Royalists can’t even decide what they’re mad about these days. Part of that is because those same royalists spent six years crying about how Prince Harry needs to “come back to Britain,” and now that he’s done just that, they’re like “wait, no, he’s done it in the wrong way.” Yesterday, Harry’s GQ interview came out and it doesn’t look like royalists can decide what they’re mad about with it either. You can see them working out their talking points and arguments in real time: Harry shouldn’t have said anything about reconciliation, Harry shouldn’t give interviews, Harry shouldn’t wear medals, Harry should just stay silent and never do charity work, because all charity work is royal work! At some point, this outrage cycle has to punch itself out, but alas, it’s not happening anytime soon.

Prince Harry, 42, spoke out Tuesday about his shock return to the UK with wife Meghan Markle and children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, and told GQ, “With everything else that’s going on in the world, the most important thing is to reconcile. That’s the key point.” However, royal biographer Hugo Vickers told Page Six that while it may be a “key point” for Harry, the family he scorned may not see it the same way.

“Both the King and William have been very clever to say very little. They have not responded publicly, even when Prince Harry said that he wanted to put the past behind them. There is a hell of a lot of past to put behind them. These things should be worked out in private,” Vickers added. “Making public appearances and giving interviews does not make the situation any easier. And even if Harry does not intend his actions to be a challenge, they will inevitably be interpreted that way, and that is unfortunate.”

Harry, meanwhile, also donned his military and royal medals when he attended the inaugural Invictus Spirit Awards at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London, last month.

“If Harry and Meghan go to Nottingham or Harry attends an event wearing medals… to the general public it looks like a royal visit. Inevitably, people will ask why else they would have him? He is not just a private individual — he is still Prince Harry,” said Vickers, who most recently published the biography, “Queen Elizabeth II: A Personal History.”

The King may have issued a letter to associations noting Meghan and Harry have returned to the UK as private citizens, “that doesn’t change anything, Vickers said. “As far as the public is concerned, Harry is a distraction. His presence risks creating the impression of a challenge to the monarchy. He has made the situation very difficult, and he has only himself to blame.”

“It is a very unhappy situation for the King to have this ongoing estrangement with his son. He has enough emotional baggage to carry without this. It is not a good situation.”

For William, Vickers said, it brings to mind how the late Queen Elizabeth treated her uncle, the Duke of Windsor, who abdicated his role as King George VI for his wife Wallace Simpson. The Queen, he said, would hold him at arm’s length.

“I don’t think William is doing anything actively hostile,” he said. “He has a great deal on his plate: he is the heir to the throne, he has a young family, his father is not terribly well, and his wife has also been unwell,” he said referring to their respective battles against cancer.

Multiple sources have frequently told us that, for William, the anger he felt at his younger brother’s actions — of leaving his role as a working royal and then writing a bombshell memoir and making a Netflix documentary — have dissipated and turned to apathy.

As one palace source told Page Six, “William doesn’t want anything to do with Harry, and he has a stony mindset when he puts his mind to something.”

[From Page Six]

“There is a hell of a lot of past to put behind them. These things should be worked out in private…” I said this in another post but I’ll say it again: the Windsors have taught Harry, in their own little Pavlovian reward system, that the only way to move the royal needle is by Harry sitting in front of a camera and documenting his grievances. If he stays silent and tries to work out family problems privately, nothing happens and no one speaks to him. Harry knows this by now as well: he knows that the more he speaks out publicly, the more his father in particular will talk to him. That being said, nothing is moving the needle for Prince William. “William doesn’t want anything to do with Harry, and he has a stony mindset when he puts his mind to something.” Yep – I agree, this is exactly where William is right now, and Harry can talk until he’s blue in the face and William still won’t talk to him.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, screencaps courtesy of GQ.