MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Sour, joyless Harry was already the prince of his own pyre, the architect of his own misery… and now, glowering at Katy Perry’s glittering Vegas concert, he’s officially become a colossal drag

All is not well, it seems, in the House of Sussex – specifically with our disconsolate duke.

Here was Prince Harry, glowering and glum, at a Katy Perry show in Las Vegas over the weekend.

Perry’s stock-in-trade is glitter, rainbows and cheer – the kind of guaranteed fluff that compels even Meghan Markle to shake her mantle of perpetual victimhood and have a visibly great time.

Harry, meanwhile, looked like he’d just been given a catastrophic diagnosis.

His sour disposition called to mind America’s reigning champ of churlishness, Ben Affleck.

Remember his demeanor this year’s Grammys, simmering and sulking next to smiles-on, glammed-up wife J.Lo.

All is not well, it seems, in the House of Sussex – specifically with our disconsolate duke. Here was Prince Harry , glowering and glum, at a Katy Perry show in Las Vegas over the weekend.

Perry’s stock-in-trade is glitter, rainbows and cheer – the kind of guaranteed fluff that compels even Meghan Markle to shake her mantle of perpetual victimhood and have a visibly great time. Harry, meanwhile, looked like he’d just been given a catastrophic diagnosis .

‘Look motivated!’ Lopez reportedly snapped at Affleck that night.

That’s a note Harry should take. Unless, as I suspect, he wants the world to see his misery.

After all, he’s been here before.

In September, a grey-suited Harry stood still as a statue at Beyoncé’s sparkling Renaissance show, checking his phone and pouting while Meghan, in a silver sequined skirt, danced and cheered from their private box at California’s SoFi Stadium.

That little vignette said it all: Harry, for all his wealth, fame, privilege and access – for all that hard work ‘Finding Freedom’ – remains at his core bitter, resentful and angry.

This is a middle-aged man who still sees the world through the narrowest of apertures, reflecting his apparent narcissism and immaturity.

This is not someone who, counter to the pre-Meghan memory of Harry, has a sense of humor or joie de vivre.

Nor someone who, unlike his late mother, finds post-Windsor purpose in helping those less fortunate, preferring to sully himself with Netflix deals and public self-pity parties.

Harry appears to be, for want of a better phrase, a colossal drag.

Look no further than his father’s historic coronation in May, Harry sans Meghan and seated third row.

Rather than conduct himself accordingly, rather than accept the olive branch, Harry refused to return to Buckingham Palace after the ceremony. He said not one word to his father or brother. Instead, he headed straight back to L.A., a whirlwind 28 hours that left the royals baffled.

As one friend of the family told Vanity Fair, Harry’s behavior left them ‘wondering why [he] had bothered to come at all.’

‘One makes one’s choices,’ the source said.

Indeed. And now Harry is experiencing something that, given the constantly traumatized look on his face, seems alien to him: consequences.

His sour disposition called to mind America’s reigning champ of churlishness, Ben Affleck . Remember his demeanor this year’s Grammys , simmering and sulking next to smiles-on, glammed-up wife J.Lo. ‘Look motivated!’ Lopez reportedly snapped at Affleck that night. That’s a note Harry should take. Unless, as I suspect, he wants the world to see his misery.

After all, he’s been here before. In September, a grey-suited Harry stood still as a statue at Beyoncé’s sparkling Renaissance show (pictured), checking his phone and pouting while Meghan, in a silver sequined skirt, danced and cheered from their private box at California’s SoFi Stadium. That little vignette said it all: Harry, for all his wealth, fame, privilege and access – for all that hard work ‘Finding Freedom’ – remains at his core bitter, resentful and angry.

As every astute observer, critic, columnist, reviewer and rubbernecker has warned since Harry embarked on this inglorious exile, he – and Meghan – were bound to face repercussions.

After that initial high of sitting down with Oprah and slinging baseless accusations of racism, barely concealing their malevolent, profiteering impulses behind self-actualization and the Montecito sunshine – well, it turns out the Sussexes have become a punchline.

This clearly does not sit well. Alas, the gloves are off, the knives are out, the schadenfreude delectable.

