Charles’ devastating Harry move

Let me introduce you to Princess Alexandra, the Honourable Lady Ogilvy. Eighty-six-years-young and a granddaughter of King George V, throughout her nearly seven decade career of wearing hats for a living as a working member of the royal family she has been posted off to do more second and third and fourth string events than Sarah, the Duchess of Ferguson in the 80s when she was in the bad books.

Alexandra is currently the 56th in line to the throne and tonight, as the world witnesses King Charles become an anointed monarch, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex will be watching his father make history right by her side. (Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank will also be sitting next to him.)

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If this was not galling, not ignominious, debasing enough – Harry, the son of the King, having to share a pew with Alexandra, who is three and a half rugby teams worth of spots away from the crown and Jack, a former tequila ambassador – then prepare yourself because they will all be seated for the ceremony in the … deep breaths here chaps … third row.

Three. Trois. Not the first, not even the second, but the third.

This is a new level of embarrassment for a duke whose willy has ended up on newspaper front pages. Twice.

When Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex turned up for Her late Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee service of thanksgiving in June last year, they made their way up the aisle of St Paul’s to have to take their places in the second row. Jaws dropped, eyes popped and certain hardy royal commentators had to find new and interesting ways to talk about how humiliating it all was for them.

Then, when Queen Elizabeth went off to meet her just reward (a never-ending Ascot meeting where her horses always come in first) in September, the Sussexes were plonked, again, in the second row for her funeral, forced to watch on from behind an 87-year-old duke and a 14-year-old viscount.

Oh mortification, thy name is Sussex.

Each of these instances read like a very clear and very deliberate set down of a couple who threw off the royal yoke to then proceed to make tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars, whingeing to the world about why they had to throw off the royal yoke.

So, ahead of today’s crowning, the question of seating was one particularly hot potato.

Now, thanks to the trusty reporting of the Sun we know that at an event at which Harry should arguably have automatically gotten a very good seat by dint of it being his own father’s big day, instead he has been lumped with the worst one yet.

Woweeee.

An insider told the paper: “There were discussions that the seating could be arranged on line of succession. Instead the decision was working royals only at the front and work back from there. Harry will be a long way from his father.”

This is such an indignity it nearly makes me feel sorry for Aitch. Going into the coronation, there had been every possibility that Charles would use this moment to offer some sort of olive branch to his wayward, loose-lipped son; that His Majesty might use it as an opportunity to send some sort of signal to Harry that despite everything, he was still his much-loved, part of the family. You know, the sort of sweet, touchy-feely sort of move we might expect from a man who makes small talk with his geraniums.

And, there is a strong argument to make that this would have been a smarter long term play, that it would have mollified the aggrieved Sussexes and maybe dialled down their fever pitch levels of indignation a notch.

Instead, it’s looking like no white flags will be waved today.

Because Harry is not only going to have to arrive with all the other extraneous HRHs and Windsor cousins and twiddle his thumbs waiting for his brother and sister-in-law William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales to arrive; he is not only going to have to watch the two-hour ceremony lost in the wilderness of the third row; but he is about to be forced to pay a very public price for the campaign he has been waging against Buckingham Palace, while billions of people around the world watch from their chip-strewn sofas.

Or to put it another way, Harry, meet consequences.

Meet the consequences of having accepted a reported $148 million deal from Netflix, the shining jewel of which was six hours of he and Meghan mining their reservoirs of hurt feeling from linen lounges that I am guessing cost more than most family cars.

And meet the consequences of Spare, in which he put his often emotionally constipated, dysfunctional family on excoriating trial while simultaneously displaying a depth of self-reflection about as a shallow puddle.

What Harry’s third row demotion suggests is how dimly King Charles feels about his son’s cash-for-comment streak. (Well, a psychology student would also argue that the chance for the duke to cathart a bit and embarrass his family might have played a part in things too.)

His Majesty is most definitely not amused.

After the Jubilee and after Her late Majesty’s funeral last year and the Sussexes second-row billing and the brouhahas that set off, Charles cannot for a second have been ignorant of how big of a deal today’s third row banishment would be.

It’s hard to read the decision to exile Harry to this royal Siberia as anything but a regal put down only shy of being sent to the Tower without any dessert.

In another universe where things panned out radically differently and Megxit had never happened, Harry and Meghan would today be taking their places in the front row and the duke may well have been given an official part to play in proceedings. There is also the chance that Archie would have been dragged along to endure a two-hour church service, what with him being the same age as Charles was when he glumly sat through his mother’s in 1953.

It would have been one big glorious celebration featuring a united, contemporary royal family front and centre.

Instead, tonight what will be on full, unmistakeable display will be a family falling-out only slightly less devastating than the War of the Roses. While Harry watches on, next to Alexandra as she rustles around her handbag for a lint-covered toffee, he is not only going to endure seeing William deliver the Homage of Royal Blood but to watch Queen Camilla’s grandchildren and great-nephew slapped front and centre.

The way things are shaping up right now, the coronation is going to be an emotional and psychological endurance feat for Harry equivalent to that of conquering Everest and all without a Tenzig Norgay and oxygen supplies. (A detail I love: News of Sir Edmund Hilary’s ascent of the famed peak reached London the same day as Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953.)

The coronation was always going to be a rough road for the Duke of Sussex and this morning it just got that much rougher with this seating news.

In 1821, after his coronation, King George IV said of the ceremony, “I would not endure again the sufferings of that day for another kingdom.”

In the not too distant future, Harry might be about to feel exactly the same way.

Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.