– Aberdeen On Friday, the day after the passing of his grandmother Queen Elizabeth, Prince Harry placed his arm over the shoulder of an airport employee who had expressed her sorrow while walking with him across the tarmac just before boarding an aircraft at Aberdeen.
It was a friendly and casual moment typical of Harry, whose affable demeanor had long made him one of the most well-liked royals. However, his choice to stand down from royal responsibilities had left a rift in the family that has yet to be fully patched.
As the queen’s closest family members raced to be with her in her dying hours, Harry was the last person to arrive at Balmoral Castle on Thursday. He was also the first person to leave on Friday, signifying that he is no longer a member of the family’s close-knit group.
The world saw a peek of Harry’s grandmother and him in better times when they appeared together in a humorous video in 2016 in response to Barack and Michelle Obama’s mic-drop insult ahead of the Invictus Games, a tournament for handicapped veterans that Harry has sponsored.
But the fact that Harry was in Britain at the time Elizabeth passed away was purely coincidental, since there had been no mention of him visiting his family in the States, where he and his American wife Meghan now reside.
Family relations will undoubtedly change now that the matriarch is gone, and as the pomp and circumstance of Elizabeth’s burial unfold, onlookers will be keeping a watchful eye out for any indications of a detente.
One of the familial dramas that has made the House of Windsor an everlasting source of curiosity for people all over the world is how the royals deal with Harry, Meghan, and their offspring. This will be a major subject of the post-Elizabeth period.
Harry’s father Charles is now the king, thus his children Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1, immediately get the titles of prince or princess of the realm in accordance with royal custom. After the queen’s childhood nickname, Lilibet was given that name.
Harry’s connections with Charles and his elder brother Prince William, who is now the heir to the throne, are unlikely to be reconciled by that novelty alone.
The brothers were close for many years after the passing of their mother Diana in a vehicle accident in 1997, when William was 15 and Harry was 12, but since Harry and Meghan started drifting apart in January 2020, their relationship has deteriorated.
“RECOLLECTIONS MAY VARY“
Initially, the couple said they planned to balance their time between Britain and the United States and carve out “a progressive new role” within the monarchy.
But their plan did not wash with Elizabeth, Charles or William, who ruled that there was no space in the Firm, as the royal family is sometimes called, for part-timers.
Instead, the couple moved full-time to California and, after a 12-month review period, relinquished their royal patronages and permanently left the exclusive club of those addressed as“Your Royal Highness”.
In March 2021, they gave a bombshell interview to Oprah Winfrey during which Meghan said her unhappiness during her time as a working royal had pushed her to the brink of suicide.
She also said there had been concerns within the family when she was pregnant with Archie about what colour the baby’s skin would be. Meghan’s mother is black and her father is white.
The interview, aired on CBS in a blaze of global publicity, generated acres of newsprint but only a terse statement from Buckingham Palace which said icily that “some recollections may vary” though the issues raised were “concerning”.
Since then, Harry and Meghan have engaged in projects such as podcasts and TV programmes, while suing British tabloids, some of which have kept up a constant barrage of anti-Meghan stories.
Publisher Penguin Random House announced in July 2021 that Harry was working on an “intimate and heartfelt” book about his life, to be published in late 2022 — sending shivers of dread down royal spines in London.
Depending on its contents, and crucially on the reaction from his father and brother, the publication of Harry’s book could prove to be either a moment of healing or another grievance for the two sides to hold against each other.