Prince harry

There are many things Americans admire about Britain – Shakespeare, Churchill and parliamentary democracy (on a good day). Above all, we admire the monarchy: that ancient, faintly miraculous institution which maintains its dignity even as the rest of the West dissolves into hashtag-fueled hysteria. What we do not admire, however, is being used as a backdrop for Prince Harry’s increasingly frantic attempts to remain relevant. No, I do not actually wish for President Trump to deport Harry to the Tower of London – although the image is, I confess, delicious, and might conceivably enjoy rare cross-party support on both sides of the Atlantic.

Amidst all the ceremony and gravity of Britain’s Remembrance Day service on Sunday, one salient fact could not be ignored. The King has long talked of his desire for a “stripped-down monarchy,” and now he has his wish. The only male figures from the Firm who were out on show alongside him were the Prince of Wales and Prince Edward, who together had the effect of making the royals look a rather paltry selection compared to the grander gatherings of the past. We all know about Harry, but although some would like to see him, too, stripped of his royal title, Montecito’s second most famous resident continues to be able to refer to himself as a prince.

Here we are again, Meghan’s latest cringe-inducing social media offering: an 80-second video of her twerking in a hospital delivery room while heavily pregnant with her daughter Lilibet. The clip, posted to mark her daughter’s fourth birthday, shows the Duchess of Sussex doing what can best be described as suggestive dance moves beside her hospital bed, complete with shimmies and rowing motions, while Haz joins in wearing a hoodie. It’s peak Meghan, really – simultaneously oversharing and attention-seeking while complaining about the invasion of privacy.

It was always unlikely that Prince Harry was going to take his latest and perhaps most humiliating legal defeat with calmness and equanimity, and so it proved swiftly afterwards. Not only did he give a lengthy interview to the BBC in which he alternated between anger and blame and claiming that it was his intention to reconcile with his family, and specifically his father – William may be a step too far - but he also released an emotive and angry press statement in which he talked about how the court ruling had uncovered ‘shocking truths’.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are finally enjoying their “honeymoon period.” Or they are according to the Duchess of Sussex, who made the statement on a fawning podcast as part of a brand building media blitz – and who certainly seems to be enjoying herself.But has she asked her husband if he’s reveling in their belated honeymoon quite as much as she is? Once the spare to the throne, his presence as her forlorn shadow at events to honor her now appears largely surplus to requirements even to Meghan. “That man loves me so much,” she gushed on Montecito neighbor Jamie Kern Lima’s podcast on Monday. She likened their relationship to a video game where you "slay the dragon, save the princess.

Somewhere atop the sun-drenched hills of coastal California, failures go to rebrand themselves, and rebrand their rebrands as "pivots." There, Kamala Harris and Meghan Markle are busy writing the next chapter in the book of blaming the system for the personal failures of wealthy and powerful people. Harris, fresh from discovering that Democratic strategists had invented the America that was enthusiastic about her, now contemplates her political afterlife. She does so from the same region of the same state where Markle, having learned that royal traditions don't yield to Instagram aesthetics, crafts multi-million-dollar deals to explain why it's everyone else's fault. Welcome to the Golden State, where yesterday's rejections become tomorrow's empowerment memoirs.

Prince Harry’s clandestine dash to Ukraine this week, trailing last year’s faux royal tours to Colombia and Nigeria, lays bare a brazen hypocrisy. He bangs on about the UK being too perilous for his family, waging legal crusades over security provisions, yet here he is, swanning into war zones and countries with travel warnings, trading on his fading royal luster to clutch at relevance – all while dodging the duties he willingly jettisoned. Bereft of official standing in America or Britain, his quest to play maverick royal smacks of pantomime, one that jeers at his claims of craving a secluded, secure existence. Take his Ukraine jaunt to Lviv’s Superhumans Center, where he mingled with wounded soldiers and civilians.

Imagine Prince Harry and Meghan Markle perched in their Montecito mansion, glowering at Donald Trump’s brazen, rebooted America. They’re not fleeing yet, but as progressive celebrities ditch Hollywood’s hills – Rosie O’Donnell settling in Ireland, Ellen DeGeneres nesting in Britain – might the Sussexes trail behind? We Yanks would rejoice. The spotlight sharpened last week when Harry’s US visa records hit the headlines on March 18, courtesy of a laudable Heritage Foundation lawsuit. The group probed whether Harry glossed over the drug escapades he bragged about in his memoir Spare – cocaine, cannabis, psychedelics – to clinch his visa.