The Royals with Roya and Kate - Harry's UK return — rows, rulings and palace psychodrama

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Prince Harry is back in Britain for events linked to the Invictus Games — but what should have been a visit focused on his charity work has become a full blown Sussex-Palace psychodrama. Roya Nikkhah and Kate Mansey unpack a bruising week for the Duke of Sussex: a humiliating High Court defeat against the publishers of the Daily Mail, a row over Buckingham Palace accommodation, unresolved security concerns, and uncertainty over whether Meghan, Archie and Lilibet will come to the UK. Was this ever an opening for reconciliation with the royal family — or does every return to Britain now risk becoming another palace crisis?Has Harry overplayed his hand - or has the palace acted coldly? Get in touch: [e-mail]: GettyProducer: Robert WallaceExecutive Producer: Priyanka DeladiaRead more: Harry, the Duke of Hazard? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Royals. The podcast where we discuss what happens behind palace walls and why it matters. I'm Roy Nika. And I'm Kate Mansy. Well, there could only be one royal story this week. And that's that Prince Harry is back in Britain. And what should have been a visit focused on his charity work has become a much bigger row over security, accommodation and trust.

It's been a dizzying few days for the Duke of Sussex. a public row over royal accommodation, an unresolved security dispute, and continuing uncertainty over whether Megrant and the children will join him in Britain. And then came a major High Court defeat for Harry, who lost on all counts in his privacy case against Associated Newspapers Limited, the publishers of the Daily Mail. It has, whichever way you slice it, been a very bad week for Harry so far. So what does this week tell us about the state?

of the relationship between Harry and the rest of the royal family? Is there still a route back to reconciliation? Or does every return to Britain risk becoming another palace crisis? So, Kate. Oh, yeah. The return of the prodigal son. Yeah. In a cloud of drama.

We've heard it called chaos. We've heard it called a media circus. We've heard it called a psychodrama, haven't we? It's been all of the above. And we're recording this only midway through the week. That's what I say. is only halfway through the week. Nothing can happen.

So this visit back to the UK by Harry has been, I feel like it's been trailed more than a new Stephen Spielberg film. It has been heavily trailed, both by his team and by the Palace sort of bracing themselves for what was coming. Taking it at face value, he's meant to be here

for a week of engagements for his charities for the Invictus Games, of course, celebrating one year to go until the games are held in Birmingham next year. For his other charity, Wellchild, which he does a lot of work for and for another charity, he's Scotty's little soldiers.

But it's so much more than that, isn't it? Because we have had so much chat, so much briefing from both sides about the issue of whether or not he was going to bring his family back. As we're recording now, he's still here on his own. Megyn and the kids aren't with him. That may change. Soon we don't know. There's been a row about security ongoing.

There's been a row about where he was going to stay, whether he'd stay at Buckingham Palace or not. And then, of course, the mega blow to Harry, which we just mentioned in the intro, he lost that case against the Daily Mail on Sunday. so much drama, it was meant to be a week of positive headlines and positive vise for Harry and a sort of re-establishing the good that he does here. It's not really panning out that way at the moment, is it? No, I mean, you think it's a Stephen Spielberg film. It's probably one of the horror films, isn't it? I think he came, didn't he, with this idea that it was

one year to go from Victus Games. There was a lot of kind of briefing for weeks beforehand, wasn't there, about how he's going to bring the children? Would they see the family? And normally this is all focused around his ongoing security row, whether he'll see the king, the children now, and if they're coming, would meet the king. But it's been completely overshadowed, kind of through no fault of his own, by the court case. Because back in January, there he was, giving evidence at this 11-week trial. That's when we last saw him here. That's when we last saw him here. And he came alone in that instance.

That's when he set out his case. this was the culmination of his huge campaign against the British press. Just the running for years. Yeah, the last litigation, you know, he sued the Daily Mirror. He sued the Sun, which is part of our group. And I think this time was the kind of the end of it. And he was told beforehand that the judgment would come down on Tuesday. And the timing of it was just extraordinary, wasn't it?

So let's just remind people who haven't followed as closely as us. This case against Associated Newsome Limited was with several other claimants, including Sir Elton John, Sadie Frost, Elizabeth Hurley, Baroness, Dorian Lawrence, Simon Hughes. And there were allegations of phone hacking, unlawful information gathering, and various other things, which associated has strongly fought throughout this long-running case. And we discovered on Tuesday when the Dutchman was handed down that Justice Nicklin had dismissed all 97 of the claims. And the reason that was so significant, not just from an optics point of view, was that Harry and his team, and the legal team and his media team had consistently said one win was enough.

