We need to talk about Prince Harry

He’s started to resemble a captured dignitary forced to spout horrifying woke propaganda

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
Prince Harry: Hostage, with fortune
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There’s no denying we Brits feel a mother’s love for Prince Harry. It’s why over the years we’ve indulged his excesses and grown so disproportionately proud of his achievements. We know he’s not the brightest, but we’ve watched him emerge from a childhood defined by tragedy and we feel protective of him.

It’s also the reason we find the internet videos in which he now keeps appearing like a captured dignitary forced to spout woke propaganda so horrifying. To us, they’re proof positive we’ve been usurped. Harry has married an American woman who seems to have…

There’s no denying we Brits feel a mother’s love for Prince Harry. It’s why over the years we’ve indulged his excesses and grown so disproportionately proud of his achievements. We know he’s not the brightest, but we’ve watched him emerge from a childhood defined by tragedy and we feel protective of him.

It’s also the reason we find the internet videos in which he now keeps appearing like a captured dignitary forced to spout woke propaganda so horrifying. To us, they’re proof positive we’ve been usurped. Harry has married an American woman who seems to have turned him into a sort of west-coast liberal zombie.

Yesterday, in a joint video statement with his wife Meghan, he apologized for the British Commonwealth itself — the sizable vestige of Empire for which his dear old granny, the Queen, is meant to be the living embodiment. Looking shiftily at the camera, he said: ‘There’s no way to move forward unless we acknowledge the past…and try to right those wrongs.’

Last week, he was at it again, repeating verbatim the strange mea culpa his wife had previously issued for not having ‘got the world to the place where you deserve it to be’ — as if we, the lumpenproletariat, expect the British royal family to heal humanity.

We need to talk about Harry. He seems to have lost his once characteristic self-confidence. Where previously he was reliably lively, now he appears brainwashed to speak exclusively in platitudes about ‘coming together’. What happened to the fun-loving rogue? And, more specifically, who is responsible for his comprehensive reprogramming?

It seems laughable now that, when she was living in England, Meghan Markle largely adhered to royal protocol that dictated she rarely spoke publicly. Yes, we heard rumors she was wildly unpopular with courtiers, but we never heard much from her directly.

Now she is on home soil, hasn’t that changed? Rather than deferring to him during public appearances, she seems not only to script the words her husband says but she finishes his sentences when she thinks he is rambling.

The Hollywood love gaze she bestows upon him, too, for the duration of these short films can seem somewhat belied by the speed at which she is prepared to cut him off, and by the submission to her his body language implies.

I wonder, what does Meghan really want? Do we take her at her word and believe she seeks merely global peace and harmony following resolution of all global injustice, both current and historic?

Or do we consider she is a highly ambitious woman and harbors secret goals of high office?

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‘A high tide raises all ships,’ she said yesterday. Does she think it’s a tide that could be surfed all the way to the White House? The fact that, at her side, is a converted, tamed, and now penitent member of the least woke and most quintessentially white privileged family on the planet is certainly testament to the forcefulness of her character.

And what next for Harry? He is now living in LA, separated from his family, his friends and his country. Additionally, he has lost his jobs as a royal and as an official representative of his beloved British Army. His world has been turned upside down. Perhaps he feels his suffering is just part of his long journey of atonement. Or is the real Harry screaming to get out?

All mothers of boys secretly fear the arrival of the girl who will turn their son against them, first by capturing his heart, then by filling his head with poison. For better or worse, Harry has made his choices and in his motherland we are powerless to do anything other than wince.