{"id":2498816,"date":"2026-07-12T12:52:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T12:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2498816"},"modified":"2026-07-12T12:52:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T12:52:54","slug":"blood-is-blood-says-the-kings-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/blood-is-blood-says-the-kings-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBlood Is Blood,\u201d Says the King\u2019s Camp."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBlood is blood.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As the private sentiment of a 77-year-old grandfather still undergoing cancer treatment, who had not seen two of his grandchildren in more than four years, this is a touching phrase, and I don\u2019t doubt it is sincerely felt. As the strategic rationale of a head of state, it is hopelessly inadequate. It is the kind of thing you say when you have no answer to the actual question, which is: why has the King of England just handed the Sussexes the biggest prize of their six-year campaign \u2014 family rehabilitation, on their terms \u2014 in exchange for precisely nothing?<\/span><\/p>\n

Because that, when you strip away the hydrangeas, is what happened at Highgrove on Friday. And the same <\/span>Sunday Times<\/span><\/a> piece that offers us \u201cblood is blood\u201d also supplies all the evidence you need to conclude that this was a huge mistake by the King.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is worth rewinding to how this saga started because the palace\u2019s story has travelled a very long way in three weeks. The news that Meghan and the children would be joining Harry first broke on the Wednesday of Royal Ascot, when Bronte Coy revealed it on The Sun\u2019s podcast (on which, as it happened, I was a guest that day). Coy then went to Ascot, where the King\u2019s team were holding court \u2014 and where, that first day, they were telling anyone who would listen that this was emotional blackmail by Harry and Meghan.<\/span><\/p>\n

From \u201cemotional blackmail\u201d to \u201cblood is blood\u201d in twenty days, via the maddest briefing war I can remember: they were coming, they weren\u2019t coming, Meghan was coming, Meghan wasn\u2019t coming, just Harry, Harry and the kids, back and forth, back and forth \u2014 culminating on Tuesday in Harry\u2019s deranged denunciation of the British courts, at which point most observers concluded he had blown the whole thing up. My God, we thought, it was all there on the table for him to take. How could he be so idiotic?<\/span><\/p>\n

What we underestimated was not Harry\u2019s idiocy. It was the King\u2019s indulgence.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was at the NEC in Birmingham on Friday for the Invictus one-year-to-go event, and two things struck me.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first was Harry\u2019s face. He was beaming. I was thinking: this does not look like a man having the worst week of his life.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second was that around midday, the place started emptying. Half the photographers hightailed it to the polo at Windsor, chasing a rumor that Catherine might bring the children; the other half bolted for Highgrove, chasing a better one. When I asked, Harry’s people weren\u2019t saying yes \u2014 but they weren\u2019t saying no either. Demurring, I believe, is the technical term. The demurring, combined with the megawatt smile, got me thinking something was up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Highgrove that day was hosting a party \u2014 <\/span>Chanel had rented the estate<\/span><\/a> for an event running from about 11 am to 3 pm. The constant traffic flowing in and out of the Chanel party was used as a decoy to slip Meghan and the children through the gates unphotographed, the Mail says. It was pivotal for everyone involved that no pictures of this meeting emerged, and none did. The waiting photographers were watching a river of canap\u00e9 vans and got nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had to fly home to Dublin, and as I landed at about seven o\u2019clock, my phone started pinging: Buckingham Palace had confirmed the meeting. Even having heard the rumors all day, I was surprised \u2014 and particularly surprised that Camilla was there.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Mr Justice Nicklin had thrown out all ninety-seven claims in Harry\u2019s marathon lawsuit against Associated Newspapers \u2014 a case in which the prince was caught in a flat lie about his friendship with the Mail on Sunday\u2019s Charlotte Griffiths. Griffiths, in her subsequent tell-all, revealed she had loyally kept his secrets for fifteen years, including a pill popped onto her tongue (\u201dNow I know I can trust you\u201d), the messages in which he complained of being bored out of his mind raising money for his own charity and of driving while still hungover from the night before.<\/span><\/p>\n

When his lawyers dragged her into the High Court and painted her as an insane fantasist who had imagined her entire relationship with a prince, she had no choice but to defend her reputation. Harry had every choice in the world not to bring the action, and every choice in the world not to involve her in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

His response to losing was a statement describing the judgment as \u201ca complete and obvious whitewash\u201d \u2014 the same establishment-stitch-up script he read out after losing his security case, this time with the added implication that a High Court judge was corrupt.<\/span><\/p>\n

