Daniela Elser: Palace fights back in PR battle after Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview

OPINION:

The most famous book on military tactics, The Art of War, was written in the 5th century BC. By Sun Tzu, but it is beginning to appear that an equally devastating treatise on battlefield strategy is being written in London by royal courtiers.

In the weeks since Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ historic interview with Oprah Winfrey (and her allegations of royal disregard for her deteriorating mental health and racism), the palace’s response has apparently been one of futile determination to minimize the magnitude of the crisis.

After all, it took almost two leaden days for the palace to issue a meager 61-word statement in response that said the “cornered” issues the couple had raised would be “addressed by the family in private”, before the entire The remaining RHS group proceeded to bravely forge ahead with their busy schedules of skipping remotely across a shattered Britain.

The message they were trying to send to the world was clear: that Harry and Meghan’s effusion was nothing more than a kind of tantrum, all trampling and finger pointing; The sound and fury of prime-time shows nothing more than a huge audience success for CBS and a childish outpouring of perceived grievances. The adults in the (throne) room would clean up the mess.

All of which felt decidedly lackluster, as if the royal family had spent the past few weeks woefully clinging to their tried and tested guide ‘How to survive a PR disaster’ which by now is ruined and yellowed from overuse. (Prince Andrew, much of the blame for this falls on you).

Basically, it was starting to look like the royal family was out of reach as the Sussexes nimbly outmaneuvered the heavy royal house.

Except now it seems like the House of Windsor could have been playing a much smarter and more cunning game, plotting and planning the kind of counterattack that Tzu would have appreciated.

The first big clue came over the weekend when the Sunday Times ran a lengthy profile of Prince William revealingly called “The Other Brother.”

Written by the newspaper’s royal correspondent, Roya Nikkhah, the article was positively filled with quotes from big names, including former Conservative leader Lord Hague and former William Private Secretary Miguel Head, who shared insights about the Prince that were much more personal and revealing than anything that has entered the public arena before.

None, absolutely none, of these people would have opened their mouths to the distance of a journalist and his trusty tape recorder without royal approval.

William then appeared in a video for Comic Relief saying that mental health is a topic “close to his heart”.

Meanwhile, Seyi Obakin, the CEO of the homeless charity Centrepoint, of which William has been the sponsor for 15 years, took to the pages of The UK Telegraph to combat claims of real racism and speak out about how they met while spending a night sleeping under a bridge.

Then came reports that appeared in the British press revealing that the palace is considering appointing a chief of diversity, and royal sources reported on the place where the measure that had already been in place before Harry and Meghan’s blitzkrieg. on Oprah.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

Instead of dodging the Sussexes and trying to land a few hits directly (metaphorically speaking, of course), the palace has come up with a much more cunning approach, after biding its time and making the decision to retaliate on its own terms. Instead of going defensive, they focus primarily on going offense.

Without saying Harry and Meghan’s names, the palace appears to be working to neutralize Harry and Meghan’s most damaging claims about mental health and racism, while also providing a poignant counterpoint to the 21st-century version of Harry, the prime time and the emotive principality.

Because propelling William and polishing his halo not only puts the royal house in good stead for the future, it also carries an implicit criticism of his younger brother’s approach.

The unspoken message of much of the William-centered media attack on the palace appears to be: “ This is what a prince dedicated to duty and his country looks like, a man focused on hard work and who does not go crabby to life. television to complain about his family. two hours.’

Similarly, the palace-driven narrative, for William, the throne is not an onerous burden to bear with resignation, but a brilliant opportunity to help create a better, modern Britain.

Note that Charles does not consider the palace’s own version of the Art of War: we do not see glowing profiles of our next king nor do we see his associates begin to speak up to defend his egalitarian bonafides.

The world has barely heard a peep from the next in line to the throne, aside from a rather fond image of the Prince with his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, posted to make the first official day of spring.

The palace has come to realize that they are the younger generations whose hearts and minds they crucially need to conquer and who better than a conservation-focused king-in-waiting who (according to them) played a pivotal role in ending the trade in ivory export from China. Who has slept under a bridge in the name of fighting homelessness? Who has already decided that they don’t want to preside over a chronic plate-opening version of a royal family, but want to step in and tackle issues like racism in soccer and mental health?

However, do not think that what we have seen over the weekend, this carefully calibrated round of media maneuvers in the UK, is the entirety of the palace recoil. Rather, this is the opening salvo in what could well be a protracted transatlantic public relations battle.

In April, William and his wife Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, will celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary.

In May, the Queen will return to London for the opening of Parliament for the first time since 2019 (Quick Jarvis, a mace is needed!).

While June’s Trooping the Color was canceled for the second year in a row, an alternate event is being considered to take place at Windsor Castle. The same month Ascot will take place, although socially distanced.

At all events, perennial engagements in red letters on royal calendars, expect to see a vigorous and coordinated campaign to push the image of a unified royal family, the message is that Megxit and its various replicas are nothing more than a trifle that has not they diverted the royal house from its course one iota.

I think we can also expect to see William and Kate deployed with even more enthusiasm and regularity. While the couple, who are the only working members of the royal family under the age of 55, have taken on the responsibility of giving the monarchy a touch of youthful verve (‘young’ is a comparative term in the real world) since Harry and Meghan traded Windsor for the sunnier climates of Montecito, I think we’ll see more of their heartwarming double act.

Last week (almost a coincidence) it was remarkably playful William and Kate who appeared in a St. Patrick’s Day video.

Expect to start seeing more of this much more humane royal version of royalty that couldn’t be further from the version of royalty that has long been the standard.

The same goes for her children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. While the Cambridges have always stubbornly guarded the privacy of their brood, the past year has seen the trio of lovable RHS appear even more in public through carefully planned social media outings. (Seeing five-year-old Charlotte in a video asking David Attenborough if he liked spiders could have done a lot more for the cause of the monarchy than a decade in which Princess Anne opened county recreation centers.)

Once again, while any outings would be organized and carefully choreographed, the royal family wants audiences to focus on these younger generations of Windsor.

Make no mistake: we are only seeing the beginning of this propaganda struggle.

So although Tzu could have written: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”, the strategy of the palace courtiers seems to be more along the lines of “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without appearing not one time”. a patio with Oprah “.

If someone inside the venue is taking notes, they might have a bestseller on their hands.

• Daniela Elser is a real expert and writer with over 15 years of experience working with several of Australia’s leading media titles.