Not surprisingly, critics of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seized on Prince William’s revelation Tuesday that he went jogging in Central Park Tuesday morning during his visit to New York — and no one noticed him and no one bothered him.
William’s comments about his peaceful run through Central Park, even amid “the hordes of New Yorkers,” has been contrasted with the spectacle that Harry and Meghan created when they visited the Big Apple in May and raised the specter of Princess Diana’s 1997 death by making disputed claims that they were pursued for two hours by “highly aggressive” paparazzi, who subjected them to a “near catastrophic” car chase.
The heir to the British throne was in New York for the Earthshot Summit, which celebrates the Earthshot Prize, a competition that encourages people to find solutions to problems created by climate change, as Vanity Fair reported. At an event Tuesday, he was on stage with the 2021 prize winner Vaitea Cowan, who asked: “I heard — is it true? Did you go running in Central Park this morning?”
William acknowledged that, yes, he “decided to join the hordes of New Yorkers doing their morning routine.”
“It was wonderful waking up in New York on a sunny morning,” he continued. “It was beautiful getting some fresh air this morning. But it’s been wonderful to be back, 2014 was the last time I was here in New York. I’ve been trying to come back for a couple of years, but with COVID and my grandmother passing last year, it hasn’t been easy.”
William was, of course, referring to Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September of 2022. Meanwhile, William last visited New York in 2014 with his wife, Kate Middleton. They saw a basketball game at Barclays Center in Brooklyn and visited the 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan, Vanity Fair said.
William and Kate also were in the United States in December, when they visited Boston for the 2022 Earthshot Prize awards. However, that trip didn’t go so smoothly, when some NBA fans booed the couple and chanted “USA, USA” as they sat courtside at a Celtics vs Miami Heat game. Time also reported that the trip also was overshadowed by fresh accusations in the U.K. of racism in the British royal establishment.
During William’s New York trip this week, he was “greeted as an international statesman” at the summit at the Plaza Hotel, Page Six reported. That included “a hero’s welcome” to the city by former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who praised the Prince of Wales for winning over “Americans of all stripes — which, as we know, is no small feat.”
Following William’s jogging comments, critics of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex commented on how the future king seemed to enjoy a more dignified trip to New York than his brother and sister-in-law.
“It’s all a case of class vs. crass,” Christopher Andersen, author of “The King,” a 2022 biography of King Charles III, told Fox News Digital.
“When Harry and Meghan swept into New York last May, they flew in on a private jet and brought with them all the baggage and complaints they’d been carting around for years,” Anderson said.
“The Sussexes seemed determined to prove that they, like Princess Diana, were being unfairly hounded by the press,” Anderson continued. “Almost as if on cue, Harry and Meghan’s visit climaxed with a purported two-hour high-speed chase through the streets of Manhattan — a chase that, to anyone even vaguely familiar with the city, seemed improbable at best. What drama.”
Royal correspondents have said that Harry and Meghan inflicted serious PR damage on themselves with the car chase claims, which the Sussexes alleged involved paparazzi causing “multiple near collisions” with other drivers, pedestrians and two police officers. These claims were challenged by an extensive report by the New York Times, the photographers who had been following the couple and the New York City Police Department, which quickly concluded that their claims warranted “no further investigation.”
It’s possible that the Sussexes won back a great deal of international good will with their multi-day appearances at the 2023 Invictus Games in Germany, which ended Saturday. Vanity Fair reported that the California-based couple closed out the games “in style,” which in part meant that Meghan showed up in another fabulous outfit — a strapless green gown — that was likely to sell out. Indeed, many of the headlines about the games, an international competition for physically and mentally wounded military personnel and veterans, focused on Meghan’s multiple outfit changes, with the Daily Mail estimating that her clothing and jewelry for the games cost close to $400,000.
Newsweek also reported that the Sussexes won over the crowds and the international media with their public displays of affection, as if the couple wanted to silence reports and speculation earlier in the summer that they were demoralized by negative news about them or that they were secretly separated.
It was also said that Harry was “at his best” while overseeing the Invictus Games, which he, a British army veteran, founded in 2014. Vanity Fair praised the “emotional speech” he gave to the games’ competitors at the closing ceremonies.
“We’ve all witnessed the true impact sport has had on your recovery. But you will never truly know the impact your actions this week have had on millions of people around the world,” Harry said in both English and German, according to Vanity Fair. “You have opened people’s hearts, through your vulnerability, through your resilience, and your sheer abilities. You have shown us that joy can emerge from struggle.”
