BBC
“Prince freakin’ Harry,” shouted award-winning US footballer Cameron Heyward, at the start of an emotional acceptance speech in which he thanked God and many of his other supporters.
The football star seemed as startled as anyone to see the Duke of Sussex handing over the prize at an NFL award ceremony in Las Vegas.
After the sombre headlines about his flying visit to London to see his father, after the King’s cancer diagnosis, here was Prince Harry in Nevada. Despite the international travel, he was looking relaxed and teasing about American football re-inventing rugby, except with “taking a breather every 15 seconds”.
It wasn’t only the sports star who seemed bemused by Prince Harry’s presence.
At the end of a tumultuous week of royal health news, people have still been puzzling about Prince Harry’s transatlantic scramble to see the King on Tuesday.
If you’d travelled overnight across the Atlantic to London, in an anxious dash to see a parent with bad news, rushing there in a convoy from Heathrow – how long would you expect to stay with your family?
The meeting, when it came, was probably less than 45 minutes.
And there was no meeting at all with his brother, the Prince of Wales. Even before Prince Harry had reached his father at Clarence House, sources had already ruled out any chance of such an encounter.
There was to be no fraternal feelgood music playing in the background. Such an emergency wasn’t going to start thawing out the family permafrost. There were just awkward grainy pictures of Harry in the obligatory black Range Rovers.
“If his father’s illness isn’t the catalyst for a rapprochement with William, what will be? With each successive year, and each key moment in life that passes, the rift will become more and more entrenched,” says historian and author Sir Anthony Seldon.
He warns it will be Prince Harry who will lose public support from this stand off and says he should “take a grip on his life” and not see himself as a “victim”.
“The truth is that Harry is a specially talented and compassionate person who has the potential to do vast good. I remain optimistic, but with each passing year, and each passing crisis, that optimism takes a hit,” says Sir Anthony.
So why was there such a short visit to his father? And why did Prince Harry fly out again after a single night?
It’s understood that the timing of the event in Las Vegas wasn’t a factor in deciding his rapid turnaround.
Instead the suggestion is to turn it round and imagine the trip from Harry’s perspective.
He’s flown over, desperate to see a parent with some distressing health news. That meeting finishes quickly, for whatever reason, and then everyone leaves. He’s in a hotel and no one is rushing to see him, except the press.
What happens next? Well, it’s a rapid exit back to the United States.
