The mood is unmistakable. There can be no doubt about how welcome he is at home. Reader comments in British newspapers are rarely so unanimous: “Please no more uneducated immigrants!” complains a reader of the “Times”. “Just when you think it can’t get any worse,” comments a second. The next one writes: “Putin did threaten that the supply of drones to Ukraine would have consequences, but I didn’t think he would go that far.”
We're talking about Prince Harry's move back to England. After six years in exile in California, the prodigal son returns home. And the British – as the quotes prove – are blown away. They complain and they complain. They get upset and laugh at him. They call him a hypocrite and a parasite. But in truth, there is hardly an islander who is not rejoicing in their hearts.
Finally they have him back! Your wild, daring, unpredictable, over-emotional and eternally childish scandalous prince is back in the fatherland, which is called "Motherland" in English, which brings back the memory of Diana, the princess of hearts, at every mention. He takes his hopeless and endless fight for revenge back home, to the epicenter of the tabloid culture that is said to have put Diana, his childhood and his bride's happiness on his conscience. The fact that Harry has once again changed his mind and wants to return despite the extensive soiling of the nest is the best news for the troubled country in a long time.
In order to understand this - and to understand that the malice in the reader comments mentioned is nothing more than hidden feelings of happiness - you have to overcome a crucial hurdle. It consists of the suspension of rules such as “you don’t do that” or “if you say A, you also have to say B”. Anyone who insists on this will never understand Harry, nor the British royal family or any other representative monarchy.
Their raison d'être consists of little more than the task of distracting the people from the misery of the present, entertaining them and, ideally, enchanting them. And no one in his generation has fulfilled this duty as persistently and conscientiously as Prince Harry.
He is a real fairytale prince who has never been subject to the gravity of bourgeois decency. Instead of allowing himself to be limited by the constraints of logic, he gets hopelessly tangled up in contradictions from which no mere mortal could free himself. Harry, on the other hand, simply ignores them, ignores the gasping public and does what he feels like: marries a woman with African-American roots, gives up the prince job, writes a dirty book that reveals more than the press would ever have known, makes even more money from Netflix, goes to court, wins, loses, curses his brother and the English press - and returns the next moment as if nothing had happened.
This self-indulgence is in his blood, which is why outrage over his disregard for etiquette and lack of grounding is inappropriate and small-minded. Harry is just like that. He was never different - a tragic, lovable, always hot royal spare, which he described himself as in the title of his autobiography "Spare". From this point of view, the return of his little family is not outrageous, but on the contrary a great gain for the kingdom and far beyond.
It not only provides a distraction from heat, drought, wars and corruption in times of declining democracy. It also outshines the revelations about Harry's fallen Uncle Andrew, King Charles' cancer and the Cambridges' existence, which is as intact as it is staid and, from the tabloid press's point of view, very unproductive. Thanks to Princess Kate, the most eye-catching dates of the past year consisted of her usual Wimbledon appearances and the usual children's birthday photos. With Harry and Meghan, however, chaos and glamor will return, discord and tension, rivalry and the thrilling hope of reconciliation. The company finally has big cinema to offer again, which is why no one is happier this week than Harry's arch-enemies in the press.
The rest of the nation is secretly just as happy, no matter how unforgiving they may appear in the reader's comments. Losing two black sheep to America within 100 years would have been unpleasant and painful. King Edward VIII abdicated the throne because of Wallis Simpson and died lonely and bitter in exile. Harry, on the other hand, has realized after just six years that the grass isn't greener on the other side. Commentators are trying to interpret this as the “bursting of his American dream.” In reality, however, the prince is just pragmatic and allows himself both: England and America; British education for the children during school hours and Californian sunshine during the holidays. Why not?
The British Education Minister, of all people, immediately understood how valuable this was for her own brand. The Labor politician's day job is usually to make private schools as unattractive as possible compared to state ones. But now she wholeheartedly praises the “British school system,” in which the royal families of Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Greece and Liechtenstein have long had their children educated. However, their charisma is not half as great as that of Meghan and Harry. Thanks to their vote for England, private schools and boarding schools are likely to experience a boom similar to that of the bestseller times of “Harry Potter”.
The return of the other Harry ultimately has a human dimension that doesn't affect anyone, because the prince, with all his royal baggage, is also just a son. His father is sick. His grandmother dead. His uncle cast out. His children are small. His wife demanding. His brother angry. His sister-in-law insulted. Who wouldn't want this totally dysfunctional family to find a happy ending - after appropriate trials and tribulations? It is as if Harry, as a born prince and gifted master of his craft, knows exactly how the fabric dreams are made of is woven.
