For the Windsors’ “big birthdays,” they usually organize authorized articles and interviews with their friends and advisors, all to describe how wonderful the birthday boy or birthday girl is. I’m still haunted by Princess Kate’s 40th birthday keenery in 2022, she went way overboard and it was like we got a glimpse at Kate’s juvenile quest to be seen as perfect, untouchable, brilliant and yet completely normal. Well, Prince Harry – a Virgo King – will turn 40 in September. Harry is obviously not part of the catastrophe that is the Windsor clan these days, but that didn’t stop Roya Nikkhah at the Sunday Times from writing a birthday piece about Harry. 80% of this piece is just Nikkhah regurgitating every stupid talking point from the British media, with bonus new quotes from people cut off from Harry years ago, including Prince William. Nikkhah did seem to speak to a couple of people who genuinely like Harry, but she drowns them out in her negativity and concludes the piece with: “As he prepares to turn 40, in his quest to stay relevant, Harry will hope his once captive audience doesn’t tune out.” My sister in royal gossip, you just devoted 10,000 words to someone you claim is barely relevant. Anyway, some highlights:

Harry at a crossroads: Those closest to him say he is at a crossroads. After laying his soul bare last year with Spare, the fastest-selling non-fiction book in history, he seems torn between battling old demons and getting on with his life. “All he does is spend time looking back,” says one former adviser to Harry. “If only he could wrench his neck around and look forwards.”

Harry is clearly yearning for something more: Some who have known him since his army days — the time in his life that seemed to give him his strongest sense of self, and inspired him to launch the Invictus Games for injured veterans in 2014 — think he is grappling with a key unanswered question: “What is the purpose of Prince Harry and what is Prince Harry’s purpose?”, as one of his former aides puts it. “He loved the army and was very good at his job. The work with Invictus is great and fatherhood was the role he most wanted, so perhaps those are enough for him. But everything else is a bit woolly. I always thought he wanted more from life. I can’t help but think he must be wondering, ‘Where do I go from here?’”

Why doesn’t Harry want to fall out of pubs anymore?? “I know how important it is for him to have a happy, settled family life, but you need to do more than that if you’re him,” says a source who has known Harry since his teenage years. “He has ended up isolated from his family and most of his old mates, in an environment where your friendships are not like the ones you forged as a young man. He used to love a night out in the pub and hanging out in the country with friends. Maybe he has grown into a different person, but do I think he’d really suit the Californian lifestyle? No. Now we’ve seen it all play out, what has that left him with? On the surface, an enviable lifestyle — but for the Harry I know, I can’t imagine that gilded exile in California is where he wanted to end up.”

How dare Harry tell his story & not let his family smear him: Many cannot forgive Harry’s decision to air the family laundry. After Spare was published, one of his closest friends, who has faithfully kept Harry’s secrets, told me, “I can’t believe he’d stoop so low. It’s outrageously disloyal. Oprah, Netflix and then the book? Three strikes and you’re out.” Another friend of William and Harry’s says, “Harry and Meghan could have left with dignity and decency and not trashed the institution. The conclusion is they’ve made money from trashing his family.”

Angry Harry: One of Harry’s oldest friends says they are among the few who get “the odd WhatsApp from him”, adding, “He’s an angry boy. Things haven’t turned out how he wanted. I think he misses being over here [in Britain] desperately and wants to be admired more. Anyone who knows him feels he’d rather be top of the pops here with everyone loving him, as they do with William and Kate.”

How King Charles treated Harry after QEII’s death: The Sussexes also understood they would be at Buckingham Palace on the eve of the funeral alongside the rest of the royal family, when Charles and Camilla hosted a reception for foreign heads of state. They were initially asked to the event but their invitations were later “rescinded”, with the Palace clarifying the event was for “working members of the royal family” only. A friend of Harry’s tells me this had difficult repercussions for the Duke of Sussex, who missed an important family briefing on the funeral as a result. “The King made some really bad decisions — it was conveyed that he didn’t want them there. For f***’s sake, this was a global reception for his grandmother, and as her grandson, he should have been there. There was a funeral briefing for the whole family at the palace just before the reception, which would have meant Harry and Meghan going to the briefing then having to leave the palace as all the guests were arriving and other family members were staying. So in the end, they didn’t go. The briefing notes didn’t arrive [via email] for them until around 11pm.” Such decisions understandably wounded Harry.

Charles might show up to the Invictus Games in 2027: One arena for a public rapprochement between father and son could be the Invictus Games, which is next staged in Canada in February and returns to the UK in 2027 in Birmingham. Some close to the King think he will want to support his son there. A friend of Charles says, “I think he would acknowledge it would be a good thing to go to. He would not want to look punitive.” Charles attended the inaugural Invictus Games in 2014 — as did William, who is not expected to go again.

LOL, Harry needs William?? The permafrost between heir and spare seems unlikely to thaw. A friend of both concedes, “I always said the brothers would be there for each other at the end of the day, and that’s been proven wrong so far.” Another close friend says, “Harry simply cannot do without his brother.” But William appears committed to making do without his sibling. For now, he has written Harry out of his script. The brothers are understood not to have spoken since the Queen’s funeral, when they “barely exchanged a word”, Harry wrote in Spare.

Willy won’t invite Harry to his coronation: In the aftermath of the King’s coronation last year, William let it be known that he wanted his own crowning to “look and feel different”. One difference could be the absence of Harry. Friends of William say that as things stand he would not want his brother at his coronation, whenever that time comes. One of the brothers’ closest friends says, “They are estranged, which is dreadfully sad.”

The Sussexes are not super-famous in LA? A friend and adviser to the royal family, who once worked closely with Harry, feels he has work to do to make his mark Stateside. “What they haven’t been able to do is create a public presence that’s respected and popular. I was in LA recently and was struck by how they’re not the topic of conversation. Everyone wanted to know about the King and Kate’s health. Harry and Meghan have dropped out of the conversation.”

[From The Times]

LMAO at so much of this – it’s not “here’s what’s really going on in Harry’s life,” it’s “here are a bunch of people who haven’t spoken to Harry in years, bitching about how he left them.” They (William) can barely conceal their seething rage that Harry isn’t their scapegoat, that they (William) can’t order him around and smear him at will. I think the purpose of this was not even “Harry’s turning 40” but rather “William still hates Harry and won’t invite him to his coronation!!!” The sh-t about the Sussexes not being the topic of conversation in LA… that’s because the Brits can’t shut up about Harry & Meghan and the Brits think that everyone else is obsessed with them too. They cannot comprehend the fact that most Americans treat the Sussexes like any other celebrity couple. It’s been over five years of this from the lunatic asylum masquerading as a national press and royal family.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.