Prince Charles will probably be fine, Harry and Meghan maybe not, says ‘The Palace Papers’ author Tina Brown

Prince Charles requests that his shoelaces be ironed. He travels with his own orthopedic bed, lavatory seat and most particular brand of toilet paper.

The Duchess of Cambridge — Kate Middleton as she was — slips away incognito for secret visits to art galleries and photo exhibits.

Harry and Meghan, well maybe it was written in numerology if not the stars: she was listed sixth on the call sheet for her lewd-lite cable TV show “Suits” and he was sixth in line to the throne by the time they married. Simpatico.

Insider details — and there are a trawling ton of them — bring to vivid life what could have been just another entry in the royal oeuvre bibliotheca. But “The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil” by Tina Brown is a rollicking good read, distinguished for its dogged research and the polish to be expected of a writer who was formerly editor-in-chief of Tatler, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and founder of the Daily Beast.

A “Lady” in her own right too, via marriage to Sir Harold Evans, late distinguished editor of the Sunday Times.

“I only use the title when I want a good table at a restaurant,” Brown told the Star in a phone interview, her just-published tome — a forensic autopsy that spares nobody in the senior Windsor clan — already racing toward No. 1 on the bestseller lists.

It’s not a hack job, though, in the gutter press sense. Too stylish for that. (And hack is actually a term of wry respect in British journalism.) Instead, a deft chronicler of royal melodrama and minutiae, drawing from archived sources and upwards of 120 new interviews with those in the behind-palace-walls know.

Queen Elizabeth II is some five weeks away from celebrating her Platinum Jubilee, 70 years on the throne. Which seems as good a time as any to put monarchy and the defenestrating Royal Family under the microscope. Can this abiding, if archaic and purportedly anachronistic institution, survive beyond the death of a beloved sovereign? Code name: London Bridge is down.

Because it could well be a rocky transition to King Charles.

“I actually think the British nation will rally to Charles,” mused Brown, who’s had a front-row seat to the trials and tribulations of a family that is not at all like us but also rather like us in its domestic messiness, ’lo these past few decades. “I think they are very attached to the monarchy even though to the younger generation it means much less. There is still a strong sense of national identity and pride tied up with the endurance of monarchy.”

The British might not even know how to be British without the sceptre and the orb, Brown suggested.

“So there isn’t a choice but to embrace that in Charles and right now is his best moment, if you like, with the British people. He’s had long periods of unpopularity. He’s never going to be beloved — we know too much about him and what people know they don’t much like because of the whole Diana debacle.

“Having said that, in these last nearly 20 years of marriage to Camilla he’s so changed as a person, he’s so unapologetically happy, that people are more embracing of him as a grandfatherly figure.”

Revamping the monarchy has been very much top of mind for Charles, waiting in the wings for 73 years as heir to the Crown. He’s trimmed the ship, lopping off lesser senior royals from the cash cow and essentially sending to Coventry his own brother, Prince Andrew — Duke of Hazard as Brown tags the Queen’s favourite spawn, a “coroneted sleaze machine” — and even, to a startling extent, his younger son; bolting, worrisomely untethered Prince Harry.

“Modernizing in the monarchy has been somewhat put on hold with the Queen 70 years on the throne,” said Brown. “Charles is going to do quite a lot of reduction in pomp and ceremony, to really focus on enhancing the monarchy rather than just continuing with things the way they are. Obviously he’s coming to the throne very late in his own life and I think he’s going to do as much as he can to get things ready for William, which will be a much longer reign.”

In “The Palace Papers,” Brown, who previously authored bestseller “The Diana Chronicles,” is quite generous toward Charles. His passions — environmentalism, the ugliness of modern architecture, sustainability — were earlier viewed as eccentricities but in fact put him on the right side of history.

A source tells Brown that Charles is “desperate” for his mother’s approval while noting that they are intrinsically different types of people — “the wrong sort” for Her Maj, who believes Charles is too needy, emotional and vulnerable. He lacks her stiff upper lip and stoicism.

