King Charles must go to Prince Harry's Invictus Games when he brings the event to Britain in what could be a reputational "booby trap" for the royals, according to a PR expert.
The Duke of Sussex picked the English city of Birmingham to host the Olympics-style tournament for wounded veterans in 2027, not Washington, D.C., which had been shortlisted.
The move will inevitably generate questions about whether the king and Prince William will attend the tournament.
Edward Coram James, a PR expert and chief executive of the media agency Go Up, told Newsweek: "In some ways, it's a bit of a booby trap for them. I'm sure it hasn't been laid as a booby trap, but whether it's been laid that way or not, it's a bit of a booby trap because it forces their hand.
"If they don't go, it looks like they're weighing petty considerations over wounded veterans, so they have to go. Reputationally, they can't not go," he said. "Then it forces considerations like, Well, do they then get seen together? And if they're not, again, it probably looks a bit petty from an optics point of view.
"It could force the royals to get in the room and work through their differences. If you want to force a group of people to sit down in a room and have a talk, this is a very good way to do that," Coram James said.
Birmingham's announcement as the host city for the games came the same month that the British government changed and Harry lost a key ally, former Conservative Veterans Affairs Minister Johnny Mercer. Mercer's replacement, the Labour Party's Alistair Carns, was at the National Exhibition Centre for the announcement on July 23.
This suggests the 2027 games may also be an opportunity for Prince Harry to build contacts in the new government as he continues to fight the Home Office's decision to strip him of his police protection, which ended in 2020.
From Charles' perspective, the rift with Harry and Harry and Meghan's bombshell interviews served as a backdrop to a tumultuous period of royal history in which he also lost both his father, Prince Philip, in 2021 and his mother, Queen Elizabeth, in 2022.
Harry and Meghan's broadsides largely stopped after their Netflix show in December 2022 and Harry's memoir, Spare, in January 2023, though there has been little sign the break has fully healed.
The prince last saw his father in February after the king's cancer diagnosis, when he flew to Britain. The resulting meeting was said to have lasted just 30 minutes.
As royals author Robert Jobson wrote in his upcoming book, Catherine, the Princess of Wales, to be published by Pegasus Books in America on August 6: "The official narrative was that Charles was 'touched' by Harry's gesture.
"The truth is that his unscheduled visit disrupted the King's plans to recuperate with his wife at Sandringham. Instead, they idled at Clarence House in London, awaiting Harry's arrival. Their meeting then lasted only 30 minutes—clearly not long enough to repair shattered bridges," Jobson said.
"The Duke of Sussex, ensconced in his own family bubble, had perhaps not yet grasped that his public betrayal of his father and the wider family had left far deeper wounds than he'd anticipated."
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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