One of those 97 claims out of the whole, all of the claimants would be enough. He complained about, I think, 14 articles. But the judge dismissed every single one of them quite categorically. And that was a massive blow for Harry. And as you say, the timing of it, which he had no control over, was extraordinary. He came on Monday to the UK alone. But beforehand, even before we got the court judgment on the Tuesday, there was so much drama. It started, I mean, arguably it's been going on for weeks, but for the sake of the fact that it's just a short podcast, start on Monday morning.

So I was live on Times Radio Breakfast talking about Harry's visit and the presenter said, oh, it's breaking news. You know, Harry's confirmed he'll stay at Buckingham Palace. And I said on air, whoa, whoa, whoa, the palace have not confirmed this. And it's very interesting because normally the palace goes first or the host goes first when they're announcing someone's. staying. It's interesting that Harry's spokesman has decided to come out and tell the BBC and other outlets about this. Sure enough, within a couple of moments, I was on the phone to the Palace who said, no, this is not true. What actually happened was weeks ago, we said Harry could stay at Buckingham Palace and offered him that chance. He could come with his wife and children,

too, if he wanted, and just do us the courtesy of letting us know one way or the other. In good time. By the end of last week. Okay, so by the end of Friday. He was supposed to let them know and still hadn't. I ran a piece in the Saturday saying still no RSVP. Saturday morning, we're now told. He came back and said, no, thanks very much, not going to stay. Later on, Saturday changed his mind. Tried to do a U-turn and said, actually, I would like to stay,

by which point the king had lost patience. Palace said, there's no room at the inn. There's no room at the end. There's no room at the hundreds of rooms in the inn, Buckingham, Palis and when no one lives in. This is it. So surely they could have cobbled together a few staff and a few rooms for Harry, his team, his security and whatnot. But as we know, we've been in Buckingham Palace a few times over the last few weeks. It's a building site. A lot of it. It's 369 million pounds is going into resurfacing the whole place. Could they if they had wanted to find a few rooms at short notice? I bet they could. Of course they could have done. But was there the will to do so? No. No way. Because Harry has mucked them around time and time again. And we were told, weren't we from the palace, this came from the top. So the king said enough's enough and his patience just snapped. And it wasn't just his patience that had snapped, which was a big part of it. It was also the fact we were told by his team that, and they'd clearly given this more thought over the weekend and they

were clearly wargaming what Harry might do, whichever way the judgment went. And they clearly foresaw, rightly, as it proved, that it could be extremely hairy for the monarch constitutionally. if Harry got a judgment that went his way, didn't go his way, and he made some barnstorming statement about his majesty's courts later that day. So we were told there were constitutional complexities and concerns about that scenario playing out. Not least because Harry over the weekend

had let it be known that even if he won at least one point, he was going to give a barstorming statement. He would be giving an on-camera statement from a yet-to-be-decided location on the Tuesday. Now, I was told that part of him doing the U-turn was a request to stay at Buckingham Palace, specifically on the Tuesday night, after he knew that that's when the judgment was going to be handed down. So, you know, Palace Courier sent into a frenzy because surely if Harry's doing some excoriating statement

about how he's beaten the press, you know, or whatever it might have been, from Buckingham Palace would have been extraordinary because that would have put the king right at the heart of it. So was there a will to just say, do you know what? Although staff we've said, you know, they don't have to work because you said, no, you're not coming, will we make the effort to ring them all back up? That's the problem. Pull the dust sheets off those few rooms at the back of Buckingham Palace, which could accommodate you.

No, there was just so much going on and just the whole idea is baffling that. And so it proved, in fact, because although he didn't win and was completely, you know, thrashed, essentially, him and six other claimants, the mail group was completely exonerated. And although journalists were told that they were impressive and honest witnesses, it couldn't have been a better win for Associated Newspapers Limited. but he still gave a statement in which he said that it was a whitewash, didn't he? And again, criticised the king's court. That's the problem with Harry, isn't it?

When he comes back to stay in the UK and asks to stay at Buckingham Palace, it's never as straightforward as just giving him a room. The king can't just say, yes, my son, come and stay and let's hang out. There's all that that goes around it. It's all the wargaming that has to be done around his media operation, what he may or may not say, the unpredictability of Harry and where his sort of thought process is going. And that played out on Tuesday. So let's go back to Tuesday because we saw him briefly on Monday night at this film premiere with his friend.

