Prince Harry received some royal happy birthday wishes when he turned 40 on Sept. 15, 2024. In a surprising move, King Charles III and Prince William acknowledged the Duke of Sussex’s milestone by wishing him a happy birthday online. According to a royal commentator, it may have been less of an olive branch or courtesy and more of a strategic maneuver.
King Charles and Prince William’s birthday messages to Harry
Harry received a birthday shoutout on the monarchy’s official social media accounts to mark his special day. The message read, “Wishing The Duke of Sussex a very happy 40th birthday today!” It appeared alongside a photo of him from 2018 (more on that later) and a cake emoji.
Harry’s birthday wishes didn’t stop with King Charles and, by extension, his stepmother Queen Camilla. His older brother, the Prince of Wales, and his wife, Kate Middleton, followed suit. They reposted the royal family’s birthday tribute to Harry from X to their own official account.
The Prince and Princess of Wales added their own message: “Wishing a Happy 40th Birthday to The Duke of Sussex!”
According to the Mail, it’s been reiterated privately that the royal family doesn’t mark non-working royal birthdays on social media. However, the birthday shoutout for Harry fell under their “tradition” of doing so on “significant” birthdays.
Wishing Harry a happy birthday is a form of self-defense for Charles and William
Speaking to Good Morning Britain about the royals’ happy birthday posts, commentator Jack Royston described it as a way for William and the king to “protect themselves.”
“The warmer that the royal family is to Harry, the more they protect themselves from any future attacks by him,” Royston said (via Newsweek). “If they’re nice to him, and they’re showing themselves to be the side that’s interested in peace, and he keeps attacking them, he will destroy himself.”
Harry, he explained, “will only destroy his own reputation and not just in Britain, but in America too. Because after Spare came out, they had a massive crash in their popularity in America.”
Charles and William couldn’t use recent photos of Harry in birthday shoutout
Prince Harry in 2024 | Eric Charbonneau/Archewell Foundation via Getty Images
The image used in the royals’ happy birthday posts has since drawn some criticism. In it, Harry smiled as he wore a gray blazer and white shirt with a glass of water in front of him.
Taken during a 2018 visit to a start-up in Dublin, Ireland, when he was still a working royal, the photo notably didn’t include Meghan, who was with him that day. According to the U.K.’s The Times, the choice of photo likely proved challenging for the royal family.
“Recent stuff” wasn’t an option “because it’s all faux royal-tour material from Harry and Meghan’s Colombia jaunt, the foregrounding of which would be something of an own goal for the Firm.” Neither was an “action” shot of Harry playing polo “because now it looks like a promo for his forthcoming Netflix series Polo. ”
One with William was also out of the question. “Reconciliation there looks far from likely. And the immediate associations from any image of those two is still, unfortunately, ripped necklaces, broken dog bowls, and a tussle in a cottage kitchen in the grounds of Kensington Palace.”
Nor could they show Harry with King Charles or Kate amid their cancer battles. The reason is that he’s “juggling multimillion-dollar media deals and reflecting incessantly […] upon the role that this same media has played in ruining his otherwise perfect life.”
As for including a photo of the couple or “Harry chillaxing in Montecito,” it was a no-go. Why? It’d “trigger post-traumatic audience flashbacks” to their 2022 Netflix docuseries.
