Harry’s eye-watering bill after court fail

That royal family – they really do go in for a rum bunch of hobbies, don’t they?

George V “did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps”, according to biographer Harold Nicholson.

Today, in their down time, the Windsors can be found keeping bees (Kate, the Princess of Wales), hiking in Transylvania (King Charles), and carriage driving (Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh), like a bunch of blundering lesser Austen characters on a fixed budget and with no imagination. (Prince William has even sold his polo ponies.)

Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex would seem to be no different from his blue-blooded relatives. He might have changed countries, jobs and oat milk brands but he, too, these days is spending large amounts of his time indulging in an unusual pastime of his own: Waging court cases.

Sure, some titled, wealthy blokes might just squander their millions on horses or yachts or acquiring pieces from Basquiat’s early period but Harry has proven time and again he is not a man willing to quiescently follow tradition.

Instead, for years, the Duke has been fighting a series of legal actions against both the British Home Office and his personal kryptonite, Fleet Street’s tabloids

Except now, poor Harry has suffered quite the blow with a judge dealing him the biggest setback yet to his courtroom campaigning.

On Tuesday, in London, Mr Justice Chamberlain denied the Duke permission to bring a second legal challenge over whether he should be allowed to pay for police protection.

While this is only one of two actions Harry has brought over the 2020 decision made by Royal and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC) to withdraw his official protection given he longer occupied an official role, those who have read their torts textbooks think this augurs badly.

“The writing is on the wall for this case now,” media lawyer Mark Stephens has told the Daily Beast.

Maybe Harry should have bought a one-hulled catamaran or a couple of lame racehorses or hit the roulette tables after all, because so far this legal habit of his has proven to be nothing but a fast way to waste a lot of money.

According to The Sun, Harry’s thus-far futile fight with the UK government over official security has cost taxpayers more than £300,000 ($A563,000).

If his own legal fees are in the same ballpark, that means in total it has cost more than $1.1 million for Harry to essentially try to prove a point that I would wager only he cares about.

Aside from the Duke’s attempt to have his Metropolitan Police security arrangements reinstated when he is in Britain, he also has three other legal challenges going against the publishers of the Mirror, the Daily Mail and The Sun for alleged unlawful information gathering. (The Sun is owned by News Group Newspapers which is also the owner of this masthead.)

Come June, while the rest of the Windsors are revving up to Royal Ascot and dusting off their tartan for Balmoral, Harry will be getting ready to take the stand. Next month he will give evidence in his Mirror case, the first senior royal to sit in a witness box in 130 years.

Will Harry triumph and prove to be an unlikely oratorical Rumpole? Or will high-priced lawyers subject him to a painful grilling only slightly less humiliating than when he asked to use a stranger’s loo on a late night comedy show?

One thing that is clear is that in the last few weeks Harry has repeatedly come face-to-face with embarrassment.

There was his turn at his father King Charles’ coronation where he was left to walk to his seat on his own, tucked conspicuously between his York cousins, and far away from his brother Prince William. Then, consigned to the third row, Harry watched his father become the 40th monarch anointed inside Westminster Abbey while stuck behind the resplendent plumage of his aunt Princess Anne’s hat.

Later, official cars transported the trove of Windsors back to Buckingham Palace while Harry was left to dash to Heathrow to head back to the US.

Then there was last week’s slightly bonkers New York paparazzi debacle. He and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex left an awards night, where the former Suits actress was collecting a gong, at which point they “personally decided to walk in front of the group of photographers,” Page Six has reported.

The Sussexes’ spokesperson later claimed that what followed was a “near-catastrophic” confrontation with snappers, a version of events which differed from that of the New York Police Department (describing it as a “challenging” situation) or the city’s mayor Eric Adams who said, “I would find it hard to believe there was a two-hour high-speed chase.”

(Elsewhere, a witness has told the New York Post that the Sussexes’ bodyguards were “mocking the paps, provoking them; these security egged on the paps”.)

Then there is the double-edged sword of the latest US polling numbers for the lighting rod Duke and Duchess. The latest figures, according to Newsweek, show Harry enjoying an overall seven point rise to a net approval of +15 while Meghan has re-entered positive territory for the first time since January, with her currently on +5.

(William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales have ratings of +34 and +37 respectively in America.)

However, the real sting in the tail comes when you consider that the time period this covers was their lowest profile and quietest in ages. Translation: Americans like the Sussexes more when they are quiet and out of sight. (Imagine what sort of numbers they would be getting if they moved to the remotest bit of Wyoming, took a vow of PR silence and deleted Oprah’s number!)

Right now it seems like the Sussexes are stuck on something of a losing streak.

While many of these legal cases are still ongoing, the thing about Harry’s Home Office case is, why? Why is he going to such expensive lengths for a matter that would have no bearing on his day-to-day life even if he wins? Why fight so hard for security in a country where the Sussexes no longer have a home and have spent less than one month out of the last 40-odd months?

These days Harry is a man who seems wholly focused on ‘making points’ and colonising the supposed moral high ground. There would be a certain impressive quality to his blinkered obstinacy if it did not come at a certain cost – adding to his obstreperous image and hardly coming cheap.

So, who else thinks it’s time for Harry to follow in the footsteps of his great, great grandfather George V and to get into stamps big time? After all the finger pointing and interviews and family hurts and hours and hours of TV and the lawsuits costing possibly millions, a nice bit of philately might be just what his advisers – and his bank manager – order.

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.