So the Harkles are now claiming they didn't want a 12 month review period but it was forced on them..
Anyone here think that's likely?
The Duke of Sussex was so intent on quitting the royal family that he initially refused the offer of a trial period allowing him and the duchess the chance of returning to the UK, The Times can reveal. His determination to make a clean break without the option of review after 12 months emerged after
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Harry and Meghan: Duke refused trial period because he wanted clean break
Prince had to be talked into 12-month review
The Duke of Sussex was so intent on quitting the royal family that he initially refused the offer of a trial period allowing him and the duchess the chance of returning to the UK,
The Times can reveal.
His determination to make a clean break without the option of review after 12 months emerged after three days of revelations about the unhappiness felt by Harry and Meghan and the battles they fought with both family and senior courtiers.
Finding Freedom, which has been serialised in
The Times and
The Sunday Times, revealed how Harry believed that the “old guard” at Buckingham Palace disliked Meghan and wanted to make her life difficult.
The book, by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, also told how the rift between Harry and his brother the Duke of Cambridge was sparked by William telling Harry: “Take as much time as you need to get to know this girl” — a remark which Harry felt was “
snobbish”.
Sources on both sides of the family divide admitted that no one has emerged from the weekend’s coverage looking good — except the Queen. One said: “People are aware that this does not look good for anyone.”
Before the weekend palace insiders were nervously bracing themselves for the worst. Today, however, while several of them felt exhausted by the “uproar” of recent days, there was a palpable sense of relief that it had not been worse.
“I don’t think anyone looks at all of this with any particular happiness,” said one source.
However, a suggestion in one newspaper that the
disclosures meant the couple had “torpedoed” their chances of creating a new position for themselves within the royal family were dismissed by more than one source.
For not only do Harry and Meghan show no sign of wanting to come back from their new home in California, but it has now emerged that Harry had to be persuaded into accepting the idea of a trial period in the first place.
The idea of the review was suggested so that the couple would know that the door was always open for them. The Queen had always made it clear to Harry that he would be able to come back if he changed his mind.
“He was adamantly opposed to the review process,” said a source. He took the view that he did not want the press to write that there would be a review, suggesting that therefore they might change their minds and come back.
He was also opposed to the idea because it had come from the institution, which in Harry’s view was enough to make it a bad idea.
The source said that “under no circumstances would they ever admit ‘this was a big mistake’.”
However, one source said the purpose of the review was not so much to allow them to come back, as to permit some flexibility about their future role.
A source close to the Sussexes said: “Do I rule out them taking on roles for the family in the future? Absolutely not.
“But a full-scale return soon is not likely. That is not down to animosity or anything like that. They have not yet reached what they were seeking to do.”
The source said that Harry’s relationship with his brother was not as bad as it was portrayed at its nadir in the book. “It is not perfectly smooth, but the uproar of the weekend makes it seem more fractured than it is.”