Prince Harry court case: King Charles ‘frustrated’ by royal rift

In the 1960s, psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross came up with the idea of seven stages of grief – and in 2023, I think it’s time to come up with the seven stages of Harry.

In the last five years, from those sun-dappled months after his wedding to Meghan Markle when the adjective “fairytale” was being tritely rolled out by the world’s press ad nauseam, when it comes to the Sussexes, the public reaction has gone from delighted to dismayed to astonished to infuriated to just plain old depressing. Restorative G&T anyone?

Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex is a man who continues to provoke strong reactions, like the royal equivalent of the anchovy.

Now, according to new reporting, it’s not just the dazed public who are at sea when it comes to Aitch, patron saint of damaged adult men (the post-pandemic Peter Pan?) but King Charles too.

His Majesty, with all of his advisors, courtiers, private secretaries, his wife, two Jack Russells and enough Jungian analysts on call to fill a Viennese coffee house, is being put through the emotional wringer right now, according to the Sunday Times.

Now the Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah has revealed that “those close to Charles, 74, say he is becoming increasingly exasperated” by his younger son.

“The King brings Harry up every time I see him. I don’t think we’ve moved past sad and bewildered, but there’s a bit more frustration at his behaviour, because it just keeps going,” a source has said.

And “keep going” on it shall.

Because if you’re reading this, chances are you know exactly how we got here. Harry’s TV pouting and the interviews and the TV show and the book and the podcasts show the duke’s transformation from cheery, diligent royal doer to a man whose bloodstream now seems to hum with righteous hurts and too much green tea.

He has taken the sorts of resentments and emotional wounds best dealt within the four walls of a therapist’s stylishly neutral office and instead turned them into a multimillion-dollar commercial concern – catharsis meets cashola.

In the last seven months, since this campaign began in earnest with the Sussexes’ Netflix series last December, it must be kept in mind that while Charles was getting to grips with his accession and the loss of his “mummy” (pause for a sniffle), the royal family has been buffeted by Harry and his truth.

Last week, Harry was back in London to take to the witness stand in one of his plethora of court cases that are inching their way through the legal system, revealing he had been motivated to bring the lawsuit against the Mirror Group Newspapers over historical hacking because he wanted to protect Meghan, a woman he met a full five years after the practice ended. (Logic? It rarely seems to figure significantly in the world according to the Sussexes).

During the courtroom outing the duke, seemingly unable to waste an opportunity for a bit of sermon-from-the-mount lecturing, then launched a wholly unnecessary attack on the British government by saying it had hit “rock bottom”, directly flouting the longstanding convection that members of the royal family don’t wade into the political.

Insiders were decidedly unimpressed, per the Times.

“I think he’s been sitting in the Californian sunshine for a long time, hanging out with James Corden [the actor and TV host] and has lost all the instincts on how to do this, how to conduct himself carefully, still as a member of the royal family,” a source who knows Harry well has said.

“He’s lost the knack of what he can and can’t say and there is no one around him to say, ‘No, Harry, you can’t say that, take that bit out’. It’s embarrassing for him and for Britain, for a prince to be saying, ‘We’ve got a shit government’.”

So too are the tweedy sorts jostling over the last Garibaldi in the biscuit tin in Charles’ office unhappy that Harry has now added Rishi Sunak’s government to his burn book.

A royal source told Nikkhah: “The Palace will find that extremely difficult and uncomfortable, because you can never fully separate yourself from the institution and it will have raised eyebrows on both sides of the park — at Westminster too — not least because it wasn’t necessary for the core of his case.”

Then there is Harry’s complaint that pre-Megxit “the institution” was about as useful as Fergie at an Oxford Union debate when it came to protecting the couple from the press.

That’s “a claim that induces exasperated sighs and rolling eyes in the royal households.”

Meanwhile, former royal aides whose CVs include stints working with Harry and Meghan “pushed their relationships with the media to the limit defending them,” Nikkhah reports.

Given that the King is “increasingly exasperated”, “bewildered” and “frustrated” by his son, it’s hardly a shock that His Majesty did not seem interested in any sort of outreach last week. (That olive branch cupboard inside Clarence House? Still yet to ever be opened).

Both father and son were both in central London and yet schedules were not cleared or time made available for any sort of meeting. Nor, according to the Daily Mail, did Harry even speak on the phone to the King while they were within the same time zone.

The name I haven’t mentioned so far here is Prince William because, of course, the blood would seem to be so bad between the brothers that if this was the Middle Ages, they would be marshalling their barons and forcing yeomen to take up arms in preparation for a bit of battlefield biff.

The two men, who are most definitely not alike in dignity, have obviously fallen out more egregiously than Fergie and her bank manager when he spies her overdraft.

Since Harry opened the Netflix floodgates in December last year, chums of Willy and his wife Kate, the Princess Of Wales have told the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes that “it’s impossible to exaggerate the extent of [William’s] contempt for Harry and Meghan now. He absolutely hates them”, that “William will never forgive Harry” and that “it’s just sickening to [William] that Harry, who knows exactly how distressing it will be to him, is now selling them out to the media”.

Prepare to be shocked when I tell you that there is no hint of a suggestion that any sort of communication was attempted between William and Harry given this War of the Roses 2.0.

What, I’m guessing, the Prince of Wales must think of Harry’s “rock bottom” line would probably not be fit for publishing without numerous asterisks and would require so many exclamation marks I’d be in need of a new keyboard. (She takes a beating the old girl, especially the ‘H’ key).

This week, all sides have retreated to their respective corners. Charles has taken the Royal Train north in a scene that looks like something from the Hogwarts Express and William will pop up at some point to earnestly try and solve homelessness or some such before his lunchtime sandwich.

An ocean and a continent away, Harry is back in Montecito doing whatever the dickens he does all day – let’s just assume it involves a lot of meetings with Archewell staffers where he steeples his fingers, uses phrases like “blue-sky thinking” and commandeers all the whiteboard markers.

Now that I think about it, perhaps the better corollary here is The Anarchy, the decade-long period in the 12th century when competing forces fought for control of the throne.

Harry might not want to rule, but we are a long way from any sort of final chapter in his various holy wars.

Charles could very well be “exasperated”, “bewildered” and “frustrated” for years to come, raising the prospect of the first royal warrant holders for yoga mats, CBD gummies and lavender oil in the years ahead.

What a time to be alive.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.