Reading through Tina Brown’s latest Substack piece, “The Sussex Circus Comes to Town,” it reminded me that the royal ecosystem survives on throwing everything against the wall when it comes to Prince Harry and Meghan, then praying that no one fact-checks them. Brown’s latest is like a wall of BS – some half-truths and selective editing to make Harry and Meghan look bad, but it’s been specially designed to mock and attack Harry for this entire situation, as if he alone is to blame. Harry’s spokesperson laid out the timeline plainly: Harry was informed by RAVEC on Friday that his family would have zero security, and not only that, but RAVEC had paused the risk assessment back in March. In the months prior, we were huffily told that of course Harry would have security for the Invictus events, and of course he had assurances from his father about being able to visit without incident. What changed? You already know. Well, getting back to Brown’s piece… she’s a real piece of work. Some lowlights:

Harry’s security problems: As if he has learned nothing in the last six years of battling with Ravec (the Royal and VIP Executive Committee that decides which personages in public life receive an official, taxpayer-funded security detail). Harry went off like an IED when, once again, he was denied official police protection for the family and, as a source close to Harry briefed, the rug “was pulled out from under their feet at the 11th hour.” What rug? The only rug under the Sussexes is a flying carpet on which the two of them circle the globe in a cloud of persistent delusion. Harry is apparently “distraught“ at the development, which isn’t a development at all but the same stance Ravec has taken for the last six years, and was under review again. Until Ravec gives another verdict, the status quo is unchanged.

Archie & Lili don’t matter to the Firm: If Harry thought that bringing his children would force Ravec’s hand he was, as he is so often, hopelessly misguided. Right now, the palace is in a crouch position about increased scrutiny of royal finances, thanks to the Andrew Windsor-Mountbatten scandals. King Charles made an announcement last week that he would henceforth be declaring his tax payments, which allowed the public to know he shelled out £12.9m in 2024-25.

Sullen, secretive William’s taxes: Shortly afterwards, Prince William, who, unlike Charles, had declined to reveal what he pays in taxes on his vast Duchy of Cornwall earnings since he became Prince of Wales, rushed out an announcement of his own tax payment of £7.76m. I am told he did so in a sullen frame of mind, as he is at odds with his father on this issue. Even as William positions himself as the monarchy’s future modernizer, “transparency” for William is a word of holy dread, as it is for most people in public life who pretend they are in favor of it. And, just as William feared, ”transparency” about his tax payments generated a rash of headlines informing the public of the uncomfortable fact that the strenuously normie champion of the homeless, who pointedly arrived at his interview with the The Reluctant Traveler on an electric scooter, is a billionaire country landowner.

It’s all about money, you guys: In the paranoid atmosphere of waiting for more Andrew shoes to drop, Ravec and the royals themselves are terrified of public blowback if taxpayers are asked to fund protection for the House of Sussex. The issue is not a hill that either the king or the government wants to die on, and who can blame them?

All of this is because Harry has red hair: The Spencers are a hot-headed clan. You only have to visit the family home of Althorp to see the fluorescent red beards of his ancestors hanging from the walls and read their history of overmighty power grabs to see where Harry’s impetuous temperament originates. When it’s matched with Meghan’s inept strategic instincts which, Harry alas, thinks are genius moves in the entertainment industry big league, it turns into excruciating serial blunders.

Harry just wants to be royal again: What is genuinely sad is Harry’s belated discovery that the one thing he does really well is what he was born to do – and rejected. Unlike Meghan, he really doesn’t want to be a Hollywood hot shot or an amorphous influencer in designer clothes. As one of his ex-employees told me, “he just wants to do public service and be paid for it,” which, in essence, is the definition of a member of the monarchy. I’m told he misses his rugged army and country-based friends who could not be further from Montecito’s precious ethos. Harry doesn’t understand that the family conflict has turned into something more lethal for him than anger — a cold war.

The Windsors have moved on!! Except for his father, who would dearly love to reconcile with his younger son, his relatives have moved on. Earlier this month, there was allegedly no invite for Harry to the wedding of his cousin, Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips, who had played such a critical consoling role for Harry at Balmoral when Diana died. A person close to Harry told me he doesn’t just desperately miss his father and understandably want his children to know him. He also very much misses William, the only other person who knew what it was to be Diana’s son. Too late. An old friend of William’s shared with me that, whenever he spent time with him in the years since Megxit, William’s sense of betrayal by Harry was a constant theme but, during a recent long conversation, Harry’s name never even came up.

[From Tina Brown’s Fresh Hell Substack]
Here’s a treasury of fact-checking, in no particular order: we learned that the palace had actually ordered Peter Phillips to not invite the Sussexes; William is, as ever, constantly and furiously rage-briefing the press about the Sussexes to this very day; no mention of why RAVEC paused their risk assessment in March and whether that too was about “cost.” What else? RAVEC’s previous stance was forcing Harry to give 28 days notice but then denying security for public events, yet Brown reverse engineers the rationale for that as a financial concern as well? The fact that no one can keep their stories straight about that is telling. If the royals are so concerned with finances and appearances, surely the bigger priority is for King Charles to stop paying for Prince Andrew’s royal protection, right? Also: the stuff about “Harry misses William” is FROM WILLIAM’S PEOPLE.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.