But Tuesday was the big first set piece day. So journalists gathered at Chatham House where he was due to speak. There was an Invictus Games engagement. We knew that the judgment was kind of come down that afternoon at 2 o'clock. We knew it was a 2 o'clock. He got the sense that he might be able to see it slightly early. He was due to arrive at 1.30. He actually ended up arriving much earlier and surprising all of us that were just sort of

Half an hour early. Milling around and suddenly there he was kind of walking past us and we were like, oh, all right, Harry's here early. Has he seen the judgment? Has he not? And he walked on to, I mean, we were in basically a conference room at Chatham House and the premise of the engagement was it was obviously starting the week of engagements around Invictus. It was going to announce that Uganda were joining the Invictus game and they were putting a team forward.

He was going to say a few words at the top and then watch various other panels. But of course everyone just had all eyes on him because everyone was, we were all in the conference room just pressing refresh on, you know, judiciary.gov.ukh, to see the judgment. And we sensed that he had seen it. He looked very, he looked very tense. Yeah, he would have known just before he came in. He looked very tense. He looked.

You could see he was trying to put on a brave face, but he looked tense. We then got, just before it all started, we got a heads up from his team that his engagement on Wednesday, which was going to have a reporter there covering it and pooling it, that that media coverage was going to be cancelled. And you sensed, is that because he's lost? Anyway, he put on quite a brave face. But of course, when we were sitting there watching him make his opening remarks, the judgment came through.

And those of us in the room with him, when we looked at it and saw that it said, all claims dismissed. And we just thought, whoa, he's lost on every single count. He looked flushed. He was rattled. And he tried to crack a few jokes. But really, for most of those two hours, yes, he was sort of watching what was happening on stage, but you could see him looking at his phone all the time.

He then, there was a break in proceedings and he then went into a huddle upstairs with his team. We saw David Sherbourne, his flamboyant barrister, arrived by a side door, clearly discussing, you know, what they were going to say in response to this hammer blow of a loss. And it really was a hammer blow. And then there was a question of whether he was going to leave early. His team said he might, but in the end he actually stayed. And I think that speaks to Harry's sense of loyalty towards his organisations because Invictus was completely overshadowed by the drama. that day of the court case. But he did stay until the end.

And boy, did he stay. And then we all waited outside for another hour while he stayed in another huddle with his team. And then he left in his car. And then quite soon afterwards, we got that blast of a statement from him and Baroness Dorian Lawrence, basically not accepting the judgment at all.

So it said, we came to court seeking justice and accountability, but we have received neither. The fact that this court has chosen to dismiss them represents an inconsistency which is hard to understand or reconcile with common sense or the evidence heard in the courtroom itself. And this is the clincher, isn't it? They said it is a complete and obvious whitewash.

However, the lengths to which the court has gone to exonerate the mail is as shocking as it is totally unwarranted. So not taking it on the chin. Not taking it on the chin, not accepting it, criticizing a high court judge. The King's Court. By describing it as a complete whitewash. His Majesty's Court. Which it was such a mirror phrase of what he said after he lost his legal battle against the home office over his security not being reinstated where he called it a good old-fashioned establishment stitch up.

So Harry takes these things to court, goes through long expensive court prices and when he doesn't get the decision that goes his way, he says, I don't accept it and it's a whitewash. But interestingly, I've written this in the Times. If the response from Harry was similar and it was, so were the judgments. So what the judge said in this case was, it's obvious that you feel, you know, hard done by, but you have not provided the evidence to be able to bring a legal claim. Because while he said they must have got these stories through illegal means or blagging or hacking, they couldn't actually provide any evidence to support those claims in court, which is why every single claim was thrown out in that 436 page judgment that came down on Tuesday. Now, in the case against the home office, which ultimately,

went to the court of appeal because he kept fighting and fighting and fighting. When that judgment came down, they said, you know, it's clear to see, it's sad to see that Harry feels, you know, that he's been let down by a system. But that doesn't translate into a legal argument, essentially. It doesn't actually translate to winning a case in a court of law. So in other words, you know, we feel your pain. You know, you're letting us know you feel sad about it. But that doesn't mean that you can take up court.

time and Winn Court cases based on how you feel like you've been hard done by. Coming up, it does feel like this ancient institution which is supposed to stand for good values and setting examples is just being completely engulfed by a family soap opera that is like a bad Christmas episode of EastEnders. So one of the recurrent themes, I think it's fair to say, about Harry's repeated returns to the UK is this ongoing security row. the case in the Court of Appeal last year. He has battled and battled and battled to have an automatic right to UK police security every time he comes here. He's been told no. He was then

told that he would have a risk management board. But what's happened with that? Because that's being delayed, it's been six months we've been waiting for that at least. So they thought, Harry's team thought, and most of us thought, and we were briefed, that that risk assessment was finally going to be done. He hadn't had a proper one done for seven years. their own rules, Ravik's own rules say that figures like Harry should get one annually. His hadn't been done for seven years. We thought we learned earlier in the year that the Home Office and Ravik had taken that on board after he wrote to the Home Office and the Home Secretary saying,

