Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan have had a tough bout of headlines lately. Despite Spare breaking all kinds of records in the publishing world, and their docu-series Harry & Meghan apparently doing well for Netflix (qualified because streaming metrics aren’t entirely transparent), they hit some speed bumps with their Spotify deal, which ended after disappointingly low output for the audio platform—and amid larger cost-saving measures at the company. Their deal with Netflix, though, continues unabated, and the next series they’ve produced, Heart of Invictus, released a trailer a couple of weeks ahead of its August 30 premiere.
The series follows Prince Harry’s work building up the Invictus Games, an international sporting event centered on veterans, and it looks like a total tear-jerker in that “emotional but ultimately uplifting” way. Will people be as into the work of putting together a major sporting event while addressing veterans’ issues, though? We talk a lot about the Sussexes’ work, especially lately as some of their work hasn’t panned out as expected, and while I like royal gossip as much as anyone—ask me about the Duke of Buckingham’s hidden passages!—this is the work of Harry’s I am most interested in.
Some of it is a general love for all international competition. The pageantry! The flags! The airing of grievances via organized sport! I 100% believe the Olympics are a total grift, but I get sucked into the drama of it all every time another Games rolls around, and the Invictus Games has the allure of not only a royal connection, but also international sport and pageantry—while also giving voice to serious issues affecting veterans.
Of all the memoirs that can be written, or gossip aired out, Invictus, like Sentebale, is something Harry is building that could well outlast him. I am SUPER interested to see how the Invictus Games come together, not just out of sheer backstage curiosity, but also as the next phase of Prince Harry’s post-royal life. There has been a lot of criticism, some of it justified, about the Sussexes work lately, but Heart of Invictus is a reminder that despite the clamor that surrounds them, they ARE still working, and while their first iteration of podcast producing didn’t work out, Netflix seems pretty happy with them (they recently optioned a novel to be their first narrative adaptation). Heart of Invictus is an important next step for the Sussexes, and a chance to show real work being done.
Attached - Prince Harry at the Sentebale ISPS Handa Polo Cup in Singapore on the weekend.
