Prince Harry had already arrived in Lesotho by mid-day on Tuesday, which makes me wonder if Harry really did leave England just hours after the WellChild Awards on Monday night. It’s a long flight from Heathrow to Lesotho – he could have taken the red eye and been in southern Africa by mid-morning. We know he was in Lesotho in time for lunch because Princess Senate Seeiso of Lesotho posted a photo with Harry, with the message of: “Had the pleasure of hosting the Duke of Sussex today for lunch.” Did Harry even spend 24 hours in the UK? I don’t think he did. I bring this up because the lunatics over there are still humping their padded cells and chanting “Harry wants to come back to us, he wants to come back to royal work!” All of this has been deliberately obfuscated: the royalists truly believe that “someone doing high-profile charity work” is somehow “someone doing pseudo-royal work.” They do not believe service is universal. They believe only royals can “serve” in any way. This comes up in the Telegraph’s latest, “Where’s Meghan? Why Harry is going it alone: Royal observers say there is a new strategy to remind people of the Prince ‘they loved’.” Some lowlights:

WellChild was the seventh event for solo Harry: Unusually, though, the event was the seventh solo engagement the Duke of Sussex had undertaken in seven days. The Duchess and their children did not travel to London, or to New York where the Prince gave five high profile speeches last week and appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show. Nor was the Duchess accompanying Harry when he arrived in Lesotho on Tuesday for what became his eighth solo appearance in as many days.

Where’s Meghan?? Particularly given the couple’s previous joint trips to Nigeria and Colombia in recent months, the Duke’s solo appearances have raised, perhaps inevitably, the question: Where’s Meghan? For a couple who have described themselves as “salt and pepper” because they “always move together”, and bought their Montecito house because two “connected” palm trees were reminiscent of their relationship, their professional separation is new…The question of the Duchess’s whereabouts is easy to answer in technical terms: she is at home, with her two young children, while her husband travels. She is also working on plans for American Riviera Orchard, including a range of jams which have been distributed to influential friends.

Harry’s solo events mean he wants to come back to royal work, obviously: [Harry’s solo] schedule has prompted speculation among royal observers that he is hankering for his royal life. With the exception of a televised haunted house skit with Jimmy Kimmel, the US comedian, and a private hour spent in a tattoo parlour, the programme could have been plucked from any week of his former role as a working royal.

Mark Borkwski is always in need a paycheck: “There has been a separation [of their work] for a while,” notes PR strategist Mark Borkowski, who has followed coverage of the Sussexes closely. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to think there’s something going on. She has been doing the jam thing, the Martha Stewart play. He seems to be going back to basics.” The “star power” they were expected to have together when they first left Britain, he says, “didn’t work” as hoped. “They had to change the narrative. They need a venture that deflects from the failures. The charity aspect impresses upon everybody that he [Harry] does have value beyond the controversial stuff. It has the effect of separating them from the bad press and the failed content ideas.”

A return to royal duties: Royal commentators have observed something of a return to royal-style duties after a long period of controversy. Ingrid Seward, editor in chief of Majesty magazine and author of royal biographies including the recent My Mother & I, says: “Prince Harry has finally realised – or been advised – that dissing his own family did him no favours. The golden ticket is for him to remind us why we loved him: For his Diana-like ability with children, the disabled and the disadvantaged. He might have finally appreciated he is far more powerful on his own without the distraction of Meghan as Diana was without Charles.”

Harry is Meghan’s spare: Phil Dampier, a royal correspondent of nearly 40 years and author of Royally Suited: Harry and Meghan in their own words, describes the Prince’s recent reputation as “starting to lose ground”, “looking like a bolt-on accessory” to the Duchess “rather than the Prince that he is”. “It’s fairly obvious that on these trips to Nigeria and Colombia, Meghan was the dominant partner and Harry looked and possibly felt a bit like a spare part,” he said. “This looks like a definite attempt by him to strike out on his own and carve out a niche for himself that isn’t Invictus. I think we’re going to see him do more of this, him travelling and doing things on his own, restoring some kind of prestige.”

[From The Telegraph]

While it’s possible some of this stuff is coming from Buckingham Palace and/or the fantasist royalists, the conversation about “royal-style duties” and “plucked from any week of his former role as a working royal” sounds a lot like the near-constant briefings from Kensington Palace. For years now, Prince William has been utterly bewildered by the fact that Harry would still want to do good and be involved in charity work and humanitarian work. To William, those are “royal duties” to be avoided like the plague. That kind of work is William’s heavy burden and he avoids it at all cost. William is the one who can’t comprehend Harry’s moves, and believes that Harry doing WellChild or Travalyst or HALO Trust events *must* mean that Harry wants to come back and “be royal,” because why else would Harry do all of that? Add in the fact that Meghan is just being in yet another undercover era, and basically, William is in some kind of hairy, eggy frenzy of confusion right now.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Princess Senate’s IG Stories.