A friend of mine runs an Australian bookstore. They had the breakfast tv and print media out this morning. Decorations and freebies.
*tumbleweeds*
No one came.
*tumbleweeds*
No one came.
So he expected the British taxpayer to continue funding his security in another country. And he would grace us with his presence for ceremonies and events. Not opening a sewerage factory on a wet weekend...like PP did.The private secretaries began to address Granny about the Five Options.
Your Majesty, you’ve seen the Five Options.
Yes, she said. We all had.
They’d been emailed to us, five different ways of proceeding.
Option 1 was continuance of the status quo: Meg and I don’t leave, everyone tries to go back to normal.
Option 5 was full severance, no royal role, no working for Granny, and total loss of security.
Option 3 was somewhere in between.
A compromise. Closest to what we’d originally proposed.
I told everyone assembled that, above all, I was desperate to keep security. That was what worried me most, my family’s physical safety. I wanted to prevent a repeat of history, another untimely death like the one that had rocked this family to its core twenty-three years earlier, and from which we were still trying to recover.
I’d consulted with several Palace veterans, people who knew the inner workings of the monarchy and its history and they all said Option 3 was best for all parties.
Meg and I living elsewhere part of the year, continuing our work, retaining security, returning to Britain for charities, ceremonies, events.
Sensible solution, these Palace veterans said. And eminently doable.
But the family, of course, pushed me to take Option 1. Barring that, they would only accept Option 5.
We discussed the Five Options for nearly an hour.
At last the Bee got up and went around the table, handing out a draft of a statement the Palace would soon be releasing.
Announcing implementation of Option 5.
Wait. I’m confused. You’ve already drafted a statement? Before any discussion? Announcing Option 5? In other words, the fix was in, this whole time? This summit was just for show?
No answer.
I asked if there were drafts of other statements. Announcing the other options.
Oh yes, of course, the Bee assured me.
Can I see them?
Alas—his printer had gone on the blink, he said.
The odds! At the very moment he was about to print out those other drafts!
Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.
And remember when noone could get hold of them to inform them that PP had died. I bet they were coked outWhere the hell is social services? All this drug-taking with small children around ... makes no fucking sense to me. Someone in the Montecito area needs to make a phone-call and report him. Presumably Dorito is around the kids too ... a convicted drug dealer? Allegedly.
Christ, what a prize cuntIs it all just about the money?
Isn’t it always?
All my life I’ve heard people saying the monarchy was expensive, anachronistic, and Meg and I were now served up as proof.
Our wedding was cited as Exhibit A. It cost millions, and thereafter we’d up and left. Ingrates.
But the family paid for the actual wedding, and a huge portion of the remaining cost was for security, much of which was made necessary by the press stirring up racism and class resentment.
And the security experts themselves told us the snipers and sniffer dogs weren’t just for us: they were to prevent a shooter from strafing the crowds on the Long Walk, or a suicide bomber blowing up the parade route.
Maybe money sits at the heart of every controversy about monarchy.
Britain has long had trouble making up its mind.
Many support the Crown, but many also feel anxious about the cost.
That anxiety is increased by the fact that the cost is unknowable. Depends on who’s crunching the numbers.
Does the Crown cost taxpayers? Yes.
Does it also pay a fortune into government coffers? Also yes.
Does the Crown generate tourism income that benefits all? Of course.
Does it also rest upon lands obtained and secured when the system was unjust and wealth was generated by exploited workers and thuggery, annexation and enslaved people? Can anyone deny it?
According to the last study I saw, the monarchy costs the average taxpayer the price of a pint each year.
In light of its many good works that seems a pretty sound investment.
But no one wants to hear a prince argue for the existence of a monarchy, any more than they want to hear a prince argue against it.
I leave cost-benefit analyses to others.
My emotions are complicated on this subject, naturally, but my bottom-line position isn’t.
I’ll forever support my Queen, my Commander in Chief, my Granny. Even after she’s gone.
