DAN WOOTTON: Charles and William have done everything possible to make concessions to the Sussexes

As for offering forgiveness in a time of overwhelming grief, King Charles and Prince William have been both compassionate and statesman for the past seven days.

Members of the royal family, quite understandably, have not forgotten that in the days leading up to the death of Queen Elizabeth the Great, the media briefing and social media campaign of their son and brother Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, respectively, in a had proceeded at a rapid pace.

In fact, their strange little PR man Omid Scobie, who doesn’t know Scotland is part of the UK, tweeted furiously that the Sussexes had no desire to meet up with any of their kinsmen until the perma victims got an apology for their apparent mistreatment.

That’s despite the Duchess making a thinly veiled threat to reveal all about her horrific days as a member of the royal family during an interview with awakened American magazine The Cut, which this week grimly ran a hit against Charles as he held his hand. mother was sad.

There was an all-too-striking resemblance to the weeks before Prince Philip’s death, where the Sussexes continued with a mocking and largely untrue revelation with Oprah Winfrey, despite learning that the Duke of Edinburgh had been taken to hospital.

So the backdrop for the warring Windsors coming together in tragedy could hardly have been more fraught.

But Charles, who has many faults, showed that one of them is certainly not his ability to forgive and move on.

Quite the opposite. His priority this week has been to make Harry and Meghan feel like they’re still part of the family.

It has happened in many ways, some more subtle than others.

There was the declaration of love for his son and daughter-in-law in his landmark King’s Speech, even as he admitted they built their lives abroad.

The couple sat right behind their father at Buckingham Palace when Elizabeth II returned for the last time, while Meghan drove with Sophie Wessex (as a second daughter of the late Queen) to Westminster Hall the following day.

But the most important concession comes tomorrow night when Charles agrees to quash protocol by having Afghan veteran Harry wear his precious military uniform as he stands at the foot of the late Queen’s coffin while her eight grandchildren watch in what is a historic slice of royal family. theater.

Charles is a father deeply hurt by his son’s public rejection, including terrible jokes in both the Oprah and Cut interviews, which he says are unfair.

After all, he walked Meghan down the aisle after she argued with her own father Thomas Markle and even agreed to help fund the couple’s move to California after Megxit.

But Harry’s sense of victimhood, seemingly encouraged by his wife, goes back further and seems to consume all his decisions, even when it comes to destroying his family and the institution of the monarchy.

William’s magnanimous display of public unity by offering a joint walk with the couple to greet mourners in Windsor is even more important.

The new Prince of Wales remains deeply angry at his younger brother, especially the attacks on his wife in the Oprah interview, to which he says the couple cannot respond, and the very damaging claims of racism that the couple’s Caribbean tour has made before. derail this year.

But in the darkest of times, after Saturday’s joint performance, William agreed to march shoulder-to-shoulder with Harry behind the Queen’s coffin en route to Westminster Hall.

It was a harrowing replay of the psychologically inappropriate episode from 25 years earlier, when the brothers were forced to march behind their late mother’s coffin, a trauma Harry still believes he blames his father on.

Significantly, at Prince Philip’s funeral last year, relations between Wills and Harry were so tense that their cousin Peter Phillips had to separate the brothers in the procession.

Whatever the reasons for Charles and William’s display of forbearance and remorse — most likely because the focus remains on the Queen’s life, not the little Montecito melodrama — there should now be an expectation that Harry and Meghan will share the same grace. will show.

While it may sound trite, we all know that the Queen expected her relatives to unite around her eldest son, whose success or failure will determine the future of the Union and the monarchy itself in years to come.

That’s why it’s so disappointing to hear reports that Harry and Meghan have been “relentless since the Queen died” at their insistence that Archie and Lilbet become Prince and Princess.

Not only is it highly inappropriate to have such discussions right now, I also find it utterly bizarre that a couple so opposed to the institution would be so desperate to saddle their American children with titles that entail such responsibilities .

I also find it unscrupulous that, given the circumstances, Harry still agrees to the publication of his all-encompassing autobiography, which is widely expected to contain sharp criticism of both the new King and Queen.

If the book is released before the coronation next year, it will almost certainly destroy Charles’ hopes of a honeymoon as a monarch.

It is my opinion that Harry should cancel the book altogether, rather than postpone its publication to a later date, leaving the Royal Family with another excruciating wait.

Of course, the book is just the start of the hyper-publicity campaign the Sussexes have planned to maximize their finances and prove that they are a valuable asset to their bosses at Netflix and Spotify, both of whom have demanded their pound of royal flesh.

It would be a crushing disappointment if, after being caught up in the heart of such a moment in history, Harry and Meghan were to use the events to further their seemingly unending desire for commercial gain.

While I found her comments more than a little ironic, given that it was her journalistically flawed “interview” that unleashed much of the hell of the past two years on the Queen, perhaps the pair should take their friend Oprah Winfrey’s words seriously.

As she said in an American TV interview this week, “When all the families come together for a communal ceremony, the ritual of, you know, burying your dead, there’s a chance to make peace.” And hopefully it will come.’

Well, the chance for peace has been offered by Charles and William to the Sussexes, even though they have been subjected to a series of highly damaging ad hominem and factually inaccurate attacks, to which it is impossible for them to respond.

Now it’s up to Harry and Meghan to put, for once, the Queen’s wishes for a strong and united family in the wake of her death above their own futile and ultimately damaging quest for revenge.