Prince Harry is due at the Beverly Hills “Living Legends of Aviation” event this evening, and most of us hope that his wife will join him. Harry was also photographed out and about in California earlier this week – go here to see the pics. He wore the California-bro uniform: shorts, sneakers, a t-shirt and a semi-puffy jacket. He looked cute, honestly. Those photos came out as the palaces announced that the Princess of Wales had undergone abdominal surgery and King Charles would soon undergo prostate surgery. It was easy to predict what would come next: British media outlets screaming about how Harry should come home, except they don’t want him back, they just want him to BEG them to come back! Robert Jobson got the ball rolling with this ridiculous piece in the Mail: “Harry must be contemplating how it could have been so different. His family needs him, but he has gone AWOL. And it raises some important ‘what ifs’…”

Harry, Hal, H or Harold – the royal formerly known as Prince – must be sitting in his Montecito mansion contemplating how it could have been so different. Should have been, perhaps.

Rather than gazing at his navel or collecting pointless awards – such as being lauded as a ‘legend’ of aviation – the former Army chopper pilot could have been doing something useful for Crown and country. Once the darling of the British public for his service and a refreshingly fun character, there was a time when Harry played his role as a working royal to perfection. Likeable and engaging, he threw himself into official duties with gusto, home and abroad, and won favour with his grandmother, the late Queen.

Then, after he wed actress Meghan, he flounced off across the pond to start his new life. What exactly is this once hard-working man doing now? That’s not entirely clear, except to say that now, just when his father the King needs him, he has gone AWOL. Worse, he has burnt most of his bridges by attacking his family in books and films.

His brother William could really do with some backup, too, as he has to care for his young family as wife Kate recuperates from major abdominal surgery.

Harry’s self-imposed royal exile and Andrew’s enforced ‘exile’ following the Epstein scandal has exposed flaws in our constitutional system. We obviously wish His Majesty the King and the Princess of Wales well. I am confident they are both in the safe hands of the best medical professionals. Both are expected, in time, to make full recoveries. And the King was praised for revealing his condition – a benign enlarged prostate – to encourage men experiencing symptoms to be checked out. William is right, too, to postpone several of his engagements while his wife recuperates to care for their young family.

But these latest palace announcements expose some important ‘what ifs’. Who would step up should anything happen to the King or William? Prince George, the next in line, is still a minor. It would have been Harry. But that’s now in the past. Thankfully, one matter has now been sorted. That’s the issue of the Counsellors of State – senior members of the Royal Family who can step in for the monarch to help with public business in the case of illness. Until recently, we were relying on help from Harry in Montecito and disgraced uncle Andrew! But as of December, Princess Anne and Prince Edward can now stand in for Charles after the King sent a Message to Parliament.

[From The Daily Mail]

Jobson goes on to say that Princess Anne should be the one to step in, should something happen to Charles and (bizarrely) William at the same time. Keep in mind, no one has said that William is ill or going under anesthesia. William is choosing not to work, not to step up, not to be a temporary (de facto) regent while his father has prostate surgery. William is choosing to cancel his schedule to go on school runs and visit his wife in the hospital for one hour every other day, and so be it. That’s the choice William made and that’s the choice Charles made too. Charles saw a fork in the road in 2020 and he chose the path of “exiling Harry and hoping William would step up.” It hasn’t worked out for any of them, so don’t give me any of this hand-wringing revisionist history about “Harry going AWOL.” Charles chose this. William chose it too.

As I’ve always said, post-Sussexit, the Windsors and the royal media have always treated Harry as the now-absent linchpin of the whole operation, that he was supposed to be around forever to pick up the work slack and act as backup for these kinds of medical emergencies. If Harry was so fundamental to the whole operation, why did they treat him with such disdain and malice? Don’t answer, I know already – they thought the child they neglected and abused would never leave. Four years later, they still can’t figure out a way to exist without him.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.