My problem has never been with the monarchy, nor the concept of monarchy.
It’s been with the press and the sick relationship that’s evolved between it and the Palace.
I love my Mother Country, and I love my family, and I always will.
I just wish, at the second-darkest moment of my life, they’d both been there for me.
And I believe they’ll look back one day and wish they had too.
Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.
Angela Levin?“Make no mistake, it’s an insult,” cried the Daily Mail, which convened a “Fleet Street jury” to consider our “crimes.”
Among them was the Queen’s ex–press secretary, who concluded, with his fellow jurors, that we should hereafter “expect no mercy.”
I shook my head. No mercy. The language of war?
Clearly this was more than simple anger.
These men and women saw me as an existential threat.
If our leaving posed a threat to the monarchy, as some were saying, then it posed a threat to all those covering the monarchy for a living.
Hence, we had to be destroyed.
One of this lot, who’d written a book about me and thus provably depended on me to pay her rent, went on live TV to explain confidently that Meg and I had departed from Britain without so much as a by-your-leave to Granny.
We’d discussed it with no one, she said, not even Pa.
She announced these falsehoods with such unfaltering certainty that even I was tempted to believe her, and thus her version of events quickly became “the truth” in many circles.
Harry blindsided the Queen!
That was the narrative that took hold.
I could feel it oozing into history books, and I could imagine boys and girls at Ludgrove, decades hence, having that hogwash rammed down their throats.
I sat up late, brooding on it all, going over the progression of events and asking myself: What’s the matter with these people? What makes them like this?
Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.
I was thinking Camilla TomneyAngela Levin?
His lack of self awareness is astounding. Just as much as his sense of entitlement.So he expected the British taxpayer to continue funding his security in another country. And he would grace us with his presence for ceremonies and events. Not opening a sewerage factory on a wet weekend...like PP did.
Except audiences on all talk shows are given instructions on how they are to respond guests. Nothing is spontaneous. Even placards are held up to remind them to clap and shout as if it were the Second Coming after a guest is announced. Partly to build up the guest and partly to show how awesome the host is by getting such a catch to appear on his show.He got one hell of an applause as he bounded onto the Colbert stage, with screams from the crowd as they chanted "Harry, Harry, Harry!"
View attachment 1873337
'Go me ..I've fixed it/had it fixed!' So the fixing of the necklace is more important to him than fixing the relationship with his brother.It's now fixed? Like everyone was hanging on his every word, desperate to know that.
Oh, the drama!
It's a bit of string. Not the Crown Jewels.
So he’s a thief as well. Worra cunt!I removed two ornaments, soft little corgis, and brought them back to the staffers. One each. Souvenir of this strange mission, I said. They were touched. But a bit guilty. I assured them: No one will miss ’em. Words that seemed double-edged.
Yawn..definitely Smegz inputIs it all just about the money?
Isn’t it always?
All my life I’ve heard people saying the monarchy was expensive, anachronistic, and Meg and I were now served up as proof.
Our wedding was cited as Exhibit A. It cost millions, and thereafter we’d up and left. Ingrates.
But the family paid for the actual wedding, and a huge portion of the remaining cost was for security, much of which was made necessary by the press stirring up racism and class resentment.
And the security experts themselves told us the snipers and sniffer dogs weren’t just for us: they were to prevent a shooter from strafing the crowds on the Long Walk, or a suicide bomber blowing up the parade route.
Maybe money sits at the heart of every controversy about monarchy.
Britain has long had trouble making up its mind.
Many support the Crown, but many also feel anxious about the cost.
That anxiety is increased by the fact that the cost is unknowable. Depends on who’s crunching the numbers.
Does the Crown cost taxpayers? Yes.
Does it also pay a fortune into government coffers? Also yes.
Does the Crown generate tourism income that benefits all? Of course.
Does it also rest upon lands obtained and secured when the system was unjust and wealth was generated by exploited workers and thuggery, annexation and enslaved people? Can anyone deny it?
