Prince Harry’s operation to gain family access ‘was like Waterloo’ | Royal | News

Prince Harry had to execute an “ingenious trap” to smuggle his family into Highgrove for a highly anticipated meeting with King Charles last week.

One source even compared the undercover operation, in which the Duke of Sussex managed to put a difficult week behind him, to Waterloo.

Harry was accompanied by Meghan Markle and her two children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, at the Monarch’s country house on Friday.

The meeting came just days after Harry was embarrassed in court when allegations of illegal news gathering against the owner of the Daily Mail were dismissed.

It also follows a dispute over his use of Buckingham Palace when he traveled to England to promote next year’s Invictus Games.

Author Tina Brown, who wrote the biography of Harry’s mother Princess Diana, explained how Harry and his family managed to enter Highgrove unnoticed.

In her latest Substack post, Brown wrote that Chanel used a lunch at her Cotswolds estate as a distraction, allowing a vehicle carrying the Sussex family to slip “into the oncoming stream of vehicles.”

After passing the door, he stood at a separate entrance, well away from the other guests.

Brown said one of the lunch attendees told him: “It was like being in Waterloo, but at the wrong end of Waterloo.”

Napoleon appears to have erred at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo by launching a diversionary attack on nearby Hougoumont, aiming to draw British troops away from the Duke of Wellington’s main force.

The attacks were ultimately repelled without requiring reinforcements, but some historians argue that the maneuver was not merely a diversionary tactic, but that both commanders considered it vital to Hougoumont’s hopes of victory that day.

Brown revealed that Meghan and her children were in Portugal, where the family is said to have a holiday home, before heading to England. She observes that it “did not occur to Harry” that he could bring his children to the UK “undetected” and that “secret, safe visits without twirling swords were perfectly manageable”.

Insiders say Harry left the meeting in high spirits, but some members of the royal family are reportedly angry at the King for agreeing to what they see as emotional blackmail.