As of this moment, I’ve yet to see any kind of concerted campaign by Buckingham Palace or Clarence House to kneecap the Duke and Duchess of Sussex ahead of their Jubbly trip. It’s been interesting. There’s negativity, of course, and the negativity falls into two categories: 1) pissy royal commentators looking to stoke drama around the Sussexes’ visit and 2) pissy Kensington Palace people showing their asses. It really does feel like the Queen and Prince Charles want very little advanced drama though. There will be drama enough during and after Harry and Meghan’s visit, I’m sure. Still, it says something. That something: Charles and the Queen need a “win” with Harry and Meghan more than the Sussexes need any of this. What’s interesting to see is that some royal commentators are even coming close to admitting that:
The Royal Family will use events around the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee to bring Harry and Meghan closer to the rest of the family, according to one expert. After years of bad blood, Kate Mansey, assistant editor at the Mail on Sunday says she believes that the Queen wants a rapprochement with the Sussexes who quit royal working life in 2020.
‘There is generally a sense that they want to bring the Sussexes in, I think. They will be invited to lots of family occasions, just not the big, official numbers,’ she tells our royal talk show Palace Confidential.
That doesn’t mean the initial encounters won’t be awkward says the Daily Mail’s Royal Editor Rebecca English, with much speculation about how the Sussexes will interact with the rest of the royals at a Jubilee thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral on June 3.
‘The amount of time that they’re seen interacting with other family members on camera will be fairly limited,’ she tells the programme. ‘But as one source said to me the other week, the body language is going to be fascinating. I just hope for the Queen’s sake it doesn’t overshadow everything else that’s going on over the weekend.’
The Mail on Sunday’s Editor At Large Charlotte Griffiths says the royal balcony will miss Harry’s humour. ‘Harry could have been the Duke of Edinburgh Mark Two, and we kind of need that,’ she says. ‘The Royal Family do take themselves very seriously but there is a fun side to them and Harry just would have been brilliant at that and he could have brought a jocular side to balcony moments and things like that and we’ve lost that now.’
[From The Daily Mail]
So… even the Mail commentators are sounding somewhat conciliatory. They really want those photos. They really want those leaks from Kensington Palace. They really want that fresh gossip. If they’re lucky, a week-long visit from the Sussex Family will keep the Mail in royal storylines for an entire summer. And I love how, after all the bitching, the moaning, the leaking, the exiling, the tantrums and the incandescence, people are like “but the Windsors would love it if Harry and Meghan came back!” Are you not embarrassed?
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