this hasn't been done seven years, I'd like it done. He thought that had been greenlit. His team put together a security risk analysis, assessment of threats that they have seen that he faces, submitted that to the Home Office with all the documentation they asked for. And we thought that that had been done, so did Harry, and was being submitted to Ravik for a decision on whether or not he would have his security reinstated. We then discovered just before he arrived, literally over the weekend, last weekend, that Harry and his team had learned from the home office that actually that risk assessment had not been done by Ravik and that all risk assessments

were being paused with no explanation as to why. So that was very unexpected. It threw all his, I think, travel plans into chaos. It threw his decisions whether or not to stay at Bucky Pannos or whether or not Megan might come with the children into absolute chaos. And he then spent day sitting with a security team going, how can I make this visit work? But then part of that chaos seems to be created by Harry, because in essence, nothing has changed for years. So he has to give one month's notice to the British authorities before he comes. And essentially, they do a risk assessment on every single visit that he does. So in some ways, they argued that he has more risk assessments than anybody else through Ravik, whether it's once a year, whatever, because on every

case-by-case basis, they are looking at that. So we have this every time because he submits, you know, the documents and he puts his claim forward. And then he finds out just before the visit, usually, that it hasn't been green lit, that he doesn't have UK police security. And that's the point at which the wheels come off. And I think doing it in this way with every visit on a case-by-case basis enables him to kind of, you know, leverage that in some sort of way because we have these briefings beforehand. There's a lot of chaos surrounding it. And it gets to the point where just before Harry comes, he's infuriated because yet again, he hasn't been given the police security that he thinks he deserves and should have and is,

you know, entitled to. There is always with the security line, a separate emotional line that comes with it. There is always the suggestion from Harry and his team that I want to bring my family back to the UK. I want a reconciliation with my family. I want my children, Archie Nilly, to meet their grandfather, the king who they haven't seen for more than four years. I can't do that without the extra security. It's not safe for them. And that is something that royal sources have described as akin to emotional blackmail.

And the feeling and the inference that we've heard, we heard it in Harry's own words in the interview with the BBC last year after the Home Office ruling went against him. He effectively said he felt his father could have intervened in that he felt his fatherhood stood back and not got involved in the way that he thought we should have done. The palace of stress like repeatedly, of course the king can't get involved in a legal process. It would be constitutionally

An outrage. Completely inappropriate for him to do that and he wouldn't countenance it. It also goes to the heart of the nervousness around having Harry to stay in a royal residence, seeing Harry face to face. Charles is always worried that Harry's going to absolutely monster him about security.

And he probably will and he probably would. But the security line is always about more than just the threat Harry faces. It's about the issue of whether his family can see the king and come to Britain, Harry says. So all eyes will be on. and we are closely watching whether or not Megan does join Harry later this week with the kids. That was the thing that was brief weeks before this visit. Harry's team was briefing.

He plans to bring the wife and children. Duchess of Sussex, Archie and Lillipat would be coming with him. And that was widely kind of briefed out by Harry's team. And Megan was meant to be doing an engagement with him on Wednesday at the hospital. She was supposed to be seen yesterday. Which never happened. She wasn't here. It's about so much more than just his legal battles.

It's about his emotional battle as well with his own family. isn't it? Yeah, and we're still here, aren't we, kind of six years after he left Royal duties and all the water under the bridge, he hasn't moved forward at all. We've said it before. He can't seem to look forward. He's always looking backwards. And I don't think, ultimately, the security situation hasn't changed. If the UK authority are assessing your visit on a case-by-case basis and you tell them what you plan to do, and they say, well, there's no cause for armed security, and you say, well, yes, there is, how will that be any different from a risk management board.

And if we see Megan and the children arrive in the next few days here, and he doesn't have the extra security, which we know he doesn't, which is asked for, does that undermine the argument a little bit? If she comes and brings the children and they're able to move around and she goes to an engagement with him, let's see, we don't know that's going to happen, let's say there's a possibility that they may meet with the king. We don't know, but it might still happen. If they come here and if it goes off without a hitch,

presumably that undermines his argument about the need for extra security. We sort of painted himself into a corner a little bit because he either accepts that position now or he sticks his heels in and says, right, they can never come. And it's not as if the king's about to pack his bags and fly out to Montecito for a visit because that's just not how it works when you're the monarch. I mean, one of the most extraordinary things about the last week and I suppose the last few months, but particularly the last few days, has been the briefing war between Team Sussex. Can we get into that? And Buckingham Palace. It's been extraordinary. It's so, yeah, it's bizarre.

