King Charles is taking the ‘Keep Calm & Carry On’ approach to Prince Harry

Hey, did you guys know that King Charles is taking a “keep calm and carry on” approach with Prince Harry? You might have missed Charles’s “I won’t dignify my son’s public comments” approach given the sheer volume of Buckingham Palace’s week-long briefing campaign. For someone who wants to convince people that he’s reacting with dignified and calm efficiency, the actions of the people around Charles show that Prince Harry’s BBC interview did serious damage. Only one royalist is bothering to admit something obvious though: that Harry has every right to go public because he has been stonewalled privately. From Us Weekly:

It doesn’t look like King Charles III will be reaching out to Prince Harry soon, at least according to royal expert Christopher Andersen.

“It really does look like Charles is taking the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ axiom to a whole other level, doesn’t it?” Andersen, who has authored multiple books about the royal family, told Us Weekly exclusively via email on Tuesday, May 6, amid the ongoing rift between Charles, 76, and Harry, 40.

“The King is only hewing to a long-standing royal practice of not dignifying something by commenting on it. The Palace does not want to give oxygen to Harry’s remarks,” Andersen continued. “King Charles has a lot on his plate as it is — there is no upside to his getting into a public quarrel with his son.”

Harry decided to go in the “opposite” direction, Andersen noted, as evidenced by his recent bombshell BBC News interview.

“It is understandable that Harry would go public — after all, he is being stonewalled privately, and it must be terribly frustrating for him not to even be able to get through to his father on the phone,” Andersen speculated. “There’s a real Catch 22 here: As long as the Palace ignores Harry in the vain hope that he’ll go away, it puts him in the position of having to amp up the volume of his public comments.”

“If Harry really wants to reconcile with his family, he has an odd way of showing it,” Andersen said. The royal expert further weighed in on Harry’s claims that his father was involved in his legal loss. “He slams his father for interfering in the trial, then says the Palace rigged the outcome, then accuses the Royal Family of not caring about the safety of his wife and children, and winds up declaring that for now he can’t foresee any scenario in which he would take his family to the U.K.. Harry delivered the coup de grace when he said he wanted to bury the hatchet with his father because he doesn’t know how much time the King has left to live.”

[From Us Weekly]

“The Palace does not want to give oxygen to Harry’s remarks” – could have fooled me. They’ve been giving oxygen to his remarks for the past week, and they will continue doing so because Harry gave the British press several gifts. Most significantly, they can write about Charles’s health using the angle of Harry’s comment about not knowing how much longer Charles has to live. The press is also clearly benefiting from the palace’s urgent spin, a quid pro quo which keeps the press from covering other aspects of Harry’s interview, including the comments about how Charles wanted other governments to refuse security to the Sussexes. Anyway, at least Andersen acknowledged the very obvious concept of: “Charles hasn’t spoken to Harry in more than a year, which is why Harry spoke to the BBC to air his side publicly.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.