There was a very good, measured piece by Shane Watson about the royal "situation" in yesterday’s Times. Here are three paragraphs:
A job that has never been a walk in the park for William has overnight become fraught with potential for clashes and upstaging. Today William and Kate take time out to visit a struggling tweed-mill … which is lovely … Ooh, but, hang on a minute, here’s Harry and Meghan going walkabout in Burford Garden Centre and employees report that she ordered a poolside gazebo and a dog bed piped with tartan “because my husband adores tartan”.
What’s William thinking now? Something along the lines of, “don’t let them near me”, obviously, but that’s just a symptom of his one, all-consuming white-noise thought which is: “How Dare They Do This to Us?”
The “Us” are the core members of the royal family who have been forced to ramp up their commitments to fill the gaps since H and M decided to find “other ways to serve” that involved substantial financial compensation. The Us is him and his father, a unit of three after the death of Diana, now reduced to two. But the big Us is Kate and William, on whom the hopes of the royal family now rest heavily. Leaving everything else aside, their job is lonelier, bigger, harder and more fraught post Megxit and, having just adjusted to the new normal, now the people responsible are looming once again on the horizon, smiling and waving. Wearing fancy clothes and touching their hearts. Hob-nobbing with the Guy Ritchies of this world, while Kate and Wills keep on doing exactly what’s expected of them.
There are some things that are beyond forgiveness, and Harry’s treachery towards his family comes into that category. The King was a saint to have Harry and the Wicked Witch of Montecito to tea the other week, but fathers are fathers (and the King would obviously like to get to know his grandchildren, even though they are ginger). But a brother-brother relationship is different.
Remember the silly, smug clergywoman who wrote a nauseating letter to the Times that I quoted in my Reply #19, in which she suggested that William must forgive Harry?
I beg to differ.
Harry’s account of a row with William in his revenge-fest Spare read as follows: “He came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me.”
Should they ever meet again, William would be forgiven if – instead of just breaking a dog-bowl – he broke the little shit’s neck.