The much hoped-for new edition of Spare must be writing itself. “‘Darling boy,’ Pa said. “This is a section 21 notice. You’re being evicted. Your attack on my darling wife was unconscionable. The new tenant, Prince Andrew, wishes to keep the copper bath.’”
Given the wealth of new material and the potentially liberating impact of Charles’s revenge, an entirely new book, Spare 2: Exiled, would probably be a better commercial decision for Random House once Harry has finished promoting volume one. The same week his family’s eviction from Windsor was revealed, he was preparing for an online session with physician Gabor Maté on “personal healing” and telling a US interviewer that he’d like to be reincarnated as an elephant.
Prior to that transformation, there’s not only the royal reaction to Spare to unpack, along with his humiliations at the late queen’s funeral, but, promisingly, all the stuff omitted from the memoir, thanks to what seems to have been some hope of reconciliation. “There are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don’t want the world to know,” he told the Telegraph. “Because I don’t think they would ever forgive me.”
But to judge by various retaliatory acts, there is not much forgiveness to forfeit. The eviction from a cottage he was allocated by the queen and its offer to a generally reviled uncle being only one indication that Harry’s exclusion is expected to be permanent and as mortifying to him as the stars of this dynastic drama can make it. Subtle, his avenging enemies are not. Harry doesn’t mind about missing the coronation? How does he feel, then, about being replaced in the public’s affections by Tom Parker Bowles? Yes, Camilla’s son, the author of Fortnum & Mason’s. An author in his own right. The Gods are just! Maybe Harry should have thought about that before he insulted the house of Parker Bowles?
It’s only a line or two in Spare but Camilla was unlikely to forget this bit: “She began,” Harry writes, “to play the long game, a campaign aimed at marriage and eventually the crown.” Favourable Camilla stories began to appear that could only, he says, have come from her: “And the leaking had obviously been abetted by the new spin doctor Camilla had talked Pa into hiring.”
The favourable press continues to this day with a vastly enjoyable Times article exploring a question on many of our minds: “Tom Parker Bowles: the Firm’s new secret weapon?” No less an authority than the Times columnist Giles Coren was happy to confirm, last week, that his friend, the suddenly priceless Fortnum asset, is a credit to his mother: “She must be a great mum because of who he is.”
But our royal bogof – acquire one Parker Bowles, get another one free – does not stop there. The queen, as more dutiful publications are already calling Camilla, might be above actually slaying anyone, but she’s evidently keen to promote her blood descendants while Harry’s babies, rightfully inheriting his doom, live to rue the day he disrespected her. In comparison, the vengeance inflicted by a ruthless queen mother on the unfortunate nanny-memoirist, Crawfie, was mild in not featuring eviction and a substitute favourite.
The plan is reportedly for Camilla’s five grandchildren to join Prince George in the coronation entertainment, fulfilling roles previously performed by duchesses, their solemn task being to hold a canopy over Camilla while she is anointed with holy oil. The Sunday Times said the refreshed ritual would send a message to subjects that Camilla and Charles “reflect the reality of modern life”. “Blended”. Not unlike Agrippina, Nero and Claudius in AD49.
Assuming modern is how the public also views the descendants of the former Silver Stick in Waiting, their multitudinous appearance could yet be problematic for King Charles in fattening up a royal family he has forever said he wants “slimmed down”. More pressing, of course, is the difficulty he has pointlessly created for himself in the approach to the coronation, in choosing the permanent proximity of his unspeakable brother in Windsor Great Park over that, rarely, of the troublesome Sussexes and their children.
Could he not wait three months to demonstrate that he considers criticism of Camilla, the queen consort, a worse offence than his brother hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein; that a whiny book is more embarrassing for his family than its connection with Andrew’s rumoured £12m settlement – despite his denials – of Virginia Giuffre’s sex abuse accusations? (To be fair, some prominent media supporters clearly share his assessment.)
Charles could hardly, anyway, object to the Sussexes’ Frogmore Cottage being largely vacant. Not after personally collecting property including Highgrove, the Castle of Mey, Birkhall, a Welsh farmhouse, a Romanian ditto, a Scilly Isles base and Dumfries House, on top of accommodation in Clarence House, Windsor Castle, Sandringham, Balmoral and Buckingham Palace. Any of which – although perhaps innocent Romanians should be spared – would be a less compromising place permanently to store Andrew.
Still, the king and Camilla deserve some credit for offering so early in his reign the Windsors’ traditional act of service: a sign to subjects that there’s always a palace-based family more fucked up than their own. A contented couple in their 70s can’t handle the not very astonishing fact that the bereaved Harry resented the rival Diana had called “the Rottweiler”.
They can’t resist fuelling this conflict, at the risk of overshadowing their own coronations and, in making it permanent, of losing two grandchildren. Where an average unhappy family might struggle to communicate, they ensure difficult relations are publicly snubbed, replacement dependants promoted. They can’t even recognise that their revenge could hardly be, from a commercial perspective, a more timely and generous gift. .
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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