Last night, Prince Harry attended the True Patriot Love Foundation’s National Tribute Dinner in Canada. It was the culmination of a whirlwind 48-hour “tour” of Toronto, which saw Harry meeting veterans and active servicemen and women, checking out various military operations and generally being charismatic and cool. Harry was invited to the National Tribute Dinner and he was the de facto keynote speaker as well. True Patriot Love Foundation is a major partner of the Invictus Games, and that’s why they invited Harry and that’s why he came to their events. You can read more about the dinner here at Sussex.com.
Throughout Harry’s Toronto visit, there has been limited press availability (really just a couple of local outlets) and no paparazzi photos and no credentialed international media covering these events. The only reason we have any photos at all is because a photographer attached with True Patriot Love has been trailing Harry at his events, and the photos have been published on Sussex.com. That limited media availability has allowed Harry to keep a lighter footprint in Toronto and focus solely on what he came into town to do. Somewhat hilariously though, Harry has gotten a lot of attention during what was supposed to be his brother’s big week in Brazil. Well, now it’s time for the British media to run the same old play: Harry’s Toronto trip is a signal that he wants to be a working royal again! These people are dumb as a box of hair. From the Telegraph’s big article, written after the Other Brother made a big keen speech at COP30.
A backdoor half-in arrangement: When the Duke of Sussex left the UK to pursue an independent life abroad, he was told in no uncertain terms that he could not adopt the “half in, half out” approach to royal life he had demanded. There was no way that he and Meghan could promote their charitable endeavours on behalf of the institution while at the same time pursuing their own commercial interests, Buckingham Palace made clear. Almost six years on, it looks very much as if the couple are doing something very similar, albeit via the backdoor.
A statement of intent! The Duke’s two-day visit to Toronto has been described by some as something of a marker in the sand, a statement of intent. This was the “grown-up statesman-like Harry” pitching his stall, proving his value and demonstrating where his life was headed, one friend told The Telegraph. And having finally had enough of the tell-all interviews and intimate memoirs, that life looks not unlike the kind he might have been pursuing had he stayed in the UK. Is the visit, therefore, a subtle pitch to his father: “See how useful I could be?” Harry’s support for the military community has never been in doubt. But whether this was a trip based solely on his passion for the Canadian armed forces is a matter for debate. Could it be that it was also intended to act as a subtle nod to the personal support he wants to show Canada, a key Commonwealth country?
Harry & Meghan are pursuing different interests! When Harry and Meghan moved to the US, they made a virtue of being joined at the hip – who can forget the entwined palm trees, salt and pepper analogies? Now though, as Meghan pursues her dream of becoming a billionaire, her husband is reverting to a rather more familiar way of life. All he wants to do, those close to him insist, is to support his pet causes.
Harry will continue to work this way: He may have been banned from pursuing his charitable endeavours on behalf of the Royal family but Harry has seemingly decided that he will plough on regardless. Quasi-royal visits and trips like his visit to the UK in September, and Toronto this week, are likely to become much more common. Meanwhile, in an effort to burnish his philanthropic credentials, he continues to dish out money. When he was in the UK, the Duke announced a personal £1.1m donation to Children in Need to help tackle youth violence in Nottingham. This week, he is understood to have made a six-figure donation to Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa wreaked havoc across the Caribbean. As he looks to the future, Harry is also understood to be mulling over the possibility of launching his own not-for-profit social enterprise.
The left-behinds are looking sparse: Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, the number of working members of the Royal family has been further depleted with Andrew’s defenestration. Would the King ever bring Harry off the subs bench? Not a chance. And King William even less so. The Sussexes, though, look set to plough on undeterred with their own version of that “half in, half out” model.
First of all, this isn’t about Harry “pitching” a half-in solution to his father. These people said the same thing about the Sussexes’ trips to Nigeria and Colombia last year, alongside the palace-issued talking points of “why are the Sussexes doing charity work and traveling on behalf of their charities in the first place, if not to be royal?!?!” At some point, these royal reporters are going to need to sit down and have the conversation that “charity work” does not equal “royal work.” When the short-sighted Windsors rejected the “half-in” suggestion, they believed that they were banning Harry and Meghan from doing anything resembling charity work, which is frankly a stupid assumption but indicative of the rot within the monarchy. What the Sussexes are doing is altogether funnier and more interesting – they’re showing that they don’t need the stagnant royal establishment or the British media to do their own charity work AND commercial work.
Photos courtesy of Laura Proctor for True Patriot Love via Sussex.com.