The briefing wars have been, I mean, kind of gloves off. The war of words between the two camps and the last week has been extraordinary by any briefing standards. It's almost felt evocative of a time before you and I were doing this job. The original War of the Wales is between Charles and Diana. Yeah. That level of toxic briefing between both sides. One setting something else, your phone. I mean, the phone, the WhatsApp greets, ping, ping, ping, ping.

It's like, we're saying this. No, that's not true. No, that's not true. And it doesn't, at the end of the day, there's so much. much information that comes our way and we look at it and we have to make a judgment on which is the more honest version of events. It's quite unedifying, isn't it? It is unedifying.

In the palace is, you know, I have to say in defence of the palace, whenever they've put something out, it's been because they've been sort of forced to correct the narrative. Because if Harry said, I'm not coming to Buckingham Palace on Saturday morning, then changed his mind and said, oh yeah, actually, I would like to come. and the king had said no. Was the Monday morning putting that statement out saying Harry's accepted an offer to stay and will be staying at Buckingham Palace? To try and bounce the king and to change his mind.

To try to embarrass the palace and to change in their mind because I think that's when we see, I don't think it is the palace machinery and operating quite in the way of what we know about the War of the Wales is in some respect because it often seems like the palace is trying to respond often reluctantly to try to have to say, well, whoa, that's not right. And this idea that they might try and bounce, was that statement, we don't know, was that statement from Harry's spokesman to try to bounce the palace into changing their mind and letting him stay because it was so public, there was a news alert on BBC about it.

I mean, at the end of the day, what is cutting through to the public, I think, is just this is turning the royal family into even bigger soap opera drama than we have seen in the last few years. And no one at the palace wants that. it's hard to believe that Harry doesn't understand that's the implications of the war of words. It's hard to believe that the palace don't get that either. But a lot of people now who talk about the royal family that I speak to outside of our bubble just are rolling their eyes going, you know, it's just yes, okay, a lot of families have difficulties and it, I suppose, is sometimes more relatable. But it does feel like this ancient institution, which is supposed to stand for, you know,

good values and setting examples and wants the spotlight to be on its public work is just being completely engulfed by a family soap opera that is just, as a lot of people say, and some of our colleagues have written this week, it's like a bad Christmas episode of EastEnders. Well, it was ever thus, wasn't it? Because they are a family. I think that's the thing, that you've got this institution, but you've also got a family and all the family dynamics. And of course, we haven't even mentioned Prince and Princess of Wales, but they want nothing to do with this drama. They want absolutely nothing to do with Harry. They won't be seeing him. They don't want to engage with the office. And who can blame them. You know, the king doesn't really have a

choice. He's still his son. He still loves him. And there is still the hope in his heart, I think, that he wants to see his grandchildren. But with William and Kate, it's a, you know, that door is, feels very firmly closed. It's back shut. It's locked. It's locked forever. Amidst all this soap opera and drama, we still have both sides, despite the bitterness from both sides. We still have both sides saying no one has ruled out a meeting between Harry, his kids and the king, which I think is fascinating. That is still very much on the table, despite everything else being off the table, you know, if that meeting happens, and I think most people would like that meeting to happen and that reconciliation, I mean, it would be a wonderful thing for the king and for

Harry. It would. I don't know why those conversations couldn't have been held privately and some kind of grown-up conversation be had, but then Harry's hurting. As Paul Dacre, the editor-in-chief of The Daily Mail said, you know, he's an angry man. He said, poor Harry, a sense of kind of pitying him. that he's been dragged into this. He's a very angry individual

and he still seems to be in a rut that he's been in for years. I wonder whether a reconciliation with his father with his children would haul him out of that rut and possibly make him think more sharply about looking forwards and sort of pressing reset on his family relationship.

I don't know. I suspect not because I think these things over his security in the slights that he feels notwithstanding completely separately, the judgment that's just gone against him, we'll continue to consume him for a very long time. I'm sure, especially as the security route continues. Well, I'm sure it's a subject that we'll be returning to, but that's all from us for this week.

And of course, Harry's visit to the UK is still unfolding. You can read all of our reporting and analysis by subscribing to the times.com, where we'll be watching every twist as it happens. And as always, we really want to hear from you. Has Harry overplayed his hand? Or has the palace acted coldly? Email us your thoughts and questions at the Royals at the Times.com.com. And we may include them in a future episode.

And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to like, rate and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube at the Times Royals channel. Until next time, thanks for joining us on The Royals and we'll see you next week.