There are those who think that this about Prince Henry has little to do with the mythical Arthurian world and more to do with Monty Python’s satire and the unforgettable parody of the search for the holy grail by Arthur and his knights of the square table.
It seems that this is how much of the British press sees him, which shows so little affection for the second son of King Charles III, the insubordinate son, the one exiled to Montecito, that Californian corner exclusive to the mega-rich.
“All this I have more”, must have thought the Duke of Sussex, turned Saturday morning in Beverly Hills (Los Angeles), into a “living legend of aviation” for his services during the decade in which he fulfilled his militar service. He was officially an Apache helicopter pilot, with two deployments to the Afghan front, in 2007 and 2012. His scorn was fueled in part by his confession in his memoir In the Shadows that he killed a couple of dozen jihadists and that Afghanistan was a bit like “God’s playground”. Then he had to redeem himself in an interview with his next-door neighbor Oprah Winfrey.
Calling the recognition “outlandish” or “totally unjustified”, the damning tabloids say that their grandfather Felipe is turning in his grave. The Duke of Edinburgh was part of the Royal Air Force (RAF), in which he earned “his wings” in 1953, piloted for 44 years, accumulated 6,000 flight hours in more than 60 classes of aircraft. On the other hand, the columnist Ephraim Hardcastle stated that “Enric doesn’t know how to fly a helicopter, just sit down and do bruuum, bruuum”.
All the disdain that Henry feels emanates from Buckingham Palace is transformed into congratulations at the Hollywood court. John Travolta, who proposed his name, played the role of the knight who, allegorically, put the sword on the shoulders of the Duke of Sussex and made him a member of that chosen group, it is not clear yes for the glory
This was Henry’s first appearance in the dark week of the British crown, after his father was diagnosed with a prostate problem and his sister-in-law Caterina underwent surgery.
The protagonist of the evening, which he attended without his wife, Meghan of Sussex, paid tribute to his champion and recalled that the actor “took his mother out to dance”, Diana of Wales, and that appointment resulted in a scene that evoked. “I was one year old when you danced with my mother. Now, we will not dance together, but fly together,” he said. The F dancer from Saturday Night, Grease or Pulp Fiction asked him what he remembered about his first flight. “This is classified material,” he joked.
To many it sounds exaggerated that he is a legend along with, say, Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon. Neil Armstrong, the first, lost his distinction when he died.
In the list of legends, which only lowers the distinction, there are Travolta himself, billionaires Jezz Bezos and Elon Musk or actors such as Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Morgan Freeman.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British Navy officer, claimed that the ceremony was just an event where “celebrities massage each other’s egos”.
