As welcome-back-to-Britain gestures go, the lord chamberlain’s letter, sent on behalf of King Charles on Monday to remind Harry, Meghan and everyone watching that they’re still “private citizens”, was so perfect as to restore me to monarchism. After six years in the wilderness, what greater comfort for Prince Harry than to find himself, once again, in the familiar waters of this country’s passive aggression, being attacked by his father via the merciless phrase “fully respected”, and provoking from the prince a coded up-yours in the form of his publicly stated “surprise”.
Well, it’s up there with better cheese, bread and the NHS, isn’t it?! Even the most Eurocentric American can’t match us for this kind of subtextual bare-knuckle fight. Before we get into what else the returnees may be enjoying this month, let’s fully excavate the letter’s encrypted hostility. First, the king’s repeated use of the words “personal” and “private” – as in “the charitable work of the Duke and Duchess is a personal matter for them both and undertaken in their private capacity” – is so intense, so heavy handed, as to go beyond merely calling his younger son a civilian and come perilously close to the ultimate insult, “middle class”.
Second, this: “in short, their position is akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests”. As we know, opening a sentence with “in short” is an absolute middle finger of a move, up there for officiousness with “furthermore”, “with respect”, “to be clear” and “I think you’ll find”. Elsewhere in that sentence, roping together the words “commercial” and “charitable”, is, I would suggest, a deliberate tactic to insinuate that the former (grubby little money-makers!) undermines the integrity of the latter (charitable, my arse!) and suggest that the Sussexes are just in it for themselves.
And finally: the absolute shellacking of the letter’s dismount, in which the king writes: “This position, distinct from the state and royal duties undertaken by the working royal family, and with the personal latitude it brings the couple in respect of financial independence and protection of their privacy as they would wish, will continue to be fully respected.”
Or in layperson’s language: “haha, you’re not royal any more, nothing in your status warrants the sustained use of capital letters or a requirement for history to remember you. We’re not giving you any money because you’ve brought this on yourselves and ps, your invocation of privacy, post the publication of your memoir and your sit-down with Oprah, is an absolute joke we couldn’t be enjoying more. See ya.” God the seething, green bile acidity of the phrase “as they would wish”! Bravo, sir! Absolutely gold standard! Poor Harry must be reeling, even as he relaxes into the warm gust of air in which he was raised. (Meghan, one assumes, is largely oblivious to just how devastating all of this is and may have found the letter merely a touch snotty.)
For the formerly royal couple, we must assume that any upset caused by the tone of this letter – and allowing for the prince’s bone-deep recognition and masochistic enjoyment of what might otherwise be an upsetting exchange – is offset by the many advantages they will enjoy now they’re back in the old country. Rolling green hills are obviously a thing of the past; the Cotswolds are as brown as southern California right now. But the prince may find comfort in the small-scale landscape, the patchwork of fields and hedgerows, the tiny lanes like crooked elbows, jammed up with tractors and alive with tiny brown birds, that large-scale farming in the US doesn’t do.
I mentioned the cheese and the bread, infinitely superior to the rubbery and sugary American equivalents, and I’d add English strawberries to that, even this late in the season. Perhaps Harry will be reunited with some of his old wardrobe favourites, too. It’s never wax jacket season in Montecito, where an extreme heat warning is in place; meanwhile, the whole of this country is down on all fours excavating its woolly jumpers from under the bed. (Don’t tell me the words “woolly jumper” won’t soothe Harry after enforced wearing of sweaters and hoodies.) For Meghan, these consolations will be alien, but perhaps, before it starts to enrage her, she can find comfort in this country’s relative slowness, its high tolerance for dishevelment and appreciation for sarcasm – failing which, there’s always the pub.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
