Prince Harry’s Californication is finally complete

As Netflix announced it had lost 200,000 subscribers so far this year and expected to lose a further two million, Prince Harry, one of its greatest assets, was effortlessly shedding some of his own followers. 

In an interview with American news network NBC, Prince Harry shared more than was necessary about the inner workings of his mind, revealing, among other things, that his late mother was helping him set up his new life and that he wanted to “protect” the Queen and make sure she has “the right people around her”.

The headlines in Britain were brutal: “The Ego has landed”, said the Daily Star; “Duke of delusion” was the Mail’s take; while a commentator for The i suggested, “Prince Harry’s narcissism seems to know no bounds”.

Just a week before, he and Meghan had managed to evade the royal press pack and nip into Windsor Castle for a meeting with his grandmother ahead of the Invictus Games, staged in the Netherlands.

Although Brits have grown suspicious of the ex-pat Sussexes’ motives, there was goodwill surrounding the pair, or at least no gratuitous bad will (apart perhaps from that rather cruel back of the head close-up exposing the balding Windsor crown).

Harry always gets due credit for the Invictus Games, which he established more than seven years ago and which remain the one genuinely noble legacy of his brief spell as a working royal.

But as with other Sussex outings — most memorably during their otherwise successful trip to South Africa in 2019 — the nation’s collective empathy quickly curdles as soon as they open their mouths. 

Then it was Meghan who undid the positive optics of the tour with her “no one ever asks how I am” whining amid some of the most impoverished people in the world.

This time, Harry pulled off the publicity disaster without the aid of his wife, who had flown back early to their children in Santa Barbara.

In the days since he held forth — on the apparent lack of security around the Queen, on how she tells him things she can’t tell anyone else, and on how he no longer considers the UK home — there has been much analysis of what he meant.

On that, there can be little doubt. Speaking to an American market, the prince wanted it known that he could count on his granny’s unqualified support even if other senior members of the family and their advisors regarded him as an outcast.

He can brag about his supposed special relationship with the Queen without fear of contradiction as HM is unlikely to respond to such claims (although the Palace did break with tradition after the Oprah Winfrey interview, with the now legendary “recollections may vary” retort to Meghan’s wilder accusations).

The Queen may have humoured her grandson, whom she is said to love dearly; she possibly wouldn’t have wanted to ruin a rare reunion by challenging his animosity towards the Firm.

Maybe they did have a bit of a laugh, as Harry said. But the idea that she confided anything meaningful to this black sheep behind the back of his father and brother is simply not believable.

And nor is the notion that she is not protected by her staff, as Harry intimated. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the British royals is aware of the posse of devoted retainers, from her dresser to her page, and of course, her round the clock guardsmen, who would lay down their lives to keep her safe.

A gullible American public may believe Harry’s fiction, but here, where polls put him above only Prince Andrew in royal popularity stakes, people are not so easily duped. 

And that is why he poses no serious threat to the monarchy. As anticipation mounts over his tell-all memoirs, to be published later this year, Harry’s capacity to do damage dwindles by the day.

As a decorated war veteran, the old Harry’s grievances against his family would have carried weight. But with his exit to America, he has not only moved mansions but relocated his mindset; Californication is now complete.

Gone are the last traces of British reserve and common sense, with his woo-woo appropriation of his dead mother — “she’s done her bit with my brother and now she’s very much helping me”. 

How, one wonders. Diana, if she was haunting her sons, would surely bang their heads together. She would certainly despair at their estrangement and probably at Harry’s behaviour.

Harry is lost to us now, and while every fresh Sussex salvo will make its way into the royal narrative, it will be more for entertainment value than constitutional import.