King Charles’s willingness to reconnect with Prince Harry may put his other son’s future rule at risk, comedian Mark Dolan has predicted.
Appearing on The Royalist podcast, the English presenter theorized that Harry’s meeting with the British monarch at Highgrove House earlier this month could lead to a host of issues for his brother, Prince William, later down the line.
“I think that my concern is that Charles is enabling Harry to establish a rival court in a complete defiance of what his mother, in her wisdom, laid down,” host Tom Sykes said, alluding to Queen Elizabeth II’s 2020 agreement with Harry to step back from royal duties and to stop using his HRH titles.
Dolan concurred, saying that Harry is, in essence, “tearing up his agreement with the late Queen” by meeting with his grandfather on royal property.
“It’s horrible that the Queen, the late Queen, is being betrayed in this way by a grandson that claims to have loved her and admired her,” he said. “Where you struck a deal, and you’ve reneged on that deal, and that poor woman is not here to enforce it.”
“And if she was, I think she would enforce it, and she’d be a lot tougher than Charles has been,” Dolan added.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Prince and Princess of Wales for comment.
One issue with Harry’s potential return to royal life, Dolan argued, involves his desire for a security detail, which was revoked following his agreement with the late Queen.
The Duke of Sussex wants to “feel royal” when he’s in the U.K., Dolan said, though he doesn’t necessarily need the beefed-up security.
“We discovered, for the U.K. return a couple of weeks ago, that he doesn’t need the cop cars and the helicopters. He can be in an SUV with blacked-out windows and get in and out of royal property very safely,” he said. “It was about the look.”
However, the other issue Dolan argues is more “generational.”
“You’re going to have Meghan and Harry, will make life a misery for King William and Queen Catherine,” he explained. “And they’d love to be in the U.K., I think up to half of the year with this rival court, and then it’s going to carry on into the next generation.”
“And Archie and Lily, when they’re teenagers and young adults, I predict will make life a misery for George, Charlotte, and Louis,” Dolan added.
In order for Charles to correct course and be a “responsible steward” for William’s eventual ascendancy, Dolan said the king needs to “scale back the whole royal operation.”
“He needs to make the monarchy a lean, mean, fighting machine,” he said. “Constitutionally, I think he’s been a good king, and he’s a kindly and intelligent man, very ethical as well. But he’s got to modernize the monarchy.”
A spokesman for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex called Dolan’s remarks “deeply distasteful.”
“There is a fundamental difference between criticizing public figures and choosing to demonize two young children who have done absolutely nothing to warrant it,” the rep said. “To speculate that Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet will one day ‘make life a misery’ for their cousins is an extraordinary and irresponsible thing to say about children.“
“We are genuinely disgusted by these comments. Whatever views people may hold about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, children should never be dragged into adult disputes or portrayed as future antagonists for the sake of a provocative soundbite.“
Join veteran royal correspondent Tom Sykes in the throne room to find out how the secret world of the palace really operates—every bit of royal tea you could need. New Royalist podcasts will be released every Tuesday on YouTube, and the next day on all podcast platforms.