And here the Sunday Times gives us a remarkable glimpse of the reaction inside the palace: \u201cThere were jaws on the floor\u201d, with a statement attacking not just a High Court judge but the entire judicial system that acts in the King\u2019s name. \u201cThere is profound upset constitutionally about that attack.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the King\u2019s own people say there is profound constitutional upset about Harry attacking the courts that operate in the King\u2019s name. That was Tuesday. On Friday, the King gave him tea.<\/span><\/p>\n

And before anyone says that the court defeat was the real story of the week: well, for those of us in the media, yes, it was catastrophic.<\/span><\/p>\n

But be honest about how this reads to a normal person getting their news off a Facebook feed. A privacy action against the Daily Mail over a bunch of 25-year-old stories doesn\u2019t register as a flicker. Tea with the King at Highgrove \u2014 full family rehabilitation in motion \u2014 registers. Harry knows exactly which of the two verdicts matters.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have previously reported that the King has drawn inspiration from the parable of the Prodigal Son. But the prodigal son rehearses his apology on the road: \u201cFather, I have sinned.\u201d The repentance comes first; the fatted calf comes second.<\/span><\/p>\n

Harry has skipped the apology and Charles went straight to the calf bit.<\/span><\/p>\n

The late Queen asked Harry and Meghan to uphold the values of the monarchy. He has spent six years doing the opposite, and a friend of Harry\u2019s cheerfully confirmed to the Sunday Times: \u201cHarry is very principled in what he stands for and he\u2019s just going about his life in the way he said he would.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Translation: <\/span>je ne regrette rien<\/span><\/em> \u2014 now, where\u2019s my cake?<\/span><\/p>\n

If you set out to design an incentive structure to teach Prince Harry that intransigence works, you could not improve on what the King did this week. If you wanted to encourage a renegade son to keep behaving exactly as he has been behaving, this is precisely how you would do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I have explained before, there are two camps in the King\u2019s court: the hawks, led by Clive Alderton, who agree with William that Harry should not be allowed anywhere near the King and regard it as their duty to protect the sovereign from his own softer instincts; and the doves, clustered around Theo Rycroft, the man being lined up to succeed Alderton when he goes \u2014 which could be within a couple of years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read the Sunday Times piece with that map in hand and you can see both camps briefing against each other in a single article. The hawks give you \u201cjaws on the floor\u201d and \u201cprofound upset constitutionally.\u201d The doves give you \u201cblood is blood\u201d and \u201cevery journey of a thousand miles begins with one footstep.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

By Friday, the doves \u2014 led, ultimately, by the King himself \u2014 had won. But the hawks\u2019 fingerprints are everywhere: the \u201cexistential mistrust\u201d about Harry and Meghan\u2019s motives; the courtiers who spent last week war-gaming the fallout, terrified Harry would emerge claiming Charles secretly sympathized with his crusade against the media; the refusal of a room at Buckingham Palace in part because \u2014 my favorite detail of Nikhah\u2019s story \u2014 aides feared he would stage his \u201cEvita moment\u201d on royal turf. Don\u2019t cry for me, Montecito!<\/span><\/p>\n

I would not be surprised to see departures from the King\u2019s staff over the coming months as a result of all this. Some aides are very, very unhappy.<\/span><\/p>\n

While all this unfolded, the heir to the throne was playing polo at Guards Polo Club in Windsor, the Princess of Wales in the stands, the pair of them laying on more public displays of affection than we have seen in years.<\/span><\/p>\n

The brothers have not spoken since the late Queen\u2019s funeral. George, Charlotte and Louis have no relationship whatsoever with their Californian cousins. And as I reported this week, William is appalled by what he regards as his father\u2019s betrayal.<\/span><\/p>\n

His dismay is understandable. Consider what William has actually asked of his father in twenty years: very little, while giving a great deal, including his tacit public blessing to Project Queen Camilla \u2014 not one word against her in public, whatever may have been said in private.<\/span><\/p>\n

The one thing he has asked was that Harry and Andrew be kept at arm\u2019s length from the monarchy: the exiled Duke of Windsor as template.<\/span><\/p>\n

After 1936, the Duke of Windsor was kept out of British life for the entirety of his thirty-five-year exile \u2014 six visits home, and Wallis received by the family precisely once, by the Queen Mother, at a memorial service for Queen Mary.<\/span><\/p>\n

Charles overruled William on Andrew until events forced his hand, and is now overruling him on Harry. And remember whose private life provided the juice in the Sussexes\u2019 $100 million of content: Catherine wouldn\u2019t lend Meghan her lipstick, Catherine made her cry about the bridesmaids\u2019 dresses, the children were made to wear tights.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was William\u2019s wife who was monetized, William who was accused of assault in Spare, William\u2019s family that absorbed it all during Catherine\u2019s cancer treatment \u2014 and those close to him, while careful never to say Harry caused her illness, will tell you William perceives a causal link between the stress his brother inflicted and what happened to his wife.<\/span><\/p>\n

