Why has the king of England just handed the wayward Sussexes the biggest prize of their six-year campaign for family rehabilitation, on their terms, in exchange for precisely nothing?

"Blood is blood," says The Sunday Times of London by way of explanation.

As the private sentiment of a 77-year-old grandfather still undergoing cancer treatment, who had not seen two of his grandchildren in more than four years, this is a touching phrase. As the strategic rationale of a head of state, it is hopelessly inadequate. The same Sunday Times piece also supplies all the evidence that this was a huge mistake by the king.

It is worth rewinding to how this saga started, because the palace's story has traveled a very long way in three weeks.

The news that Meghan and the children would be joining Harry first broke on the Wednesday of Royal Ascot, when Bronte Coy revealed it on The Sun's podcast (on which, as it happened, I was a guest that day). Coy then went to Ascot, where the king's team were holding court—and where, that first day, they were telling anyone who would listen that this was emotional blackmail by Harry and Meghan.

From "emotional blackmail" to "blood is blood" in 20 days, via the maddest briefing war I can remember: they were coming, they weren't coming, Meghan was coming, Meghan wasn't coming, just Harry, Harry and the kids, back and forth, back and forth—culminating on Tuesday in Harry's deranged denunciation of the British courts, at which point most observers concluded he had blown the whole thing up. My God, we thought, it was all there on the table for him to take. How could he be so idiotic?

What we underestimated was not Harry's idiocy. It was the king's indulgence.

I was in Birmingham on Friday for the Invictus one-year-to-go event, and two things struck me.

The first was Harry's face. He was beaming. I was thinking: this does not look like a man having the worst week of his life.

The second was that around midday, the place started emptying out. Half the photographers hightailed it to the polo at Windsor, chasing a rumor that Catherine might bring the children; the other half bolted for Highgrove, chasing a better one. Harry's people, when I asked, weren't saying yes, but they weren't saying no either. Demurring, I believe, is the technical term. The demurring, combined with the megawatt smile, got me thinking something was up.

Highgrove that day was hosting a party—Chanel had rented the estate for a four-hour event running from about 11 a.m. The constant traffic in and out was used as a decoy to slip Meghan and the children through the gates unphotographed, The Daily Mail says. It was pivotal for everyone involved that no pictures emerged of this meeting, and none did.

I had to fly home to Dublin, and as I landed at about 7 p.m., my phone started pinging: Buckingham Palace had confirmed the meeting. Even having heard the rumors all day, I was surprised, and particularly surprised that Camilla was there.

On Tuesday, Mr Justice Nicklin had thrown out all 97 claims in Harry's marathon lawsuit against Associated Newspapers, a case in which the prince was caught in a flat lie about his friendship with The Mail on Sunday's Charlotte Griffiths.

Griffiths, in her subsequent tell-all, revealed she had loyally kept his secrets for 15 years, including a pill popped onto her tongue ("Now I know I can trust you"), the messages in which he complained of being bored out of his mind raising money for his own charity and of driving while still hungover from the night before.

When his lawyers dragged her into the High Court and painted her as an insane fantasist who had imagined her entire relationship with a prince, she had no choice but to defend her reputation. Harry had every choice in the world not to bring the action, and every choice in the world not to involve her in it.

His response to losing was a statement describing the judgment as "a complete and obvious whitewash"—the same establishment-stitch-up script he read out after losing his security case, this time with the added implication that a High Court judge was corrupt.

And here The Sunday Times gives us a remarkable glimpse of the reaction inside the palace: "There were jaws on the floor" with a statement attacking not just a High Court judge but the entire judicial system that acts in the king's name. "There is profound upset constitutionally about that attack."

So, the king's own people say there is profound constitutional upset about Harry attacking the courts that operate in the king's name. That was Tuesday. On Friday, the king gave him tea.

And before anyone says that the court defeat was the real story of the week: well, for those of us in the media, yes, it was catastrophic.

But be honest about how this reads to a normal person getting their news off a Facebook feed. A privacy action against The Daily Mail over a bunch of 25-year-old stories doesn't register as a flicker. Tea with the king at Highgrove—full family rehabilitation in motion—registers. Harry knows exactly which of the two verdicts matters.

I have previously reported that the king has drawn inspiration from the Biblical parable of the prodigal son. But the prodigal son rehearsed his apology on the road: "Father, I have sinned." The repentance came first; the fatted calf came second.

Harry has skipped the apology, and Charles went straight to the calf bit.

The late queen asked Harry and Meghan to uphold the values of the monarchy. He has spent six years doing the opposite, and a friend of Harry's cheerfully confirmed to The Sunday Times: "Harry is very principled in what he stands for and he's just going about his life in the way he said he would."

