I wonder how a newly crowned King and Queen recovers from a coronation? Long Island Iced Teas in industrial quantities? Lomi Lomi massages followed by a whole lot of sitting down? Long contemplative walks through private woodlands about the size of Luxembourg?
As some poor souls were tasked with taking down the battalion of flags across London this week, Charles and Queen Camilla were at the family’s Norfolk weekender Sandringham enjoying some much needed R & R.
So, let’s all hope here that whatever the couple has been up to, it has done the trick and that right now His Majesty is as relaxed as one of his subjects on an all inclusive Malaga mini break because things could be about to get, what’s the technical term … hellish for His Majesty.
Do I even need to waste the time telling you that the cause of this new mess for the King is none other than Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and currently the London legal world’s single biggest source of revenue?
While the King and Queen were enjoying their footman-provided foot rubs and Twiglets on demand at Sandringham, Harry’s lawyers have been back at it, with his third legal action against a UK publisher hitting the courts in less than two months.
First in late March came his case against Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail; then in late April another one against News Group Newspapers (NGN) who put out The Sun and back in the before times, the News of the World; and now this week the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN). (NGN is also the punisher of this masthead.)
It has been a bumpy ride for the good ship Buckingham Palace thus far but where things could get decidedly nerve-jangling for His Majesty is that next month the duke will make history, becoming the first senior member of the royal family to take the stand in 130 years.
Harry plus a witness box equals every chance of fireworks bigger and with more of a bang than anything ever set off to mark a Jubilee or the late Queen’s favourite racehorse winning.
In June, Harry is expected to return to the UK and to the High Court to give evidence in the MGN suit, a prospect that should be making Charles as twitchy as when Camilla has her two BFFs over for a gal’s night involving a carton of cigarettes, a crate of Shiraz and live ammunition.
Already this year we have had plenty of embarrassing details come out via the duke’s legal manoeuvring including him revealing that his brother Prince William had received a “very large sum” from NGN in 2020 to secretly settle his own claim in relation to phone hacking.
There was also his assertion that there was some sort of secret deal between NGN and the Palace over the hacking too.
This week we got more of the same flavour of embarrassing details. NGN’s lawyers told the court that some of the stories about Harry that landed on the Mirror’s front pages could have come from Mark Bolland, then Charles’ Deputy Private Secretary. (Bolland was famously a purveyor of the dark arts when it came to the media and was the spin doctor extraordinaire who masterminded the ascent of Camilla from hated other woman to moderately respected royal doer and occasional sly wink dispenser.)
A father’s most trusted lieutenant ratting out his son to a tabloid? That’s nearly as bad as some tampon-fantasising.
So we’ve had rocky shoals aplenty courtesy of Harry’s cases, but, would seem that Harry leaving his family red faced and seething quietly is something he is as comfortable with as making small talk with the Kardashian-Jenners and pretending to know what this ‘day job’ thing is people talk about.
What that means is that, given this track record on this front, the possibilities of what might come out of Harry’s mouth when he takes the stand are such that Charles might want to think about investing in a crash helmet.
One of the recurring themes of the Great Sussex Offensive, which has been about as brutal of a fight as the Sommes but with less mud, has been the hitherto unpublicised connections between The Firm and Fleet Street.
During the Sussexes’ Netflix cringe-a-thon, Harry claimed that it was his father’s office who let slip to the press that he and Meghan were considering moving to Canada in the lead-up to Megixt. He also said that William had “played the game” when it came to the press and “this business of trading”.
He also said it had been “heartbreaking to see my brother’s office copy the very same thing the two of us promised we would never ever do”.
Then when the Spare onslaught came, the duke said that Camilla was “dangerous” and had “left bodies in the street”, “because of the connections that she was forging within the British press. And there was open willingness on both sides to trade of information”.
Just what else might Harry have up his sleeve that could leave the Palace red-faced if not looking like Machiavelli-worthy manipulators?
The mind positively reels at the possibilities, from Camilla’s secret addiction to online poker (handle: BuckinghamBabe69) to Charles’ private belief in the reintroduction of feudalism to that one time Kate drank far too much Pouilly-Fuisse at lunch and told Princess Michael of Kent what she really thought of novels. (Did one of her Bahrain drop pearl and diamond earrings fall off and drop into her Eton Mess as her mascara blearily ran? Let’s all assume so.)
What we could see coming out of the High Court in London is Harry unfiltered, Harry unchained, acoustic Harry if you will – a prospect which should have triggered a current wave of Palace-wide insomnia.
In a way, the Duke of Sussex’s trio of legal cases against various papers constitutes a bit of a twofer, taking on his greatest nemesis – parts of the British media – all with the additional effect of managing to embarrass his family in the process.
The question that Charles, William and every courtier worth their Brooks membership must be asking is, when is this going to stop? Will Harry, at the conclusion of this crop of lawsuits, be willing to move on with his life and find a new focus for his time, energy and Netflix stipends? Or is the-seemingly-at-a-loose-end duke, no longer able to style himself as an HRH and with way too many hours in the day to fill, going to keep waging this war his cash reserves run out or Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex calls time?
What seems possible today is that things may well get a lot worse for Charles before they start to get better. If he had hoped to be able to enjoy the months between now and his summer holidays basking in the room temperate glow of his post-coronation honeymoon then I have some very bad news.
Should the Balmoral housekeeper be quietly stocking up on all the Stoli, Quality Street and Scotch eggs that a certain King might soon want to sulkily comfort eat in his pyjamas? I’d say that’s the smart bet.
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.