With the coronation a mere two months away, the “will they, won’t they” speculation about the presence of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at the ceremony has taken on a new twist. If they come to London, they will not have anywhere to stay: officially, at least.
It has been revealed that Frogmore Cottage, Harry and Meghan’s wedding gift from the Queen, has been withdrawn from them. In a classic case of adding insult to injury it has been offered to Prince Andrew instead, on the understanding that he will in turn give up his larger residence of Royal Lodge, the thirty-room, ninety-eight-acre mansion in Windsor Great Park that he has been brooding in for the past few years.
As one well-informed anonymous source informed the Sun, perhaps with a measure of glee, “This eviction surely spells the end of Harry and Meghan’s time in the UK. Andrew is resisting the idea of moving into Frogmore Cottage after he was offered it last week. But it shows Harry and Meghan are powerless to stop the eviction.”
It is a strange world in which the man who was once third in line to the throne is now being evicted from his former home, which he and his wife had spent £2.4 million ($2.9 million) on renovating before deciding that it was no longer fit for their purposes. But it also shows that King Charles — fresh from his controversial meeting with Ursula von der Leyen — is acting decisively, even ruthlessly, when it comes to his estranged son.
On the one hand, the British royal family is not under any obligation to keep a property vacant for someone who shows no interest in living there any longer. Given that Harry and Meghan have made their lives in California, and that even the possibility of their returning for the coronation for a matter of a few days has excited controversy for most of the year, it makes perfect sense to repurpose Frogmore Cottage. Prince Andrew being given the house — which, with five bedrooms, is certainly the most grandiose of cottages that can be imagined — represents an act of simultaneous altruism and discipline on the part of the King. It suggests that the Duke of York remains a member of the royal family, but a chastened, lower-status one, and that should there be any more controversy in the future, he might expect to lose even this rung on the reputational ladder.
Yet even those who have no sympathy for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex might wonder whether the timing of this act smacks of pettiness. The publication of Harry’s memoir Spare undeniably embarrassed his family, and in lieu of any kind of public statement or interview — which now seems as if they will never happen — these well-briefed gestures continue to indicate the Firm’s antipathy towards their most troublesome members.
It was never likely that Harry and Meghan were ever going to return to Britain and resume their place at the heart of the royal family: too much bad will has taken place for that ever to be a possibility. But this continued tit-for-tat sniping, largely conducted via sympathetic news outlets, runs the risk of overshadowing a major event that will define the beginning of King Charles’s reign. One can only wonder whether this announcement was truly necessary.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
