The royalists are still crowing about King Charles and Prince William’s big Army Air Corps handover event on Monday. The event was scrambled together last week, hours after Prince Harry’s spokesperson said that Harry and his father would not meet, due to Charles’s busy schedule. That one statement set Charles and the palace off on a week-long tantrum in which they changed their story a million times, lied to royal reporters, and looked clownish, angry, childish and vindictive. What was even funnier and sadder is that Charles and his people were still desperately trying to reclaim the narrative and throw a tantrum so huge, it would overshadow the Sussexes’ massively successful Nigeria trip. While Charles did get the headlines he wanted, he’s come out of this week looking like an emotionally abusive, short-sighted, intemperate liar. If anyone thinks that the past week’s events were good for Charles or William, well…I don’t know what to tell you. But that didn’t stop “royal insiders” from trying to massage the narrative into “we’re doing all of this to humiliate and gaslight Harry!” Again, they think this is a winning strategy.

They’re doing all of this to humiliate & banish Harry: The royal insider said: “Harry has been stripped of security, stripped of his HRH title, denied a meeting with his father, and now his brother—who loathes him—is being made head of his old regiment. He was not deliberately humiliated last week, but his lack of significance as a member of the royal family was highlighted. It’s notable that the king didn’t send a message of support for Harry’s celebration of ten years of the Invictus Games—and even more notable that he found time to meet David Beckham but not his own son. Making William head of the Army Air Corps was previously announced, but the timing of the handover is the final nail in the coffin. The message that he is now just another outsider could not be any clearer.”

The palace’s contradictory briefings about a potential meeting between Charles & Harry: A friend of William and Kate’s told The Daily Beast: “A charitable explanation could be that Harry sent an informal request direct to his dad rather than going through the formal channels which got missed. But it doesn’t really add up. I hate to say it, but it feels a bit like the Palace gaslighting Harry because the simple facts are everyone knew Harry was here last week and wanted to see Charles. Charles is very aware of how William feels about the whole Harry situation and he has to respect his position, because he is the Prince of Wales, so a fudge that it was all down to a cock-up could suit everybody.”

[From The Daily Beast]

I hope that “friend of William and Kate” understands that if Charles is capable of throwing this kind of gaslighting tantrum towards Harry, Charles is more than capable of doing the same to the heir and his missing wife. But yeah, I agree with these sources in that I believe everything that came out of Buckingham Palace in the past week was intended for an audience of one (Harry) and that Charles really showed everyone who he really is: a vile, hateful old man who is obsessed with abusing and “humiliating” his son. The gaslighting angle is interesting too – that all of the contradictory palace briefings were some kind of strategy to make Harry seem like the liar. Was that an actual strategy? I kind of doubt it, because Charles seemed like he was on the back foot and lashing out, and his courtiers were furiously trying to come up with an explanation for why they f–ked up.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.