bitchy | Times: Prince Harry didn’t actually inform the palace about his Toronto trip?

Two weeks ago, Prince William set off for what would be a whirlwind five-day trip to Brazil which was either ignored or scorned by the people paying attention to royal comings and goings. As William arrived in Rio and began his first public events, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s office announced the news that Prince Harry would spend two days in Toronto on the invitation of the True Patriot Love Foundation, the major veterans-support foundation in Canada. In the days before Remembrance Sunday, Harry was invited to spend time with active servicemen and women, plus he visited elderly veterans at a home for seniors, and then he was the major speaker for the foundation’s fundraising dinner. While the two-day trip absolutely resembled a “royal tour,” it was not. Harry was there as the founder of Invictus and a veteran himself.

William was absolutely furious that Harry was out and about during his Earthflop week, and even more furious that Harry’s office seemed to indicate (off the record) that Harry had informed Buckingham Palace of his Toronto visit. This is something King Charles allegedly “got” from Harry when they met in September: Harry promised to share his general schedule with the palace, even though Harry is under zero obligation to do so. As these stories unfolded, I believed that Harry or his office simply gave the palace a heads up – perhaps just an email informing Buckingham Palace of his plan to go to Toronto for two days and that’s it. I also believed that William was freaking out about it because Buckingham Palace hadn’t shared that information with him or his people. Well, two weeks later, and it sounds like *someone* is still freaking out. From a very suspicious piece in the Times of London:

When the Prince of Wales set foot on Sugarloaf Mountain at the start of a five-day visit to Brazil, the phones of the assembled press pack started to ping. The messages were not updates on the prince’s itinerary, but an announcement from Prince Harry’s office that the Duke of Sussex had travel plans of his own. He would be travelling to Toronto, Canada, later that week to mark “remembrancetide”.

The duke’s office added that “the Palace” had been informed in advance “as a courtesy”. However, it appears no one at the Palace received the memo, leading to questions as to whether it was ever sent.

One source said it was “a bit rum” to claim the Palace had been informed when nobody at either Buckingham Palace or Kensington Palace appeared to have received any advance notice of the trip before it was released to the press. When the duke’s office was asked when they gave the “courtesy” warning and to whom, there came no reply.

The guidance that the Palace had been informed about the trip ahead of time appeared to give it a royal seal of approval. That was perhaps particularly important given the trip’s royal connotations before Armistice Day. During the trip, the duke met soldiers from the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, of which his stepmother Camilla is Colonel in Chief. He then spoke to troops from the Royal Regiment of Canada, which has the King as Colonel in Chief, a role he has held since 1977. On Thursday, the duke met veterans who were taking part in a creative arts programme at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.

The duke also published an essay on his website in which he reflected on remembrance and honoured those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in war. In the piece entitled The Bond, the Banter, the Bravery: What it Means to be British, the duke said that remembrance “is not simply a minute’s silence”, but “a call to collective responsibility”. Yet on Sunday morning, as the royal family was preparing to mark the National Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph on Whitehall, pictures emerged of the Sussexes partying with the Kardashians.

Pictures later emerged online of the couple posing with Jenner at the party, including one of Harry looking a little bleary-eyed. However, Jenner and her daughter Kim Kardashian, who had posted the images on social media, deleted them shortly afterwards. The Sussexes’ office has not responded directly to the case of the deleted images, however it is understood that their removal came at Meghan and Harry’s request.

While the mysterious case of the vanishing party pictures may provide a few moments of titillation for social media users, the disagreement over whether the duke informed the Palace of his royal-related military tour of a Commonwealth realm has more serious undertones, exasperating many at the Palace. To some royal sources, the late Queen’s statement in 2021 that “recollections may vary”, in response to the couple’s tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, feels particularly salient.

[From The Times]

It’s possible that Buckingham Palace’s courtiers are trying (once again) to make trouble for Harry and find some way to disturb whatever fragile truce he’s reached with his father. But it feels far more likely that this is just William throwing yet another tantrum that his big-boy Brazilian trip was such a flop, and he’s still raging about how his father and brother stole his thunder and “sabotaged” him. The reason why I think that Harry probably did inform Buckingham Palace is because they didn’t have anything to say about his visit at the time. Usually, the palace/Rota WhatsApp would have been full of talking points about how the king is mad about this or that regarding Harry, and those talking points would have appeared in every press report in real time. That didn’t happen – BP basically ignored Harry’s trip, and Charles busied himself with knighting David Beckham (lmao). William faced, in my opinion, the double-betrayal of “Harry getting attention” and “Charles not informing William of Harry’s plans.”

Photos courtesy of Cover Images and True Patriot Love via Sussex.com.