In that now-legendary ‘South Park’ episode, the Duke and Duchess were eviscerated as professional victims who, as one character laments, refuse to go away despite proclaiming they want zero attention: ‘I’m sick of hearing about them! I can’t get away from them!’

A cri de cœur for us all.

That was in February, weeks after Harry’s memoir ‘Spare’ – called ‘WAAAGH’ in ‘South Park’ – hit shelves.

The would-be literary classic became fodder for late-night talk shows: Jimmy Kimmel mocking Harry’s frostbitten todger; Stephen Colbert, who interviewed the prince, comparing him to Harry Potter and forcing him to down tequila shots for cheap laughs.

Fresher humiliations abound: Spotify dropping Meghan’s podcast in June and cancelling the couple’s $20 million deal entirely, with executive Bill Simmons publicly castigating H&M as ‘f***ing grifters’.

The animated series ‘Family Guy’ similarly brutalized them a few weeks ago, with Harry and Meghan sitting poolside as a butler approaches to hand the prince a check.

‘Sir,’ he says, ‘your millions from Netflix for no one knows what.’

‘Put it with the rest of them,’ drones an imperious Harry.

And over the weekend, former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter took yet another shot at Harry and Meghan, predicting that their marriage would last ‘years, not decades.’

Vanity Fair, which put a little-known Meghan on its cover back in 2017 with the headline ‘She’s Just Wild about Harry!’ – which Meghan later claimed was racist.

Perhaps this is all part of Harry’s rage. He and his wife, the former C-list actress of ‘Suits’, were doubtless expecting a new life as Hollywood royalty: Invitations to the Met Gala, the Oscars, to Barack Obama’s 60th birthday party, to Oprah events and George and Amal Clooney’s humanitarian awards — all have yet to materialize.

Hollywood, by and large, laughs at them now. Our would-be Duchess of Hearts had her grand moment this spring as the Duchess of Hertz. A subsequent breathless car chase through Midtown Manhattan was panned as a farce.

And so a private jet shared with the likes of Cameron Diaz, forgotten-musician Benji Madden and ‘Avatar’ actress Zoe Saldana, to see Katy Perry in Vegas, surely offers Harry little consolation.

Compared to his former life as a royal, it must seem a cheap and seamy kind of fame, consorting with mid-level celebs in a joyless scrum to prove… what, exactly?

Harry doesn’t seem to know either.

They were doubtless expecting a new life as Hollywood royalty: Invitations to the Met Gala, the Oscars, to Barack Obama’s 60th birthday party, George and Amal Clooney’s humanitarian awards — all have yet to materialize. Hollywood, by and large, laughs at them now. Our would-be Duchess of Hearts had her grand moment this spring as the Duchess of Hertz (pictured). A subsequent breathless car chase through Midtown Manhattan was panned as a farce.

And so a private jet shared with the likes of Cameron Diaz, forgotten-musician Benji Madden and ‘Avatar’ actress Zoe Saldana, to see Katy Perry in Vegas, surely offers Harry little consolation. Compared to his former life as a royal, it must seem a cheap and seamy kind of fame, consorting with mid-level celebs in a joyless scrum to prove… what, exactly?

Meanwhile, his father’s 75th birthday approaches with a kind of Cold War détente.

As a friend of Charles told the UK’s Sunday Times, ‘there are issues that aren’t resolved and there won’t be a rapprochement anytime soon… But that doesn’t change the King’s love for his son. He’ll never not invite his son to a family gathering, because that’s not who he is.’

The implication, from both sides, is that Harry – pointedly, not Meghan – is always invited and always expected to turn those invitations down. Appreciated for it, perhaps.

As Meghan plots her much-vaunted rebrand (‘Look at me, don’t look at me!’), Harry must clearly wonder what’s next. His memoir, un-self-aware and substance-free, lingers in remainder bins. Spotify is done. Netflix is on the bubble. His family can never trust him again.

He has become the prince of his own pyre, the architect of his own misery.

Call it karma, consequence, or poetic justice, but this was always the ending: Our prince building something that was only ever going to burn all the way down.

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