One curious by-product of King Charles having cancer has been the definitive confirmation
that His Majesty is, despite reports to the contrary, human. He does indeed have a beating heart, troublesome flesh, and all the complicated, messy emotions that come with being alive.
Emotions like behaving like “a bloody caged lion, driving everyone round the twist if he’s stuck at home,” as a friend has told the Sunday Times, and emotions like him behaving like a petty so-and-so who needs Queen Camilla to sit him down for a stern talking-to.
Even Kings contain multitudes, like the capacity for serious grudge-holding which we are about to witness first-hand this week.
On Tuesday, UK time, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex is set to arrive back in London swaddled in his flying cashmere for another one of his British in-and-out jobs.
The reason the duke is braving a return to his perpetually nonplussed homeland is because late on Wednesday there will be a service at St Paul’s cathedral to mark 10 years since the first Invictus Games was held.
The cathedral also happens to be the site of one of the most disastrous royal weddings since George IV’s marital foray – that of Harry’s parents – and site of the last royal event that Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex voluntarily attended where she wasn’t swathed in black. Prepare for a symbolism overload.
This week’s service will see at least one government minister and vast numbers of those connected with the military community to front up to celebrate the Games and its founder – however the royal family looks set to blank the event entirely.
Charles is clearly not a man whose emotion-of-the-day calendar has got to forgiveness, or who is open to considering anything so much as a single bygone.
Despite the Invictus Games being a universally-lauded success that has, in the most literal and powerful sense, changed the lives of thousands of wounded active and serving veterans; despite the Games being one of the most successful things to have come out any palace office this century; and despite the royal family regularly strutting about the palace in their honorary gold-braided, red-jacketed military finery and strutting about the place, Crown Inc will not be showing up to the service.
Not any of the first string players like His Majesty nor, even more bluntly, a second-tier HRH dispatched to put in an obligatory appearance.
Bad form Your Majesty, deuced bad form.
The royal family staying away for Wednesday’s service will look incredibly petty, if not plain childish.
If ever there was one thing I wish I could scream from a conveniently located mountain top it’s that two things can be true at once.
You can think that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made some shortsighted and ill considered choices in setting off all of those prime time pyrotechnics while the late Queen was clearly not long for this world AND think that Harry’s Invictus work deserves no end of noisy, regular praise.
The 39-year-old former army major can have created an immensely successful and life changing initiative that redounds to his credit AND think he has made quite the hash of his life.
Yet Charles seems to have entirely failed to make this distinction, between Harry’s work and Harry the Californian who seems like he could do with a hug.
Sadly, we’ve been here before. During last year’s September’s Düsseldorf Invictus Games, it
did not go unnoticed when the royal family largely failed to do their bit for the 59-member
British team, who took home 69 medals.
The Telegraph’s Victoria Ward reported of this omission last year, “Palace sources insist members of the Royal Family never involve themselves in each other’s professional endeavours.” Parlez-vous ‘massive royal cop-out’?
As British athlete Rich Waldrom told Ward back then: “We love him here. You’ll never get a bad word out of any of us for Harry. Look what he’s built. Look what he’s created for us all.”
And that’s the key detail here – in snubbing this week’s Invictus service, it looks like the King cannot see past his complicated relationship with this son and the amazing thing his son has “created” for the global military community.
It’s not even as if Charles himself would have to front up to St Paul’s and have to pretend to make nice with Harry.
The King could just as easily have sent along Prince Edward or Princess Anne or the 88-year-old, still working, Duke of Kent who spent 21 years in the military, ending as a field marshall, the highest army rank possible.
But nope. As things stand on Monday, no members of Team Crown will be flying the flag for the King at St Paul’s.
Are you ready for some weapons-grade hypocrisy? Buckingham Palace sources have spent much of the last few days telling the UK papers how real and open the King now is, three months after being diagnosed with cancer, you would think they would see the hypocrisy here.
As a palace source told the Telegraph’s Hannah Furness: “He is literally as well as figuratively reaching out to people, happy to embrace them and hold their hand. The more people see of him and her [Camilla], the more they see they are warm and engaging on a human and personal level, in a slightly new way for a monarch.”
According to Furness, going forward, “authenticity” is being viewed as “key” by Buckingham
Palace.
And yet it’s this same “warm” King who looks set to give the military community the cold-shoulder, seemingly because their greatest champion happens to be his troublesome younger son.
At around the same time that Harry is heading towards St Paul’s on Wednesday, Charles will
be descending the steps down onto the palace lawn for the season’s first garden party.
Interesting that the King chose this day to make his big splashy return to public duty, at nearly the same moment that Harry will be being rightfully showered with praise.
That afternoon, His Majesty and His Montecito-ness will be mere kilometres apart in London and yet the auguries do not point to any sort of warm meeting.
The Telegraph has reported that “opportunities for father and son to catch up are severely limited and it is understood that nothing has yet been set in stone.”
Read: Don’t anyone get their hopes up about some touchy-feely meeting. So, in summary, what have we learnt today? That King Charles is fallible and human – and that even someone with their very own throne can, at times, struggle to behave like an adult.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’
experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.