One of the funniest things about Prince Harry’s UK visits is the left-behind Windsors hyper-awareness of his schedule. They pitifully try to compete with him, all while publicly saying that they’re much too busy to meet with him. All of last week, royal reporters were practically in TEARS as they tried to convince everyone that King Charles’ schedule is locked down six months in advance, and these were always the events he planned to do that week, regardless of Harry’s visit. Meanwhile, Prince William and Kate continued their grand tradition of overpromising and underdelivering – they told everyone that they would be booked and busy throughout Harry’s visit, but Kate was only seen on Monday, Friday and Saturday. Personally, I think Kate kept her week free in case the Duchess of Sussex turned up and Kate needed some emergency “pay attention to meeee” busywork. But that’s what it felt like for a whole week – the left-behinds all focused on Harry, all while trying to pretend that they were busy and important. Speaking of, an excerpt from the Telegraph’s “The week the Royal family avoided the ‘Sussex circus’.”

There have been penguins, lemurs, a police dog wearing shoes, Pooh sticks, an engagement filmed by drones and a behind-the-scenes farewell to the man who would have taken a bullet for the King. There was a round of mini golf with teenagers who needed time to talk, a memorial for Sir Tom Stoppard, the never-ending red boxes and a Princess at a hospital bedside. Princess Anne attended a welding conference, Prince William brushed up on his Welsh and the King painted a snail shell with purple nail polish in the name of scientific research.

Welcome to a week in the life of the working Royal family. True, this just happened to be the week in which the Duke of Sussex was in town. So it may have been pure coincidence that from Windsor to Wimbledon, Bovington to Borsetshire – via a cameo appearance from the Duchess of Edinburgh on The Archers – the nation’s working royals often found themselves elsewhere, hard at it, on the road.

“I will take good care of my winkle,” promised Prince William at one point – further explanation below if required, but perhaps more amusing without. It has been both an ordinary and extraordinary five days in the diary.

As the Duke of Sussex agonised over whether to bring his family to Britain, where to stay and how to travel, the Royal family has tried, with some limited success, not to enter the fray. After news broke that Harry would be staying at Buckingham Palace on Monday, aides moved to deny it was the case. When he lost his court case against Associated Newspapers, there was private relief that he did not deliver his “complete and utter whitewash” statement from under the King’s roof, but no public reaction.

Afterwards, there was notable silence on the topic of whether the King would meet his younger son, or see his daughter-in-law and Sussex grandchildren for the first time in four years. Those in-the-know predicted that it would happen on the King’s terms, and so it proved. On Friday evening came the calm, straightforward confirmation that the King and Queen had indeed hosted the Sussexes at Highgrove, Charles’ private residence famous for its gardens and a treehouse once played in by William and Harry as children.

Away from “Monarchy HQ”, it was a deft way of distancing the King and Queen from what has become known as the “Sussex circus”, and keep it personal. It brought to a close a week in which the Sussexes have provided maximum drama and the Royal family have been out in force on the day job. With nearly 50 engagements between them (not counting private meetings, correspondence, or official entertaining), was it busier than usual?

“It’s an entirely standard week,” insists a source, before mentioning an unexpectedly happy caveat. The King, whose cancer treatment has taken up so much of his time and energy the last two years, is now able to work the full five days again, and has crept back up to it since his medical care was scaled back at Christmas. While aides have previously limited his travel and public-facing engagements on Mondays and Fridays to “pace” him – largely against his will – he is now up to full away-days again.

There is also a bit of cramming-in to do before the Royal family breaks for the summer – the Sandringham Flower show in two weeks’ time is traditionally the monarch’s “end of term”, give or take a few engagements while he is in Scotland. And so the royal roadshow continued.

[From The Telegraph]

The question remains: were the left-behinds busier than usual for the first half of July? The answer is yes. I’ve been keeping track of their events and schedules for years – while it’s true that there’s a rush of events before their two-month summer holiday, they wanted to look busy specifically for Harry’s benefit. There are legitimately seasons/weeks where they ramp up their work or visibility for non-Sussex reasons, but they simply cannot avoid the fact that they ALWAYS ramp up their schedules around Harry’s visits to the UK. Not just that – the Windsors track the Sussexes’ schedules for other international trips too, especially anything to do with Invictus. William and Kate are always pulling their “look at meeee” stunts around Invictus events or when the Sussexes are scheduled to travel.

So what does all of this actually say about the Windsors? Nothing good. That fact that the royal institution seemingly hinges on whatever Harry and Meghan are doing actually reveals the Sussexes’ importance culturally and royally.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.