Almost there. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have just completed their second-to-last day of events on their first overseas tour. They visited the Northshore Riding Club where they competed against each other in a “wellie wang” (tossing rainboots), and planted a tree for the Queens Canopy, and met with Pillars, an organisation working with children of prisoners, and there was a walkabout, and then a reception at the Auckland Museum War Memorial. 

My Photo Assumption tells me that Harry and Royal Meghan seem more energised the last couple of days, like a second – or third – wind. A few days ago you could read the exhaustion coming off of their bodies. They can feel it now though, the end of the trip, and as I predicted, they saved a lot of charm for New Zealand. Charm and belly-cupping. It’s almost as though the belly-cupping has to get its passport stamped in every country. 

In other Sussex news though… 

Have you heard about this biography of Prince Charles? Charles at Seventy: Thoughts, Hopes, and Dreams was written by royal reporter Robert Jobson who’s been at it for thirty years and who travelled with Prince Charles on official tours for 18 months doing research for the book. Excerpts are being released by the Daily Mail. The point is that this isn’t some random sh-t. The suggestion here, although they don’t say it outright, is that much of what’s in the book is likely endorsed by Charles himself, which is why a lot of the information is presented quite favourably – at least from Charles’s perspective. Like all the details about Princess Diana and what went wrong in their marriage, sympathetically laid out to describe Charles as someone who acknowledges he made a mistake in marrying her but who insists that he did not do her dirty, that she was unpredictable and volatile and should bear equal responsibility in their failed marriage.

While it’s not surprising that Charles, who hopes to be getting closer and closer to finally becoming king, is trying to give himself a makeover where Diana is concerned, it is curious what we’re hearing in this book about his relationship with his sons. Apparently, over the years, his bond with them has been strained at times. They supposedly resented him for being away so much. His intention, according to the biography, was to give them the space to be independent. And Charles was apparently hurt last year, during the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death, that William and Harry did not consult him or make much mention of him and how he supported them when they were doing interviews remembering their mother. 

For the most part, Harry comes out looking better than William. Robert Jobson writes that Charles and Harry have become closer because of Charles’s warmth towards Meghan and her deference towards him. Sources say that Meghan is known to seek Charles’s advice (OF COURSE that would flatter him) and that Meghan has encouraged Harry to spend more time with his father, perhaps because hers hasn’t exactly been, you know, helpful. This, perhaps, explains why it was Charles who stepped in for Thomas Markle at the wedding – the implied background being that they’ve grown close behind the scenes.

That said, we all remember, holy sh-t, the drama that led up to the wedding. And the stress that Harry and Meghan would have been experiencing. Robert Jobson says that both Harry and Meghan went to acupuncture together and that Harry was pretty aggro during that time and at one point would snap at his aides, “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets!” 

If you are a Royal Meghan hater, you’re now thinking she was a bridezilla. If you’re not a Royal Meghan hater, you’re like, yeah…and? The eyes of the world were on her, anyone would want it to be perfect. Whether or not you’re a Royal Meghan hater, what’s clear here, once again, is that he’s infatuated with her. From the time of the Love Shield, when he released that statement scolding the media for their treatment of his then-girlfriend, what Harry feels for Meghan is probably much more intense that what his dad felt for his mother. Which is probably not a point that they hit too hard in this book. Next: what Robert Jobson says about William.