The royal media’s gaslighting of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex continues unabated. At no point will they acknowledge their massive role in this absolute circus. To recap, the Sussex family went on vacation somewhere in Europe, likely Portugal, where they reportedly own a vacation villa in a luxury resort community. They used their vacation spot as a base for what was supposed to be a family visit to the UK. About ten days before they were due to arrive in the UK, Harry was informed that RAVEC had not only denied him security for his visit, but that his risk assessment had been “paused” months beforehand.

Following that call, the Sussexes’ plans were in disarray, and Meghan ended up pulling out of the public events in the UK because of very real safety concerns, all while Harry did his events solo with his private security (as he’s done for his previous UK visits). This was one of the explicit goals for the Windsors: to make the situation so unsafe that Meghan would not show up at public events, overshadowing all of them and becoming the biggest story of the year. Instead, Meghan’s movements were kept quiet – no one knows when she flew into the UK, we just know that she went to Highgrove with the kids one week ago, and we assume that Meghan and the kids also stayed at Althorp (the Spencer family’s ancestral home) last weekend. There were zero photos of Meghan and the children on vacation in Portugal or in the UK. Instead of acknowledging the extraordinary private security measures taken to ensure Meghan’s shark-like movements, Tom Sykes is instead platforming conspiracies about how Meghan was never in the UK. Sykes also suggests that Harry’s appearance in NYC last night was “magic” and not… Harry flying on a plane.

Harry’s magical respawn in New York City raises a couple of questions, and also suggests that he was indeed able to spend several days in the United Kingdom with his wife and children without them being murdered (or photographed).

An optimistic reading of all this is that Harry is finally conceding defeat on the security issue despite the fact that his office dutifully insists that he’ll fight on. He has now proven, with his own two feet, that such a trip is logistically possible. He has proven the British state’s long-held position correct. Having spent years insisting it was just not possible, his actions now show that it is, in fact, entirely possible. You could go further and say that a private visit to see his father with his family has been available to him this whole time. He simply didn’t want to do it on the palace’s terms.

And what happened with no armed security? Nothing! No pap shots at Heathrow or JFK. He just appeared in a tux in Manhattan. Yes, after all the noise about how impossible and dangerous it is for him to move about, it turns out he can slip in and out of the country like anyone else when nobody’s making a huge song and dance of it.

The elephant in the room is that not one photograph of Meghan or the children has surfaced from this trip, which has led some to question whether they came at all. Some sleuths have raised some fair points about the intensely compressed timeline the events of the meeting with the King on Friday 10 July required. However…

Charles goes everywhere by helicopter these days. The palace has not released any timings for the meeting — they only specified, after the event, in a background briefing to the royal rota, at about 6:30pm, that it had “concluded.” Interestingly, the palace’s note used the princely titles “Prince Archie” and “Princess Lilibet,” which some have read as a significant olive branch.

For anyone catching up: the conspiracy goes something like this. No photograph exists. The palace only “confirmed” it after the fact, in a background briefing, with no timings, no arrivals, no arrival shots, no departure shots — nothing you could actually verify. In the days beforehand, Meghan was being reported as almost certainly not traveling because of the security row, and then, suddenly, without any sighting of her or the children anywhere in the UK, she was said to be at Highgrove. Highgrove was hosting a Chanel event the same day, which the theorists insist makes the timeline of a private family reunion physically impossible (not clear why, Chanel wrapped by 3:30, plus, it’s a big house and garden with carefully segregated private sides). Both camps — palace and Sussexes — have PR incentives to appear reconciled after two years of open warfare, the argument goes, ergo the whole thing was cooked up between them, and the family were never actually there at all.

My question to those theorists is this: why on earth would the King allow himself to be compromised like that? What is the advantage to Charles of leaving his backside, frankly, hanging out of the window in a massive lie (known to Meghan, which could serve as leverage if things got nasty again) about something he gets absolutely nothing from lying about, as this meeting is actually a massive risk and quite unpopular?

My own observation is that this family usually communicates through visual images — Trooping, Sandringham at Christmas, the balcony — so it is valid to ask why no pictures have emerged, and it is not surprising that the failure to be fully visually transparent about what occurred has triggered some conspiracies. But my sense is not that a huge fake meeting is being perpetrated on us. It is that this sudden attack of visual discretion is in recognition of the fact that it would have been too much for the British public to take this rehabilitation in one go. Project Thaw is a softly-softly exercise and Meghan in particular is hugely unpopular.

[From The Royalist Substack]

Well, I’m sufficiently ragebaited for the day. “…After all the noise about how impossible and dangerous it is for him to move about, it turns out he can slip in and out of the country like anyone else when nobody’s making a huge song and dance of it….” The last time Meghan stepped foot in England in 2022, the Daily Mail literally published a massive graphic of her movements, including how she traveled to and from Manchester and the projected timing of her movements. The press would have been absolutely psychotic if Meghan had actually gone out in public on British soil and they would have done everything possible to target her in every way. Harry has proven that he can move around the UK with some ease when it’s just him and his private security, but it will ALWAYS be a different story when it comes to Meghan and the children. The British press were clearly putting bounties on photographs of Archie and Lili, and the UK press is furious that their biggest money-maker (Meghan) evaded them entirely. I cannot even imagine the lengths the Sussexes’ security probably went through to get Meghan and the children safely in and out of the UK.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.