Prince Harry has always needed the Invictus Games more than they need him. In 2025, they’re a public relations lifeline.
An unimpeachably worthy cause that taps into the things he does at his best — the informal empathy of banter and backslaps, the shedding of self-serious self-consciousness and being silly in the name of making others feel comfortable — these Olympic-like games for wounded service people have always held a reputational panacea for a prince who’s long struggled with his public persona.
After all: he founded these games less than two years after those infamous photographs of him playing strip billiards in Vegas were leaked to TMZ, a moment that seemed destined to cement him forever as the Party Prince, the stereotypical royal wastrel. Invictus, and the purity of the mission at its heart and Harry’s obvious sincere dedication to uplifting his fellow combatants, was an essential off-ramp from that well-trodden road.
Fast-forward a decade or so, and the Invictus Games are being held right now in Vancouver, their first-ever winter sports edition. Harry has come a long way: he’s a husband and father who made a public break with the Royal Family for the sake of his nuclear one, a hugely bestselling author who left no grievance or embarrassing personal anecdote unturned in his record-breaking memoir and a vindicated crusader against the same tabloids who splashed his bare derrière on their front pages.
And yet, mostly as a direct result of all those developments, mixed in with the intractable toxicity of echo chambers that feed on our worst impulses, the stakes for Harry — and, perhaps to an even greater extent, his wife, Meghan — have never felt higher. Going public with their relationship at the Toronto edition of the games in 2017? A cakewalk compared the public gauntlet they’re walking at this one.
Even Donald Trump piled on
You know it’s bad when the president — even if it’s Donald Trump, who’s long taken issue with this couple — stays his supposed threat of deportation on the (chauvinistic, misogynistic) grounds that Harry’s got more than enough to deal with in his choice of spouse right now.
“I don’t want to do that. I’ll leave him alone,” Trump told the New York Post on Friday. “He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.”
Here, Trump echoes the world view on Meghan that looks at everything she’s done so far in 2025 — return to Instagram, announce her Netflix lifestyle show, postpone said show because of the California wildfires, volunteer with disaster relief efforts — as yet another act in “Grift: The Musical,” rather than, say, the genuine efforts of an ambitious woman looking to reclaim her own identity after years of being subsumed (and nearly destroyed) by daring to marry a prince.
Renewed bullying accusations
Meghan’s new start has not been helped by a recent Vanity Fair article that doubled down, with fresh anonymous sources, on long-running claims of Meghan’s alleged mean-girl approach to personnel management. It also claimed she shopped around a “divorce book” early on in her relationship with Harry.
Harry — with his own recent PR fumbles lurking, like the flop Netflix “Polo” series and the opinion in some quarters that he went back on his own word by settling his suit against the tabloids after all — didn’t come out of the piece well, either, particularly when it came to the value he brought to the couple’s massive Spotify and Netflix deals. (A show where he taste-tested different hot chocolates was floated — and then, shock, vetoed — at one stage.)
A couple in love
One thing that everyone in the article agreed on? The couple are deeply in love, a win when you’re dogged by divorce rumours at every turn.
That love has been on full display at the Invictus Games in Vancouver, with hand-holding, kisses and words of affirmation. Case in point? Meghan’s impromptu speech when she introduced her husband at a dinner that kicked off the games.
“I was not planning on speaking tonight, and we just arrived, I don’t know, a couple of hours ago, and I touched Canadian soil and I went, oh, it feels like home,” she told the crowd. “We are just thrilled to be here, and I would be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to introduce someone who means a lot to me. And I know he means quite a lot to all of you.”
She went on to pay tribute to Harry and his Invictus prep: “What you won’t have seen is all of the moments that have happened in the lead-up to these Games, all of the moments where, as you know, with families, the big rush in the morning — getting ready for school, packing the lunch boxes, making breakfast,” she says. “My husband’s in all of that with us, and then he’ll be on his phone, and Archie will say: ‘Papa, why are you on your phone?’ And he’s like: ‘That’s Invictus. I’m getting ready for Invictus.’”
Meghan, for her part, has been posting to her new Instagram account with the excitement of someone who has turned off their comment sections. (If you’ve seen the diabolical nature of what people wrote underneath the YouTube video of the “Love, Meghan” trailer, you’ll know exactly why she was very wise to do that.) “Get ready for a week of heart, hope, and heroes in action,” she wrote on a grid post that featured a sizzle reel for the games. “Join us in cheering loudly and proudly to show just how much these competitors and their families mean to us.”
As usual, the haters …
Alas for Meghan and Harry, the contingent of those who will find fault with them at every turn is strong. Even something as straightforward as attending the event you founded and using your star power to bring attention to its cause is cast in a sinister, self-serving light.
While comments sections aren’t always the most accurate bellwether for public opinion, the commentary on Instagram would curl a publicist’s toes.
“Damn they’re desperate. Jam not selling well,” said one person under a People magazine post about them at the games, a knowing reference to Meghan’s much-delayed American Riviera Orchard lifestyle brand. “Camera chasing! How predictable,” said another comment, while another opined, “These two have a few days to milk this for all the publicity they can as they need the attention and praise. It’s sad their lives have come to this!”
… and a few fans
Because here’s the thing: while the deluge of negativity that accompanies this couple’s every move is the shiny, click-y object, there is still an enormous well of support and sympathy for them as a couple that doesn’t ever seem to get the same attention.
It’s there in the positive comments on these kinds of posts — “I think she is amazing,” “Meghan is so in love with Harry … how wonderful” — and in the ways that you see people responding to them in situations like these games: Harry pulling goofy faces at someone in the crowd at the wheelchair basketball final, Meghan in a heart-to-heart with a family member of an athlete at a reception, both laughing, her hand on his knee, his hand always reaching for hers when they walk, as they do their best for an event they truly seem to care a great deal about.
When — if ever — that translates into more favourable wider public opinion, however, remains to be seen.
