When Prince Harry appeared on the Stephen Colbert show earlier this week, he deviated from his usual pained ‘my family have wronged me’ routine and attempted to strike a lighter note.
He told the no doubt surprised host that his favourite smell was Meghan Markle, expressed a penchant for cheese and ham toasties with Dijon mustard on top, and laddishly suggested that he should dispose of some of his tatty old boxer shorts. When asked to describe how he would wish to live the rest of his life, he suggested five words that sounded almost like a mantra: ‘freedom, happiness, clarity, space, love.’
Harry seems unable to pass a television studio or interviewer without giving them another pained statement about ‘his truth’
Yet amidst the joshing and uxoriousness, the Duke of Sussex did say one rather more interesting thing. When Colbert asked Harry about his views on life after death, the Prince suggested that we return as animals. When pressed on which particular mammal he would like to be reincarnated as, the Duke replied ‘probably an elephant’. In context, this might have sounded like a simple, inadvertently surreal piece of badinage, but Harry is by now too seasoned and savvy a media operator to say anything accidentally. Elephants, as every school child knows, never forget, and neither do the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
When it was announced recently that they were to be evicted from their grace-and-favour residence of Frogmore Cottage, the world waited eagerly to see what their response would be. The public nature of the snub – and the added humiliation of seeing the disgraced Prince Andrew handed their former home into the bargain – needed some kind of reaction, and so it has proved.
The couple’s official statement was tight-lipped to the point of reticence: ‘The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been requested to vacate their residence at Frogmore Cottage’, a spokesman confirmed in the light of the news. The most interesting reaction, however, has come via that time-honoured source, the anonymous ‘friend’, speaking to Harry and Meghan’s ally and biographer Omid Scobie. This loose-lipped chum said ‘it feels like cruel and unusual punishment’, and suggested that at least two members of the wider Royal Family were shocked at the ‘callous’ treatment with which the Duke and Duchess have been treated. ‘It’s like the family want to cut them out of the picture for good’, the outraged friend declared.
This is not a deduction that needed the forensic skills of Sherlock Holmes to arrive at. For all of Prince Andrew’s irritations and embarrassments, he has at least been largely quiet over the past year, and the gift of Frogmore Cottage represents the payment for his continued silence. Harry, however, seems unable to pass a television studio or interviewer without giving them another pained statement about ‘his truth’, which, in a form of Godwin’s law, always comes down to how he and his wife have been horrendously wronged by the Royal Family.
Whether or not one believes that their eviction from Frogmore Cottage was justified or petty, there is no doubt that this particular action will cause a reaction, and it will not be long coming. To add to the gaiety of nations, Prince Harry will be participating in a live-streamed interview with Dr Gabor Maté this Saturday, ostensibly to promote Spare, but it would be unsurprising if the conversation veered off into other areas, including this.
The old adage has it that revenge is a dish best served cold. One would not bet against this particular savoury treat being delivered at vindaloo strength – the controversy bandwagon will keep on rolling in consequence.
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