One of the curious paradoxes of the royal family is that combined they are worth billions, and yet they holiday like a clutch of repressed lay vicars on fixed incomes.
No bikinis or drinks with miniature parasols or breaks that involve getting Ambre Solaire all over the latest Daniel Silva novel, no siree.
Whether it’s tradition or penny-pinching or just the habit of decades, it’s nearly that time of year again, when the House of Windsor flocks to northern Scotland to tramp across moors and endure midge bites for their annual summer “holiday”.
This year’s highlands migration to Balmoral is set to begin in mid-August, two weeks later than normal so King Charles can up the ticket sales to looky-loo tourists. (His Majesty and his better half Queen Camilla already have their out-of-offices on and are at the Castle of Mey, but will relocate in the coming weeks).
Every HRH worth their coronet and plenty who are not are set to turn up, and thus we get to the same sticking point that royal writers have been asking for five long years now: what about Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex?
It’s not as idiotic a question as it might appear, with the Daily Mail’s royal editor Rebecca English having reported that the couple has an “open invitation” to join his family for interminable weeks of rounders and early nights which has not “been rescinded”.
That said, it is “certainly not expected” that Harry and Meghan will accept and turn up with their children and a set of co-ordinating handmade Burberry kilts.
Still, this is where we get to the good bit for all you optimists out there. As a source close to the royal family told English of the “open invitation” situation: “If true, that can only be a good thing and may offer a sliver of hope that at some point in the future personal relationships can be rebuilt.”
Even two months ago, the very notion of Harry and Meghan setting foot anywhere north of the Firth of Forth would have been risible, but it feels like the ground has shifted of late, so it’s worth asking the question, could or would they ever take Charles up on a Balmoral stay?
If ever there was going to be some sort of royal equivalent of the Treaty of Versailles, the King’s private Scottish estate would make a lot of sense for a face-to-face meeting.
Charles and Harry would be away from the Buckingham Palace courtiers, a number of whom the duke took aim at in Spare. Added to which, there are 50,000 acres to roam, there would be no press in sight, unless some Mail reporter has gotten lost while fly fishing, and much looser schedules allow for longer conversations (and conversations that don’t have to be fitted in between investitures and the like).
Given that Harry and Meghan have never stayed there with his family during the Windsors’ usual getaway, it might also represent neutral-ish territory and a place that comes with no bad memories.
It’s not just the location that could make this an attractive option but the timing too.
The last three months have seen the duke and duchess take something of a pasting.
In May, Harry turned up to the coronation on his Jack Jones looking like a sad, isolated figure in need of a hug and a meal involving a baked potato.
The same month, the couple arrived in New York for what should have been a routine bit of self-promotion with the duchess collecting a gong from the Ms Awards.
But Meghan being hailed for her tireless feminist work (stop giggling you up the back there) was lost in the hullabaloo that followed when they put out a statement claiming they had been involved in a “near catastrophic” car chase with the pernicious paparazzi. To paraphrase the late Queen, it soon became apparent that “recollections varied”, with the New York Police Department and the city’s mayor offering much less histrionic interpretations of events.
All this was just a bit of a warm-up for what lay ahead, which was their US career taking a nosedive.
Today, their $29.7 million ($US20 million) Spotify deal is all over red rover, their Netflix contract is unlikely to be renewed and they have been called “f**king grifters” with Meghan labelled as “not a great talent”.
How do you say ouch in Scottish Gaelic?
In early June, Harry was back in London to take to the stand in his war against the Mirror Group Newspapers over alleged phone hacking, an experience that left him appearing to fight back tears.
Meanwhile, the Sussexes have found themselves increasingly targeted or at least caught by the paparazzi with a steady stream of new shots of them out and about in Montecito.
Lastly, there has been the drip, drip, drip of speculation about the state of their union.
A source told The Sun recently, “There is a bit of a feeling Harry is spiralling out of control and all is not well”.
It’s at this point that sequestering oneself away in a small bothie (wee Scottish cottage) somewhere on the vast Balmoral estate might not look like the worst idea, even if it came with the prospect of being dragooned into some lengthy moorland march by aunty Anne.
Obviously, there has been no sort of progress or patching of hurts this year in the wake of Harry’s memoir. (The King is not believed to have waded into his son’s magnum opus of hurt feelings, with one friend of His Majesty telling the Mail, “Why would he read something that he knows is going to be so hurtful?”)
However, by the same token, all indicators point to the duke and duchess moving on from their years-long purging of emotions whenever they were in the vicinity of recording devices. The main tempest would seem to have passed.
At the same time, Harry’s attempts at dragging some sort of concession or an apology out of his father and brother have fallen totally on obstreperous deaf ears. He might have sold a Guinness World Record-busting number of books and have finally worked out how to use a semicolon, but his campaign to hold The Firm to account looks like it has largely failed. He scored a few blows, but there was not a single knockout.
If this has all proven futile, then could we see a change in tack? Some sort of yielding or outreach from either or both sides?
At some point, even if for nothing but pragmatic reasons, some sort of reconciliation or tentative reopening of lines of communication surely has to happen.
English has also reported that “relations between father and son … are still not good, although the family feel encouraged by claims that Harry and Meghan are now determined to focus on the future rather than family recriminations”.
“Slivers of hope”? “Encouraging” developments? Just imagine what all that fresh air plus those burnt Tesco sausages eaten by a loch could achieve.
And if they can pull this off, then next year they should invite the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
