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Prince Harry's wild palace comeback plan for Archie, Lili
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There is a brilliant British expression: The marmalade dropper. That one is standing in one's kitchen at breakfast time, looking out over trellised delphiniums and Marks and Spencer garden furniture, and you hear some news so startling a jar of the Waitrose's finest Oxford pip-free slips through your fingers out of deep shock.
So I'm warning you now. Put down all condiments, sauces, dressings or hot drinks.
Get this: Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex reportedly sees a future where his children could return to the UK and become official working members of the royal family.
Yes, him. The world's only royal refugee, a man who chucked in palace-dom and the possibility of ever being proudly tasked to open the Perthshire Agricultural Show, who painted the Windsors as emotionally constipated, self-serving egoists, who told us at exhausting length about the commercial-grade suffering that he endured as a paid up representative of the Crown. Him.
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He, reportedly, thinks that – despite having earned tens of millions of dollars rubbing his family and laying bare the inequities and humiliations of monarchy and despite his kids having been to the UK once in the last five years – his kids could one day become paid up, front row members of Crown Inc.
I'm not sure we've had a piece of news this bizarre and defying all logic, reason and good sense since, Prince Edward (remember him? Thin, suited, bears an increasingly haunting resemblance to Prince Philip if he had ever joined a book club?) got the idea to do a royal version of 80s game show It's A Knockout.
Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh attends the 2025 Chelsea Pensioners Founder's Day. Picture:MORE:'Lonely': Insiders lift lid on Harry's sad life
On Thursday The Guardian, which normally stays well clear of breaking any news about Crown Inc aside from pointing out the tens of millions they squeeze out farm land they acquired during a joust in 1484, took a break from extolling the virtues of wind farms and tahini to get into the royal reporting game. (Personally, I love both.)
The Guardian ran a piece reporting that Archie and Lili were forced to wait six months for new passports after the late Queen died and that Harry and his wife Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex feared the delay was because 'UK officials were dragging their feet because the passport applications included the titles HRH (His/Her Royal Highness) for both children.'
A source close to the Sussexes said that 'the king hadn't wanted Archie and Lili to carry the titles, most of all the HRH, and the British passports, once created, would be the first and perhaps the only legal proof of their names'.
However, the Duke of Sussex wanted 'to keep the HRH titles for his children so that when they grow older they can decide for themselves whether they want to become working royals, or stay out of public life'.
MORE: Prince Harry's $200m UK secret revealed
Prince Harry wanted 'to keep the HRH titles for his children so that when they grow older they can decide for themselves whether they want to become working royals'. Picture: John Stillwell –Marmalade, meet floor.
Of all the things that you can imagine the duke noodling about in Montecito as he did the composting or was assuming the lotus position, his children having or wanting a future that would see Buckingham Palace merrily tasking them with a few lighthouse-related outings or some mid-tier midlands military patronages is madness.
It would be like a committed vegan considering whether their adored offspring might one day get into farm to table butchery.
The members working royal family, the fundamental indignity of the pathological hierarchy of it, the monarchy, the mandatory involvement of his most nemesis the British media duly recording every pat pleasantry during an away day to Sheffield – isn't this everything Harry has been pushing back against? Has repeatedly criticised from the global bully pulpit of Netflix and from the pages of a Guinness World Record setting book and interview after interview?
Even aside from this, what makes the duke think his kids would be allowed to rejoin the merry old house of Windsor?
Archie has not lived in the UK since he was about six months old; Lili has only been there once. She is not believed to have ever met William or Kate, The Princess of Wales or anyone with any sort of main character energy here.
Prince Harry holds his newborn daughter Lilibet. Picture: Instagram
Harry and Meghan pose for their Christmas card last year with Archie and Lilibet. Picture: Alexi Lubomirski/The Times
Why would they want to sacrifice their independence and freedom for a country and institution they have no connection with?
Nor, you would have to imagine, would the British people be that jazzed about two people with thick Californian accents turning up to host garden parties who don't know what Hobnobs are.
That the palace or the British people would accept the young Sussexes as representatives of the Crown is nigh-on impossible to swallow.
Even then, even if these obstacles were somehow surmounted, there is the biggest of them all – would William let them?
That the palace or the British people would accept the young Sussexes as representatives of the Crown is nigh-on impossible to swallow. Picture: Jim Clarke/AFP
By the time Archie and Lilli are firmly in their 20s he is likely to be running the show and King. As a friend of his told The Daily Beast last year, he 'absolutely f**king hates' Harry.
Does that sound like a welcome-with-open-arms situation to you?
Even today, royal cousins are essentially barred from being allowed to be working members of the royal family.
Since 2012, when Charles put his plan in action, four deeply regrettable words have echoed up and down the Buckingham Palace halls – 'slimmed down royal family'.
At another time Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie as HRHs and 'blood princesses' would have been shoe-ins to never have to work real jobs and to live lives where they spent the hours of 10am until 2ish on any given Wednesday cutting ribbons at Women's Institute meetings and visiting donkey rescues on behalf of the palace. Instead you can find Beatrice York on LinkedIn, a regular London gal in her 30s with a very good career in the software biz.
Princess Beatrice of York and Prince William in Ascot, England. Picture:Beatrice and Eugenie have not been allowed out onto the palace balcony to exercise their waving muscles since 2019.
Who knows. Maybe by 2045 the royal family will be desperate for fresh faces and Prince George, as he preps for the throne himself, will be dead keen on his American cousins being called up to bolster the flagging royal ranks. Maybe Archie and Lili will be keen to embrace their British heritage and want to devote their lives to dutiful public service.
For the time being though, you can safely pick up the marmalade again but be warned.
There is one thing we can say about Harry – the duke never fails to surprise us. Or the palace. And maybe the same goes for the next generation, in Montecito and London.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
Originally published as Prince Harry's wild palace comeback plan for Archie, Lili
