Robert Hardman’s Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story was originally published in January 2024. The book – which was serialized by the Daily Mail – got a lot of attention because Hardman claimed that Queen Elizabeth was incandescent with rage over Prince Harry naming his daughter Lilibet. After everyone piled on and confirmed that yes, QEII absolutely hated the Sussexes for naming their daughter in her honor, Hardman had to walk it back and pretend like he never wrote any of that. Well, funny story. He’s reissuing the book with new chapters and a complete rewrite on certain sections, one would think. Once again, the Mail has exclusive excerpts and they are a hoot! I wonder how much of this Hardman will have to walk back in the coming weeks. Some highlights:

Prince Harry’s appearance in court in April of this year: Days later, [Harry] appeared in Britain as his legal team took his long-running case against the British Government to the Court of Appeal. There was no need for him to appear. Many legal experts could see no reason for his presence in the court, scribbling on Post-it notes and sipping water as his barrister pressed his challenge to a Home Office decision to remove his right to automatic police protection in the UK. ‘He seemed to be pitch-rolling ahead of what was likely to be a humiliating court decision,’ was how the King’s team regarded his short visit to London, especially as there was no prospect of seeing his father, who was away on his state visit to Italy.

King Charles offered Harry a room at Buckingham Palace in April: Yet after hearing he was coming to London, the King had still offered him accommodation at Buckingham Palace during his stay. ‘Once again, he said no – presumably because the Palace is still so unsafe – and ended up staying in a hotel,’ said a member of staff, struggling to hide the sarcasm in light of what the Duke did next.

Harry’s Ukraine trip: After leaving London, he went to Ukraine to meet wounded soldiers. Aside from the glaring inconsistency of claiming that Britain was fraught with danger one day and then travelling to a war zone the next, Prince Harry also had the satisfaction of stealing a march on his brother. The trip to Lviv had certainly come as a surprise to Prince William, who, as an ex-serviceman himself, had long wanted to visit Ukraine….Thus far, however, the Prince of Wales had been limited to a visit to the Mercians, of which he was Colonel-in-Chief, in Estonia.

Prince Harry’s surprise BBC interview in May: It all felt like a ‘good old-fashioned Establishment stitch-up’, the Duke half-joked, before alluding gravely to his mother’s death: ‘Some people want history to repeat itself and that’s pretty dark.’ For the foreseeable future, Britain would remain too dangerous for his children. There was a wistful but jarringly tactless note at the very end, when the Duke was asked about reconciliation: ‘I don’t know how much longer my father has – he won’t speak to me because of this security stuff but it would be nice to reconcile.’ Prospects for that, however, had just receded further. Within royal circles in Britain, some were ‘frankly appalled’ by his glib choice of words about the King’s health.

Buckingham Palace’s reaction to his BBC interview: Within the Royal Household, there was both exasperation and incredulity that Prince Harry could expect any sort of rapprochement after springing yet another effusion of scattergun accusations on the family via the media. There was considerable irritation that the Prince and the BBC had arranged a landmark interview about royal security issues yet the first the Palace was aware of it was minutes before broadcast. ‘As the Duke of Sussex might say, it felt like a bit of a stitch-up,’ reflected one member of staff.

The palace is mad that Harry shows up for court appearances: Royal staff had noticed something else, too. It was starting to feel a little more than coincidental that when the King was on important business overseas, the Duke of Sussex would suddenly emerge from his hard-won privacy to make a high-profile public appearance. In March 2023, as the King was embarking on the first overseas state visit of his reign to Germany, Prince Harry had unexpectedly – and unnecessarily – flown to London to watch the preliminaries of one of his various court cases. When the King was beginning his 2025 state visit to Italy, Harry had done the same again. A few weeks later, as the King flew to Canada, his younger son made a surprise appearance in Shanghai at a conference on sustainable tourism. ‘Only a cynic could possibly detect a pattern there,’ observed one courtier, with mild amusement.

King Charles doesn’t care about Harry! There was one person, however, who seemed wholly unconcerned by the latest Sussex grievance. Even in private, the King showed no interest in discussing the matter. ‘People are always saying that he must be so upset by the Harry business,’ says one member of his inner circle, ‘but when you have all that is going on in his world, you don’t have time to agonize over things beyond your control.’ Back channels remained open, however. There was much excitement when the King’s press communications secretary was spotted having a drink with the latest Sussex media manager during a London visit in July. Some commentators even hailed it as a ‘peace summit’, to the surprise of Palace insiders, who had regarded it as a courtesy call.

[From The Daily Mail]

This excerpt ended with a long-winded description of some details of the planning for Operation London Bridge, aka King Charles’s funeral. Weird, because Hardman and the courtiers were super-mad about Charles’s son even mentioning that Charles might not have much time left, and then Charles’s biographer is in such a rush to talk about the king’s funeral??

Anyway, the funniest part is that courtiers are banging their heads against the wall because Harry flies in and out of London whenever he feels like it and he rarely gives them a heads up. Harry was burned last year when he came to London for the Invictus anniversary service, a well-publicized event for which the palace had months of preparatory time. They prepared for Charles to publicly snub Harry and they put a ton of busywork on the king’s schedule, including Charles handing off the Army Air Corps patronage to William. Those same courtiers were furious when Harry ruined all of their plans by publicly announcing that he wasn’t going to see his father because of his father’s schedule. Charles looked like an a–hole. That’s what bugs them – Harry effortlessly exposes Charles constantly, and Harry is always making William look lazy and dumb. As for the larger bitching about Harry’s schedule and appearances… like I’ve said for years, if the left-behinds wanted a say in Harry and Meghan’s schedules and lives, they really should have taken the Sussexes up on their half-in offer. It worked out better this way though.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.