In Mike Bartlett’s 2017 play “King Charles III,” Queen Elizabeth II has died and Prince Charles succeeds her and immediately precipitates a constitutional crisis that has Prince William and wife Catherine looking to wrest the crown away from him. In the midst of rioting in the streets, Prince Harry falls in love with a black woman and decides to abandon royal life for her but in the end, acquiesces to remain in the fold and support the new king and queen.
Truth, of course, has a way of being stranger than fiction, for the real Prince Harry has gone further and farther than the fictional one ever does — all the way to Vancouver Island, Canada but stripped of His Royal Highness status and any state funding. He and his wife, Meghan, are also required to repay the $3.1 million that British taxpayers shelled out to refurbish Frogmore Cottage, which was, is, their British home.
To read the posts on various British and American sites, you would think that they have somehow won, but I’m afraid the posters are as naive as the Sussexes. That the duke and duchess will retain that title, which is key to their Sussex Royal brand, is small potatoes to the royal family, which has nonetheless put perimeters on the kinds of things the brand can represent and the deals they can make. There are tons of dukes and duchesses of paper clips. What matters to the royals is the HRH. Remember they deprived Diana, Princess of Wales of it. (Oh, how like her is her passionate younger son, more heart than head, more sensibility than sense, unlike the steady William and his poised wife.) The royals also made sure that Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, for whom the duke, the former Edward VIII, gave up a throne, was denied it.
To be stripped of your HRH — oh, excuse me, to be told you’ll no longer be using it, because you’ll no longer be a working royal — is to say, “You’re out.” Similarly, the public has misread the queen’s gracious statement, particularly this sentence, “Harry Meghan and Archie will always be much loved members of my family.”
Whenever someone says “I will always love you,” it’s a door slamming, not a continuing chapter. Witness President Donald J. Trump, whose impeachment trial rages on in the Capitol, saying he would always love New York, right after he announced a change of his permanent residence to Florida. Of course, the ultimate “I Will Always Love You” kiss-off is the Dolly Parton song, which she wrote to get out out of her contract with Porter Wagoner. Here you have to hand it to the queen. No one plays the game better. They can’t say she isn’t understanding. And yet, we know exactly what she means.
Perhaps Harry should play Parton’s song as he contemplates paying for the Frogmore renovations, along with the monthly rent.. (The English always play out their relationships in real estate. See Jane Austen’s “Sanditon” and E.M. Forster’s “Howards End,” both now on PBS.) What some people never get in their naiveté and presumptuousness is that rejecting someone or something frees the rejected to do some rejecting in turn. Perhaps the now-just-plain Harry and Meghan thought they’d tie the queen’s hands with their part-time royals salvo. All they did was free her of them.
What of the military appointments that once meant so much to Harry, the former soldier — the relationships with the grandmother who doted on him, the father who tried to make up for what he did to Diana and waltzed Meghan down the aisle, the brother he always turned to, the sister-in-law who was more of a sister, the niece and nephews he played with. Gone now. One day Meghan and Harry —or at least he — may realize that in gaining, they’ve also lost.