According to the last study I saw, the monarchy costs the average taxpayer the price of a pint each year.
In light of its many good works that seems a pretty sound investment.
But no one wants to hear a prince argue for the existence of a monarchy, any more than they want to hear a prince argue against it.
I leave cost-benefit analyses to others.
My emotions are complicated on this subject, naturally, but my bottom-line position isn’t.
I’ll forever support my Queen, my Commander in Chief, my Granny. Even after she’s gone.
My problem has never been with the monarchy, nor the concept of monarchy.
It’s been with the press and the sick relationship that’s evolved between it and the Palace.
I love my Mother Country, and I love my family, and I always will.
I just wish, at the second-darkest moment of my life, they’d both been there for me.
And I believe they’ll look back one day and wish they had too.
Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.
Please please @ChipDex put this forward as a thread title!It's now fixed? Like everyone was hanging on his every word, desperate to know that.
Oh, the drama!
It's a bit of string. Not the Crown Jewels.
This?I hope to God they’re not true. I was horrified reading what I read today.
If Someone you loved had been attacked you’d be furious, not 'sad'. Megs had her mitts all over this to make out she’s the innocent party which makes me think there’s so much more to come out about her.I stayed true to my word, didn’t tell Meg. But not long after she returned from her trip, she saw me coming out of the shower and gasped. Haz, what are those scrapes and bruises on your back? I couldn’t lie to her. She wasn’t that surprised, and she wasn’t at all angry. She was terribly sad.
Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.
(with apologies to the late great Robin Gibb)All ready for Prince Harry the Musical I see.
'We care about working, serving - and staying alive.'
As the sound of the Bee Gees fills the auditorium...
Now you know how our armed forces feel after your "I killed 25 taliban" commentTHE QUESTION WAS: Where to live?
We considered Canada. By and large it had been good to us. It had already come to feel like home.
We could imagine spending the rest of our lives there. If we could just find a place the press didn’t know about, we said, Canada might be the answer. Meg got in touch with a Vancouver friend, who connected us with an estate agent, and we started looking at houses.
We were taking first steps, trying to be positive.
Doesn’t really matter where we live, we said, so long as the Palace fulfills its obligation—and what I felt was its implicit promise—to keep us safe.
Meg asked me one night: You don’t think they’d ever pull our security, do you?
Never. Not in this climate of hate. And not after what happened to my mother.
Also, not in the wake of my Uncle Andrew. He was embroiled in a shameful scandal, accused of the sexual assault of a young woman, and no one had so much as suggested that he lose his security. Whatever grievances people had against us, sex crimes weren’t on the list.
February 2020.
I scooped Archie from his nap and took him out to the lawn. It was sunny, cold, and we gazed at the water, touched the dry leaves, collected rocks and twigs. I kissed his chubby little cheeks, tickled him, then glanced down at my phone to see a text from the head of our security team, Lloyde. He needed to see me. I carried Archie across the garden and handed him to Meg, then went across the soggy grass to the cottage where Lloyde and the other bodyguards were staying.
We sat on a bench, both of us wearing puffer jackets. Waves rolling gently in the background, Lloyde told me that our security was being pulled.
He and the whole team had been ordered to evacuate. Surely they can’t. I would tend to agree. But they are.
So much for the year of transition.
The threat level for us, Lloyde said, was still higher than for that of nearly every other royal, equal to that assigned the Queen.
And yet the word had come down and there was to be no arguing.
So here we are, I said.
The ultimate nightmare.
The worst of all worst-case scenarios.
Any bad actor in the world would now be able to find us, and it would just be me with a pistol to stop them. Oh wait. No pistol. I’m in Canada.
I rang Pa.
He wouldn’t take my calls.
Just then I got a text from Willy. Can you speak?
Great. I was sure my older brother, after our recent walk in the Sandringham gardens, would be sympathetic. That he’d step up.
He said it was a government decision. Nothing to be done.
Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.
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