The Ginger Pimpernel – as the world will probably not be calling the Duke of Sussex – has popped up once again. It was widely assumed that, after his surprisingly successful quasi-royal visit to Britain this week, he would be returning to Montecito and his family, but he has wrongfooted everyone by instead hopping over on an unannounced visit to Kyiv. There, he and other members of the Invictus Games Foundation were due to meet wounded military personnel and to announce new initiatives to offer unspecified (but presumably financial) assistance, which will be going towards sports recovery programmes to aid the rehabilitation of veterans injured in the ongoing conflict.
It is hard not to believe that he is enjoying the sensation of being in demand again.
Harry has already been to Ukraine once this year, visiting in April, but told the Guardian (naturally) that he had been invited back to the country by Olga Rudnieva, founder and CEO of the Superhumans Trauma Centre, and that she informed him that ‘the biggest impact you have is coming to Kyiv.’ He said to the newspaper that ‘We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process. We can continue to humanise the people involved in this war and what they are going through. We have to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds. I hope this trip will help to bring it home to people because it’s easy to become desensitised to what has been going on.’
All of this is thoroughly commendable behaviour on the duke’s part: compassionate, engaged and using his considerable celebrity and public profile to make what he hopes will be a significant difference. Coming directly off the back of what even his detractors acknowledged was a thoroughly well-organised and fruitful return to Britain, in which he swapped petulant courtroom shenanigans for Children in Need donations and WellChild events, it is easy to suggest that Harry, smarting from the terrible publicity he has received from his legal failures and the Sentebale disaster, wishes to reset the dial and remind the world of his personal compassion and decency.
He may very well have succeeded in doing that. Yet such has been the fervour and aggressiveness with which he has torn into his family since he fled to California in 2021 that many will be asking what his endgame actually is. The much-ballyhooed meeting he had with his father on Wednesday may have lasted less than an hour, but somehow no readout of what took place between the two has been leaked to the press. The Daily Mail yesterday promised two pages on what had really gone on between the two, only to reluctantly reveal that the biggest scoop was that there was, in fact, no scoop. Charles had only agreed to the father-son reunion on the proviso that none of the substance of their encounter made it into the papers.
If Harry really wants a reconciliation with his family – and he has been consistently saying that is what he wants – there is a mountain to climb, and this week’s good work aside, he is still very much at Base Camp. The publication of Spare and the Oprah Winfrey interview in 2021 cannot be undone – any more, much as we might wish it so, that the Netflix specials involving him and his wife would vanish from view – and Prince William remains implacable in his ongoing estrangement from his younger brother. However, the mood music is beginning to shift in this regard, with William being accused of stubbornness and an inability to compromise. If Harry continues to show himself to be the model of good works and public decency, it will get harder and harder for him to be ignored.
Is Harry, whether in a solo capacity or with Brand Sussex in mind, looking for a longer-term return to the UK, the charms of Montecito having been exhausted? It is hard to say. But this public relations offensive – and a potential return to Britain next week for the Duchess of Kent’s funeral, which would put him in the same room as his brother once again – suggests that something is going on. Like the Pimpernel, Harry is sought everywhere, and even as he does good works in Ukraine, it is hard not to believe that he is enjoying the sensation of being in demand again.
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