friend of William and Kate’s has told the Telegraph that their philosophy is “heads down, focusing on the positive work and not being pulled into the drama for a while. Focus on the positives and not spend your time torn up”.

Which is all Zen and whatnot (all those crystals that I’m guessing the princess bought her husband are clearly working), but while the Waleses are trudging on, they are losing time to shore up the monarchy and to complete its transition from a flag-waving to a future-shaping institution.

This is all a pickle times a muddle to the square root of a mess.

There is only one smart play Charles has here – book early and save. Find out when Harry’s next big courtroom outing is scheduled for and skip town.

Imagine: Queen Camilla in a bikini splayed out on a sun lounger, slurping on a pina colada, while Charles huddles in the shade annotating the latest bulb catalogue.

In fact, now that I think about it, long lens shots of Her Majesty in a skimpy two piece might be the one thing that could bump Harry’s court antics off the front page.

Don’t say I never come up with solutions …

Daniela Elser is a royal expert and freelance writer with 15 years’ experience who has written for some of Australia’s best print and digital media brands.