Prince Harry made a two-day trip to Ukraine and it was important, wonderful and newsworthy. His security-conference speech garnered worldwide headlines and even Donald Trump commented on it. Harry spent time with hundreds of Ukrainian officials, veterans and activists. He did Invictus events and highlighted the hugely important work of the HALO Trust, of which Harry remains a patron. Harry’s Ukrainian visit followed the Sussexes’ wonderful Australian tour the week before, which went so well, it caused weeks of seething from the British media. Speaking of, the Sunday Times published this bizarre column: “Working and royal? Poor Harry, still trying to be relevant” by Polly Vernon. Ah, yes. “He’s irrelevant, we swear, that’s why we obsessively write about him and stalk his every move and scream about every statement he makes!!” Some lowlights:

No one is bothering with Harry!! What’s worse than the whole world hating you? Why — the whole world not being bothered about you one way or the other, of course! No one wants to be irrelevant — but, I suspect, few people want it less than Harry, Duke of Sussex. He is, after all, the man who called his 2023 autobiography Spare, because that awful feeling — of being at best, a back-up plan for the royal establishment, therefore not especially important in your own right — has haunted him for the whole of his life.

Harry’s inconsequential destiny: Yet it would seem that not mattering very much in the end might be Harry’s destiny. I feel more pity for him, writing those words, than I ever have before — give or take the time I watched him, heartbreakingly young and heartbreakingly pale, walk behind his mother’s coffin, obviously. But yeah. A slip slide into insignificance might very well be Harry’s fate. His fate, and that of his wife, Meghan (who, you’d be forgiven for assuming, all evidence considered, has been somewhat passionately set on relevancy for the pair of them, since the day she met him).

Desperate global attention!! Their recent public activities do seem to amount to a series of increasingly desperate, misfiring attempts to prove themselves worthy of the world stage….There was a four-day, faux royal tour of Australia, whose people responded with an overwhelming attitude of “meh”….There was Harry’s tribute to his late grandmother, a wreath sent to St George’s Chapel in Windsor on what would have been Elizabeth II’s 100th birthday last week; a gesture made “privately” and “quietly” according to People magazine, which somehow knew all about it the moment it happened.

Working & royal: Most recently, Harry’s protests, issued only this weekend, that he “will always be part of the royal family” and that (to the argument he is no longer a working royal), he is, in fact, “working and doing the very thing I was born to do”. Which loosely translates as: “I matter! Royal blood still runs through my veins! I exist!”

Ukraine is important: To be fair to Harry, he was in Ukraine at the time of those latest comments, visiting alongside the HALO Trust, the landmine clearing organisation whose profile Princess Diana transformed in her 1997 trip to Angola. The clearing of landmines is a desperately important cause, and Ukraine — a country whose ongoing plight is constantly pushed out of the headlines by other, evolving and unceasingly dramatic international situations — could absolutely do with the spotlight again. In all those respects, Harry did the right thing, oh but: if only he hadn’t made it about him! If only he’d just, you know, done it. Like his mother did that time (and is it horribly cynical to think, perhaps his copying of her is as much about reminding the public of his connection to her as it is the cause itself?).

Trump’s comments: I’d say the most damning, definitive proof of Harry’s creeping irrelevancy came in the form of Donald Trump’s latest put-down of him. “How’s he doing? How’s his wife? Give her my regards,” Trump said, which — though, of course, delivered with irony (assuming Trump does irony? Anyone?) was mild, to the point of gentle, in the grand scheme of Trump’s denigrations. And when Donald Trump no longer considers you significant enough to publicly skewer with playground bully-grade venom… I fear the jig is truly up.

[From The Times]

“Which loosely translates as: ‘I matter! Royal blood still runs through my veins! I exist!’” It’s so telling that these people are so irritated by Harry’s reminder that he’s part of the royal family. I believe the irritation is because he’s putting a mirror up to all of the monarchists and royalists who swear up and down that the family deserves all of the castles, palaces and taxpayer money because they were anointed by god, etc. Either every member of the family has the magic royal blood OR the magic “royal blood” can be determined by picayune interfamily disputes and negated via bureaucratic paperwork. You can’t have it both ways – and this isn’t a f–ing riddle, like Harry is Schrodinger’s Prince. Either Harry has the magic royal blood or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, what does that say about the rest of the royals? As for the rest of this… if Harry is truly so irrelevant, why not give all of this attention and all of this commentary to Harry’s bald-demon brother? You know, the one who was too lazy to show up for ANZAC Day?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.