Prince Harry was forced to execute an “ingenious decoy” to smuggle his family into Highgrove for last week’s highly anticipated meeting with King Charles.
One source even compared the clandestine operation to Waterloo, as the Duke of Sussex managed to leave a difficult week behind him.
Harry was accompanied by Meghan Markle and their two children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, at the Monarch’s country residence on Friday.
The meeting took place mere days after Harry suffered embarrassment in court when his allegations of illegal newsgathering against the proprietor of the Daily Mail were dismissed.
It also followed a dispute over his use of Buckingham Palace, as he touched down in the UK to promote next year’s Invictus Games.
Author Tina Brown, a biographer of Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, has now revealed how Harry and his family managed to enter Highgrove undetected.
He utilised a Chanel-hosted lunch at the Cotswolds property as a distraction, enabling a vehicle carrying the Sussex family to slip in “amongst the stream of arriving vehicles,” Brown writes in her latest Substack.
Once through the gates, it drew up at a separate entrance, well away from the other guests.
Brown said one of the lunch attendees told her: “It was like being at Waterloo, but the wrong end of Waterloo.”
It is understood Napoleon blundered at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo by launching a diversionary assault against nearby Hougoumont which was intended to draw British troops from the Duke of Wellington’s principal force.
The attacks were ultimately repelled without requiring reinforcements, though certain historians argue the manoeuvre was not merely a diversionary tactic, with both commanders considering Hougoumont crucial to their prospects of victory that day.
Brown reveals that Meghan and the children had been in Portugal, where the family is rumoured to own a holiday retreat, before making their way to the UK. She observes that it “didn’t seem to occur to Harry” that he could bring his children to the UK “undetected” and that “secret, safe visits, conducted without all the whirling swords, are perfectly manageable”.
Insiders indicate that Harry left the meeting in good spirits, yet some members of the royal household are reportedly furious with the King for acquiescing to what they consider to be emotional blackmail.