I still question the wisdom of the Sussex family’s return to the UK, but I’ll give them credit for something: it’s funny as hell to watch the Windsors scramble and freak out over anything Prince Harry and Meghan do or say, real or imagined. It’s funny that Harry and Meghan just “waltzed” back into Britain without “royal permission” or royal sponsorship. And most of all, it’s funny that Kensington Palace keeps pushing one certain talking point: how dare Harry and Meghan come back to Britain without APOLOGIZING! This month, KP’s little elves told the Daily Express that the Sussexes were considering some kind of private or public apology to Prince William and Kate, specifically about what the Sussexes said in the Oprah interview. Team Sussex denied the story to several outlets, and royalists had to admit that Harry in particular is still mad as hell about how his family treated Meghan. Well, Robert Jobson decided to write another sad-sack column about the Apology That Never Was.

When a family wants to make peace, someone picks up the phone or sends a note. Nobody floats the idea in a newspaper saying that you’re thinking about it. The late Queen Elizabeth understood that. After the Oprah interview, her statement allowed that ‘some recollections may vary’ and promised the matter would ‘be addressed by the family privately.’ The principle still holds.

So I raised an eyebrow this week at reports in Britain’s Daily Express that Prince Harry and Meghan were ready to apologize to Prince William and Catherine. I’ve learned to take such claims with a grain of salt.

Within days, a noisy source close to the Sussexes, in something of a tiz, told People magazine the idea was ‘nonsense.’

Why didn’t the Daily Express listen? Had nobody there heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?

The denial did more harm than the report it set out to kill. Until then, the couple simply had not said sorry. Now they will not even consider it, and people who refuse to apologize usually believe they have nothing to regret. Almost everyone missed that.

The Sussexes understand contrition perfectly well. They are connoisseurs of the form, though only as recipients. When a British tabloid apologized to Meghan in 2022, her spokesman dismissed it as ‘nothing more than a PR stunt’ and added: ‘A true apology would be a shift in their coverage and ethical standards for all.’

In March 2021, Meghan told Oprah of concerns and conversations within the family about how dark her unborn son’s skin might be. Neither she nor Harry named anyone, leaving every senior royal under a cloud. William was reduced to telling reporters: ‘We are very much not a racist family.’

…This matters beyond one family’s quarrel. The monarchy has almost no hard power and survives on goodwill. An unanswered charge of racism against the Sovereign and his heir’s wife strikes at its foundations, so silence from Montecito is never neutral.

Would William and Catherine trust an apology if it came? I doubt it. They have watched private conversations travel to Oprah’s studio and on into a ghostwritten memoir. Trust in families mends slowly, usually over Sunday lunch, long after the shouting.

The King, I suspect, wants something narrower: contrition toward his wife. In Spare, Harry wrote that he believed his stepmother had ‘sacrificed me on her personal PR altar.’ Queen Camilla has never answered back. The same book records the King’s plea to his sons: ‘Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery.’ Whether Harry made amends to her this summer when they met at Highgrove, the King’s country home, we do not know.

People do change, and this family offers proof. Camilla went from the most vilified woman in Britain to a crowned Queen. In Spare, of all places, Harry wrote: ‘In a funny way I even wanted Camilla to be happy.’

[From The Daily Mail]

I’ll say this carefully… for the most part, I don’t think Harry is the best judge of how to approach relations with the Windsors both privately and publicly. That being said, I think Harry understands that if he and Meghan ever offered any kind of apology, it would be game over for their credibility. Besides, I think Harry and Meghan both know that they have nothing to apologize for. If anything, the Windsors should be thanking them for not *really* revealing all, from Harry cutting out hundreds of pages in Spare to Meghan choosing to stay silent about her husband’s family for the past four years. But the Windsors can’t acknowledge that, obviously. Which is why they keep pathetically bleating to the tabloids about how Harry and Meghan need to apologize to them, for reasons!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.