The Duke of Sussex is reportedly considering a fresh offer to stay at Buckingham Palace when he returns to the UK from his Montecito home in California for round two of “Harry’s homecoming” saga.
Harry will visit Britain for the annual WellChild Awards in September, and is said to have been once again offered a room at Buckingham Palace as somewhere to stay. At present, it’s not known if he will be joined by his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, and two children, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five.
It comes only weeks after the 41-year-old Prince’s last dramafest over his five-day visit to the UK, which involved a litany of intense rounds of will-he-won’t-he to-ings and-froings before he even got here. As we now know from Meghan’s Instagram post last week, the family thoroughly enjoyed the joys of the English countryside via a visit to Uncle Charles’s stately pile (Althorp) and Grandpa Charles’s home in Highgrove.
Harry missed out on a jaunt to Buck Pal after King Charles’s team had to withdraw the offer because he didn’t have time to prepare. This all happened in the same week that the High Court dismissed all claims in his lawsuit against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.
For someone who is said to enjoy the quiet life and crave privacy, Prince Harry is never far away from drama. Popping up everywhere like he’s in a game of Whac -A-Mole or suffering from “main character syndrome”, when he can’t help placing himself at the centre of every story.
To ramp up the drama in his life full-throttle, he also gatecrashed Meghan’s MasterChef Australia cameo at the weekend by video-calling her while she served as a guest judge on the TV show.
In an odd scene, MasterChef producers handed Meghan the phone. “Hi, my love,” Meghan casually says and tells the contestants and judges: “My husband’s here.” Harry greets the Australian group with a “g’day” as Meghan shows him the dishes.
After the call, Meghan claimed that her family connect over food, but this latest episode suggests they also connect over drama. Harry’s behaviour is like him putting his head round the door of a party he’s not invited to, or around the bedroom door of your kid’s sleepover to check on them. It signals a desperate need not to be left out.
Not everyone who creates drama enjoys it, but sometimes it’s the only language they’ve ever learned
Kathleen Saxton, psychotherapist and author
That’s why I suspect Harry could be tempted to return to the lion’s den for another round-two UK visit so soon. With Buckingham Palace back in play, there is another plot-line to explode. It reminds me of how Diana was portrayed in Netflix’s The Crown; her therapist advises that the adrenaline she gets from chaos is “addictive”.
It’s exhausting to both watch and to be part of it. I know what it’s like to get sucked in myself, as I spent the first half of my life on an emotional rollercoaster thriving on intensity, using over-the-top gestures and exaggerated language, making dramas out of nothing, all so I could be the centre of attention. It helped me feel connected and avoid my own feelings of low self-esteem. I wonder if Prince Harry feels the same way his mother did.
And as Dr Scott Lyons, a holistic psychologist in the US and author of Addicted to Drama: Healing Dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and Others, explained to me when I spoke to him about Diana’s addiction to drama, it’s “the most accessible and contagious of all the addictions” because “it’s free and can be produced at any time”.
He told me that drama addicts “chase drama to avoid trauma” and it’s “a dependency on stress”. “It creates a buzz of energy every time you get caught up int he swirl. It rises above the threshold of numbness or depression, momentarily. It’s pretty intoxicating. Drama becomes a distraction from internal feelings and emotions… and it’s actually one of the most natural pain relievers we have…”
According to Kathleen Saxton, psychotherapist and author of Sly and Mighty: How to Recognise, Resist and Rise Above Toxic Power, to be published in September, not everyone who creates drama enjoys it, but sometimes it’s the only language they’ve ever learned.
“If you grew up in a family where attention only came through conflict, where love was unpredictable, or where you had to be loud to be noticed, your nervous system may have learned a simple equation: intensity equals connection,” Saxton tells me.
“As an adult, peace can feel unfamiliar, while chaos feels strangely like home.”
For a person with “main character syndrome”, she tells me that “every setback becomes a catastrophe, and every relationship becomes another chapter in an ongoing performance”.
The good news is that what was once a survival strategy doesn’t have to become a life sentence
Psychologically, however, this is often less about ego than unmet need. “Attachment theory tells us that inconsistent caregiving can create adults who constantly seek reassurance,” she says.
The irony is that many people who crave drama aren’t really seeking conflict, she adds. “They’re seeking significance,” she says, adding: “They’re seeking the attention they never consistently received.”
The good news is that what was once a survival strategy doesn’t have to become a life sentence. “Healing begins when we realise that we don’t have to perform to belong, create chaos to be seen or become the main character in every room simply to feel that we matter.”
In Harry’s case, he knows nothing else but royal drama and as the “spare”, he might even unconsciously be drawing attention to himself to feel alive, unforgotten and not second best.
While Harry was always the spare, not the heir, he always had the bigger personality from childhood, taking up the space that his brother’s birthright would eventually make impossible for him to properly fill. As the outgoing brother, he, not William, is the one who had the charisma to become a compelling leader. Yet, it was never going to be.
So the endless spiral we see now? Perhaps his way of still trying to take up the space outside the system; to show the “men in grey suits” he refers to in his memoir Spare that, despite their best intentions, there is no keeping Harry in his place. By constantly being at the centre of the drama, Harry becomes impossible to ignore.
But the truth is, to find any peace, Harry needs to step away from all the noise that he, in part, creates. Only then will he heal – and have a chance of finding his true place post-Megxit and a potential role in the firm. But there is no sign of this drama ending soon. The next chapter has only just begun.