How Two Rival Royal Courts Clashed—and Why the Palace Is Irritated

It was a day when two rival royal operations appeared to collide head-on.

Whatever the official spin—and despite Team Sussex’s relaxed insistence that their Nottingham visit was not a traditional Palace away day—the symbolism was difficult to miss. Harry and Meghan were presenting themselves as public figures free to chart their own course.

In practice, that course looked remarkably similar to a royal engagement, complete with public appearances, carefully arranged visits and plenty of handshaking.

For Harry, this kind of public duty has been familiar since childhood. Meghan, meanwhile, appears to have recognised quickly that such events offer an efficient way to connect with large numbers of people.

There is a reason the working royals have relied on this formula for generations.

Attention also turned to the King and Queen, who demonstrated the formal discipline of royal duty as they arrived in Cardiff to open the Welsh Parliament. The couple maintained their composure despite a small but vocal group of anti-monarchist protesters.

With Camilla beside him in a striking vermilion outfit, King Charles III ignored calls of “not my king” and proceeded with the official red-carpet welcome. The visit included a poignant meeting with Gareth Jones, a survivor of the 1966 Aberfan disaster, who became visibly emotional while holding the monarch’s hand.

The King and Queen also met Len Moss, an off-duty nurse who travelled to the Welsh mining village after a colliery waste tip engulfed its school. Moss spent two days cleaning the hands and faces of children recovered from the rubble so grieving relatives could identify them.

Inside the Senedd, Charles praised the building’s “spirit of public service”. Although the words were part of a prepared speech, they carried added resonance given Harry’s long-running and highly public disagreement with the Royal Family over the meaning and obligations of service.

Harry’s late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, shared the view of the then Prince Charles and Prince William that a royal could not realistically be “half in, half out”—particularly while pursuing profitable commercial ventures.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex famously responded that “service is universal”. For the past six years, they have continued testing the limits of the so-called Sandringham Agreement and seeking the arrangement they originally wanted.

William was notably absent from the public-facing events. However, he was understood to be taking part in a long-planned “duchy day”, working privately on projects connected to the Duchy of Cornwall.

What made the day particularly striking was how closely the Sussexes’ activities resembled the programme they might once have undertaken as working members of the Royal Family.

An operational note circulated to journalists, including royal correspondents, outlined the couple’s series of “official engagements” in Nottingham. The Daily Mail’s correspondent was reportedly excluded—a pointed detail given Harry’s previous description of some journalists as “pirates with Press cards”.

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Several reporters were invited to attend the events and distribute coverage and video through an official Sussex media pool.

That is no criticism of fellow journalists. Major public events must be covered, and the responsibility of the press is to report what happens fairly and accurately.

What’s so remarkable, though, is that this is the way the Sussexes have chosen to fashion their approach to the British media, when they vowed to do the very opposite at the time of their acrimonious departure.

Once again, it seems, they cleave back to the mothership.

Even their staffing yesterday was eerily familiar.

Behind Harry in Nottingham, those with an eagle eye might have spotted the delightful Beth Herlihy, who was employed as a programme coordinator by the prince when he was a working royal (and who also previously worked for William and Catherine at their Royal Foundation).

She and another equally lovely former royal aide Clara Loughran (Harry’s former programme manager, who was appointed a member of the Royal Victorian Order in the 2019 New Year’s Honours List) have since founded a private advisory firm working with high-profile individuals in the philanthropic sector, whose number one client in the UK is …the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Both, in other words, have been trained in ‘the royal way’. Even the walkabout undertaken by the couple – just hours after their own team pointedly insisted they wouldn’t do one because they didn’t have the security to manage it, despite the exact timings of their visit being publicly released, presumably in an effort to drum up interest – was royal in all but name.

While courtiers have done their best to make clear the Sussexes have nothing to do with them and should be treated as private citizens (as Harry and Meghan themselves have so frequently requested) events like their trip to Nottingham yesterday come as close to ‘official’ royal duties as you could get.

The obvious question is: what can the Palace do about it?

Very little, it seems. They’ve made their point, Harry and Meghan have chosen to ignore it.

There’s no doubt that the Royal Household is irritated and is likely to be even more so when it reads an inflammatory briefing by a friend of the couple to Hello! yesterday that the Sandringham Agreement was ‘foisted’ upon them – and that they never actually agreed to anything. Which many feel tells you a great deal about their current thinking.

But the Palace is absolutely determined not to be stung into reacting. Indeed, if the King’s approach yesterday was anything to go by, he will simply ignore the haters – whether they be random protesters or members of his own family – and stoically get on with his public duties.

And the same goes for the rest of the real royals too.