The monarch owes loyalty to the heir. This week, he didn\u2019t show it. The Sunday Times asks what the Prince of Wales will make of the olive branch and answers its own question: \u201cHe won\u2019t like it, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d The understatement of the reign of King Charles III?<\/span><\/p>\n

Charles is spending political capital he does not have. Ipsos has support for the very concept of a royal family falling from 65 per cent at the start of his reign to 55 per cent now. YouGov\u2019s January tracker has Harry at 31 per cent positive and 60 per cent negative; Meghan at 19 positive and 66 per cent negative, the worst figure the pollster has ever recorded for her. Two-thirds of the country actively dislikes the Duchess of Sussex. There is no public appetite for this reconciliation and no mandate for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of the problem is that the King has no idea how unpopular the project is, because of the iron control the palace exerts over the British newspapers. Criticize the King often enough in print and you get removed from the palace WhatsApp group \u2014 which means losing the operational notes for the King and for the Prince of Wales, whose press office reports into the King\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

No notes mean no photographers at the polo, no pictures on the front page \u2014 and one news editor told me royal coverage accounts for about 20 percent of their circulation and clicks. So the coverage stays sweet, the criticism stays muted.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is Animal Farm run as a communications strategy: the pigs announcing record barley production while the other animals go hungry. Meanwhile, in any pub in the United Kingdom, people will tell you what they actually think of this week\u2019s events.<\/span><\/p>\n

Harry returns to the U.K. in September for WellChild, and another family reunion in the autumn is \u201cnot being ruled out by either side.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Next July, the Invictus Games come to Birmingham, where I\u2019m told Harry intends to be for as much as a month \u2014 with the children, whose American school holidays conveniently run all summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery journey of a thousand miles begins with one footstep,\u201d purrs one royal source to The Times.<\/span><\/p>\n

Except this was not the first footstep. The first footstep was taken almost exactly a year ago, when Meredith Maines and Liam Maguire met Tobyn Andreae at the Royal Over-Seas League. Since then we have had the tea at Clarence House, the weirdly synchronized statements on Ukraine and antisemitism, the \u201cBond, Banter, Bravery\u201d love letter to Britain \u2014 and now Highgrove. We are many footsteps down the road. This is not an isolated incident; it is the systematic undoing of the Sandringham Summit. It is the unwinding of Megxit itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the engine of it all is the King\u2019s recovery. When everyone thought Charles was dying, he did not have the strength \u2014 or the standing \u2014 to attempt this. Now that his treatment is going well and he believes he has been gifted time, he is taking back control, and the message to his heir is unmistakable: you may not like it, son, but this is my family and this is how I am going to run it.<\/span><\/p>\n

History is full of impatient heirs waiting in the wings. What history has never seen is a monarch who faced death, was rescued by medical science, and came back determined to wrestle power back from an heir who had acquired a taste for it \u2014 and who believes, not without reason, that his father is running the institution in a way that will damage it by the time it lands on him.<\/span><\/p>\n

The conflict between Charles and William is at the core of everything happening in the royal family right now, and Harry is currently the proxy battle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Friends say Harry woke on Saturday \u201cbuoyed, very happy and really energised.\u201d Of course he did. He had just turned the worst week of his public life into the best with the only verdict he actually cares about: his father ruled in his favor.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the Scotty\u2019s event, Harry told bereaved military children that he marks his mother\u2019s anniversaries with lemon drizzle cake, and that \u201ca laugh at the end of a hard day is the best medicine served.\u201d On Tuesday, minutes after his court defeat, he told an Invictus audience: \u201cWhat brings us together is far more important than what sets us apart.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What sets this family apart is a memoir, two documentaries, an Oprah interview, six years of litigation and a statement attacking the King\u2019s own court, none of it withdrawn, none of it regretted, and all of it, as of Friday night, rewarded.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source theroyalist.substack.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBlood is blood.\u201d As the private sentiment of a 77-year-old grandfather still undergoing cancer treatment, who had not seen two of his grandchildren in more than four years, this is a touching phrase, and I don\u2019t doubt it is sincerely felt. As the strategic rationale of a head of state, it is hopelessly inadequate. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2498817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2498816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Blood-Is-Blood-Says-the-Kings-Camp.jpg3Fv3D-155542831626version3D.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2498816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2498818,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498816\/revisions\/2498818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2498817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2498816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2498816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2498816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}