Brown is also exceedingly kind toward Camilla, who hung in for so long, just “kept calm and carried on” despite being slagged in the press as a hag, an old bag, a homewrecker and the Rottweiler (as per Diana). She’s a fan of Kate as well, for a temperament suitably attuned to her position as a future queen, built upon the bedrock of a solidly middle-class upbringing and a thoroughly harmonious family.

The former Meghan Markle doesn’t come off so well, however, and neither does Harry, fumbling about as a California celeb, evoking uncomfortable memories of his abdicating shambolic great-great-uncle, the Duke of Windsor.

“Harry was much more beloved than anyone except the Queen,” Brown pointed out. “I believe Harry will be embraced again if he shows a desire or interest in returning to England.”

The Invictus Games, which Harry established for wounded war vets — and he was never happier than in his years in the army, piloting an Apache helicopter, on the front line in Afghanistan until outed by the Drudge Report, then sent home for security reasons — have been a fabulous success. Yet there doesn’t seem much more to his existence since the prince decamped as a working royal, his wish to be a semi now-and-then royal firmly rejected by the Queen, Charles and William.

“There is a pathway back to monarchy,” said Brown. “But I don’t know if he wants to. Right now he is absolutely embracing California, not only as a place to live but as a way of thinking. If it happens, it will probably be after the death of the Queen.”

Harry stumped royal watchers last week when he paid a surprise visit to his granny, then went on American TV to claim he wanted to make sure the Queen was being “protected.” Whatever does that even mean?

“He goes off like a complete sort of IED at any moment. I asked someone what he was thinking when he makes these comments and I was told, ‘He’s not thinking, he just sounds off.’”

Brown draws an analogy, comparing the once deeply close Brothers Windsor: Harry the combat Apache helicopter, William the search-and-rescue helicopter.

The schism between the siblings won’t soon be repaired, Brown continued. “It’s a very wounded relationship right now.” Mending it would require more than going to the pub for a few pints. “William has fundamentally had his trust undermined by the Oprah interview and the news that Harry is writing a book. Harry feels hurt and rejected by William, believing that William didn’t embrace Meghan in the way that he thought he should have.”

Which brings us back to Meghan, the biracial and divorced ex-actress from America who knocked Harry’s socks off, even as William urged his brother to slow down the courtship, not rush into marriage with a woman who had no grasp of what royal life would entail. Meghan couldn’t hack it, turned out, and Harry was apparently just as relieved to flee the fishbowl, although he never expected to be relieved of his HRH status, stripped of his military titles and most of his charitable patronages.

They’re still the Duke and Duchess of Sussex but can’t use the “Royal Sussex” brand for any commercial purpose.

“Meghan was a great success in the first six months,” Brown reminded. “She was mastering her role beautifully. The problem is that she hated it. It wasn’t so much that she got it wrong, she just didn’t like it, at all. She never felt accepted. She didn’t like the British sensibility, which is far more snarky and iconoclastic. That plays out every day in the press.

“As an actress, Meghan was totally unused to not having a uniformly approving press. The British press can be brutal. Undoubtedly there was racist tabloid stuff about her that was extremely wounding. She found it hard to recover from the hurt she felt from that. And Harry exacerbated that feeling for her because he hated the press so much for what they did to his mother, for what they did to him — tormenting his girlfriends, stalking, hacking, buying, it was unbearable. The only escape he’d had was when he went into the military because he was protected there from the glare.”

The Sussexes, who must now make their own fortunes — financially and otherwise — did not have a particularly soft landing in California, even if gleefully welcomed by the American public. What really has come so far of their much-hyped deal with Netflix? Meghan, Brown writes, saw herself as a kind of Angelina Jolie, an ambassador for her favourite causes, bringing royal distinction to pet projects. That hasn’t quite got off the ground and her attention has been scattershot.

“It’s difficult to build a platform from scratch,” said Brown. “It doesn’t matter how famous you are. You still have to run a successful, strategic career. Entertainment deals, OK. But you make a deal and then you have to fulfil it, you have to deliver. I don’t think either of them recognized how hard that was going to be.”

Asked if she thinks the royals will read “The Palace Papers,” Brown snorted delicately. “They’re so deluged with material about them, they’ll probably deputize other people to read it for them. But who knows?

“I wouldn’t if I were they.”

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno

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