So, why did Harry bring Meghan and his kids into this situation in the UK? It now appears it was for juxtaposition.
Now that the media hoopla has unleashed its opening salvo, the Palace has issued its extraordinary public memo reminding military personnel and others that the Duke is a private citizen, and Uganda has quickly withdrawn from the Games, it becomes clearer why Harry and Meghan might have felt it necessary to arrive in the UK one year in advance, with their beautiful children in tow.
Harry may have known that things could get ugly.
And perhaps he wanted some beauty to come home to. And he wanted to keep his family together. Safe and sound with him to protect them.
Uganda is hardly integral to the success of the Invictus Games. It is a newcomer to the Invictus community and has never actually competed in the Games. That’s not to say, who needs Uganda? But Birmingham will not collapse because Uganda has withdrawn. The athletes who matter, who are loyal to this mission and who have always come, will still come. The stands will still fill.
Indeed, attempts to quell enthusiasm around the Games may have precisely the opposite effect. Because, as they say, any publicity is good publicity. The stories of courage, recovery and comradeship that have defined Invictus since Harry founded it will still be told.
But the timing is impossible to ignore.
Uganda’s abrupt withdrawal came only days after King Charles issued guidance reiterating that Harry and Meghan are private citizens and that their activities should not be treated as official royal business. The guidance was circulated to precisely the sort of institutions with which an international military sporting event must interact: government, military and civic bodies.
On its face, a low blow.
Then came Uganda.
Its military chief, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, announced that his country would withdraw from the Invictus Games, invoking respect for King Charles and subsequently referring dismissively to “Harry-Meghan nonsense.”
There is an extraordinary irony here.
The King has expressed support for the Invictus Games. Yet this comes subsequent to a Palace directive whose practical effect could hardly have been helpful to his son’s life’s work.
Harry created the Games. Britain bid to host them and is preparing to do so. And yet, almost immediately after the Palace emphasized Harry’s status as a private citizen, the leader of a foreign military invoked the King himself to justify walking away from a noble and honorable project honoring injured servicemen and women.
Whatever the Palace intended, the sequence is extraordinary.
Harry served in the military. This is why he has such a profound kinship with soldiers and veterans. Yet since his relocation to California, the conspicuous absence of his father and brother from the Invictus Games has become part of the story surrounding an event Harry created to honor wounded service personnel.
And perhaps that is the more interesting story of Harry’s year in England.
Because I have spent much of this series imagining Meghan’s clothes.
Her boots. Her beautiful coats. Her tartans and cashmere. The school runs and country lunches. The dogs bounding through wet grass. Flowers on the kitchen table. Meghan disappearing into London for a meeting before returning to the Cotswolds for dinner.
It can all sound impossibly idyllic.
Perhaps it needs to be.
This juxtaposition is needed.
Because while I have been imagining Meghan building a beautiful English life, Harry has been walking into an ambush.
He has returned to the country of his birth as the son of its King but officially a private citizen; as a former soldier whose greatest international achievement depends upon relationships with militaries and governments; and as a husband bringing back a woman who has spent years being treated as a national provocation by sections of the British press.
Maybe Harry knew exactly what he was doing when he brought Meghan, Archie and Lili with him.
Maybe this was never simply a return to Britain.
Maybe he brought home his sanctuary.
His wife and children are that for him. Perhaps he knew he would need them most of all.
There is something rather beautiful about imagining this contrast.
Outside the gates, statements are issued. Newspapers scream. Commentators speculate. Governments posture. People who have never met Harry explain his motives, his marriage and his future.
And then he comes home.
There are muddy shoes by the door.
A child’s schoolbag has been abandoned somewhere it shouldn’t be. One of the dogs wants walking. Meghan is in that magnificent cream pleated skirt we imagined the other day, except the velvet jacket has long since disappeared and she has pulled on a sweater because this is home, not a photograph.
Someone wants dinner.
Someone else cannot find something.
Life intrudes.
And suddenly Uganda seems very far away.
That, perhaps, is the point of this imaginary year in England.
I have never wanted to imagine Harry and Meghan creating a rival court in the Cotswolds. I am interested in something much more grown-up than that: the creation of a life sturdy enough to withstand the noise outside it.
The Invictus Games will go on.
Harry will deal with Uganda. He will deal with Birmingham. He will deal with governments, military officials, Palace distinctions and a British press delighted by anything that can be presented as another humiliation.
But at the end of the day, in my version of this story, he drives away from all of it.
Down the country roads. Back to Meghan. Back to Archie and Lili. Back to dogs and dinner and schoolbags and whatever small domestic crisis has replaced the international one by the time he walks through the door.
And eventually, perhaps, they will all board a plane and fly back to California.
Because England does not have to replace the life Harry and Meghan built there.
Perhaps this year is simply about discovering that Harry can come home to England without ever again
having to come home alone.
