Why Harry is going it alone: He and Meghan have barely been seen together for weeks

There has been a slightly skittish energy about Prince Harry over the past two weeks, as he has left his Montecito mansion and gone solo from New York to London to Lesotho, undertaking various speaking engagements at awards ceremonies and charitable panels and summits.

You could see it in the way he nervously cracked his knuckles while waiting to address an audience in New York, and in the way he wrung his hands and licked his lips on stage a few days later at the WellChild Awards in London.

And who could blame him for feeling apprehensive? Because the past fortnight has seen Prince Harry essay a full relaunch on the philanthropic scene, after the score-settling pinnacle – or should that be nadir? – which was his book Spare.

Published in January 2023, the book earned him a fortune – maybe as much as £25 million – but left his reputation in tatters and his family relationships probably permanently damaged.

No wonder Harry, who has just turned 40, looked like a man in need of bolstering.

Maybe that is why WellChild host Gaby Roslin grabbed him for a confidence-boosting kiss on the cheek on stage on Monday. For bad news seems to have a habit of following him, wherever he goes.

On Thursday night, with yet more terrible timing, the couple’s head of press Ashley Hansen announced she is stepping down to launch her own agency.

Meghan quickly stepped in, with a gushing assessment of her qualities, and Hansen said she was going to carry on looking after the Sussexes part-time.

Yet, her departure takes the number of staff to have left their employ to a staggering 19.

The couple were still reeling from a blow to their reputation – and Meghan’s management style in particular – after a report in the entertainment industry bible Hollywood Reporter, asking why Hollywood ‘keeps quitting’ on the couple.

The article, on September 11, was prompted by the departure of employee number 18, Josh Kettler, their chief of staff, after only three months, and included quotes from sources calling Meghan a ‘dictator in high heels’ who ‘belittles’ people and has reduced ‘grown men to tears’.

It left Meghan trying to mastermind an almighty, emergency PR clean-up exercise.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Harry could only forge ahead with his attempted relaunch as a global philanthropist.

The trip has served to highlight his isolation from the family and friends who once stood by his side.

He didn’t see his brother, Prince William, while he was in London: that bond appears to have been utterly ruptured, and neither side seems to even want to think about repairing it.

He didn’t see King Charles, who was in Scotland, last week either. A source says the monarch made ‘no effort’ to renew contact with his younger son. Although the door will never be completely closed, there seems no appetite to make a connection, either.

Harry last saw him on February 6, at Clarence House, for around half an hour after flying in for a visit following the King’s cancer diagnosis.

It’s thought he also didn’t see his cousins, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, on this visit. They are said to be the family members to whom he’s remained the closest.

So, no shortage of spare rooms in the capital, yet Harry stayed, by all accounts, solo apart from his security detail, in a central London hotel.

He remains locked in legal action against the Government about its failure to provide him with bodyguards on visits to the UK.

One report suggests that one of his security team, David Langdown (known as ‘Langers’), is now his closest friend. If true, your heart breaks for Harry – once the most sociable and popular of young men, now reduced to thinking that the men paid to keep him safe are his besties.

You can understand some of his bachelor friends falling away – such as Johnny Hornby, the advertising guru who now works with Meghan’s great critic Jeremy Clarkson and actually handled the licensing application on his Oxfordshire pub.

Some friendships naturally fade over time but other, newer, friendships also seem to have cooled.

Last Friday, for instance, even while Prince Harry was goofing around with chat show host Jimmy Fallon in New York, film star George Clooney – a guest at his wedding in 2018 – was hosting a humanitarian awards ceremony with the great and the good in that city – and Harry wasn’t there.

And when was the last time you saw him with the Obamas, who used to come to his Invictus Games events?

Many are wondering why Meghan was left behind in his latest travels. After all, when he made two faux-royal tours earlier this year, to Nigeria and Colombia, his glamorous wife was firmly at his side.

Sources in California believe the new ‘solo Harry’ is Harry’s own idea. ‘I hear he wanted it this way,’ says a well-placed Californian source. ‘I believe he wants space.’

A London source suggests a slightly different explanation, saying: ‘This definitely feels like he is upping his game to cement his position as a serious player on the international stage.

‘He’s always been desperate to be taken seriously and people I know say his fall from grace will really have got to him.’

The source adds: ‘It is a surprise that he went to Lesotho without Meghan. There may be a good reason she can’t leave the kids, but she’s never been to Lesotho and that surprises me – it is like a second home [to Harry].

‘He first went there as a teenager and the royal family there is like his second family.’

They’re so close that Harry and Prince Seeiso, the younger brother of Lesotho’s king with whom he founded the charity Sentebale, call each other ‘brother’.

The source adds: ‘Sentebale is such a big part of his life you’d think he would want to share it.’

In truth, Meghan and Harry’s brand separation has been a long time coming; I wrote about it in this newspaper almost exactly a year ago.