Translation: je ne regrette rien—now, where's my cake?

If you set out to design an incentive structure to teach Prince Harry that intransigence works, you could not improve on what the king did this week. If you wanted to encourage a renegade son to continue with his wayward behavior, this is precisely how you would do it.

As I have reported before, there are two camps in the king's court: the hawks, led by Clive Alderton, who agree with William that Harry should not be allowed anywhere near the king and regard it as their duty to protect the sovereign from his own softer instincts; and the doves, clustered around Theo Rycroft, the man being lined up to succeed Alderton when he goes, which could be within a couple of years.

If you read The Sunday Times piece with that map in hand, you can see both camps briefing against each other in a single article. The hawks give you "jaws on the floor" and "profound upset constitutionally." The doves give you "blood is blood" and "every journey of a thousand miles begins with one footstep."

By Friday, the doves—led, ultimately, by King Charles himself—had won. But the hawks' fingerprints are everywhere: the "existential mistrust" about Harry and Meghan's motives; the courtiers who spent last week war-gaming the fallout, terrified Harry would emerge claiming Charles secretly sympathized with his crusade against the media; the refusal of a room at Buckingham Palace in part because aides feared he would stage his "Evita moment" on royal turf. Don't cry for me, Montecito!

I would not be surprised to see departures from the king's staff over the coming months as a result of all this. Some aides are very, very unhappy.

While all this unfolded, the heir to the throne was playing polo at Guards Polo Club in Windsor, the Princess of Wales in the stands, the pair of them laying on more public displays of affection than we have seen in years.

The brothers have not spoken since the late queen's funeral. George, Charlotte and Louis have no relationship whatsoever with their Californian cousins. And William is appalled by what he regards as his father's betrayal.

His dismay is understandable. Consider what William has actually asked of his father in 20 years: very little, while giving a great deal, including his tacit public blessing to Project Queen Camilla—not one word against her in public, whatever may have been said in private.

The one thing he has asked was that Harry and Andrew be kept at arm's length from the monarchy: the exiled Duke of Windsor as template.

After 1936, the Duke of Windsor was kept out of British life for the entirety of his 35-year exile. There were six visits home, and Wallis was received by the family once, by the Queen Mother, at a memorial service for Queen Mary.

Charles overruled William on Andrew until events forced his hand, and is now overruling him on Harry. And remember whose private life provided the juice in the Sussexes' $100 million of content: Catherine wouldn't lend Meghan her lipstick, Catherine made her cry about the bridesmaids' dresses, the children were made to wear tights.

It was William's wife who was monetized, William who was accused of assault in Harry's book Spare, William's family that absorbed it all during Catherine's cancer treatment. Those close to William, while careful never to say Harry caused her illness, will tell you William perceives a causal link between the stress his brother inflicted and what happened to his wife.

The monarch owes loyalty to the heir. This week, he didn't show it. The Sunday Times asks what the Prince of Wales will make of the olive branch and answers its own question: "He won't like it, that's for sure." The understatement of the reign of King Charles III?

Charles is spending political capital he does not have. Ipsos has support for the very concept of a royal family falling from 65 percent at the start of his reign to 55 percent now. YouGov's January tracker has Harry at 31 percent positive and 60 negative; Meghan at 19 positive and 66 negative, the worst figure the pollster has ever recorded for her. Two-thirds of the country actively dislikes the Duchess of Sussex. There is no public appetite for this reconciliation and no mandate for it.

Part of the problem is that the king has no idea how unpopular the project is, because of the iron control the palace exerts over the British newspapers. Criticize the king often enough in print, and you get removed from the palace WhatsApp group. This means losing the operational notes for the king and for the Prince of Wales, whose press office reports up into the king's.

No notes mean no photographers at the polo, no pictures on the front page, and one news editor told me royal coverage accounts for about 20 percent of their circulation and clicks. So the coverage stays sweet, the criticism stays muted.

It is Animal Farm run as a communications strategy: the pigs announcing record barley production while the other animals go hungry. Meanwhile, in any pub in the United Kingdom, people will tell you what they actually think of this week's events.

Harry returns to the U.K. in September for WellChild, and another family reunion in the autumn is "not being ruled out by either side."

Next July, the Invictus Games come to Birmingham, where I'm told Harry intends to be for as much as a month, with the children, whose American school holidays conveniently run all summer.

"Every journey of a thousand miles begins with one footstep," purrs one royal source to The Times.

Except this is not an isolated incident; it is the systematic undoing of the Sandringham Summit. It is the unwinding of Megxit itself.

And the engine of it all is the king's recovery. When everyone thought Charles was dying, he did not have the strength or the standing to attempt this. Now that his treatment is going well and he believes he has been gifted time, he is taking back control, and the message to his heir is unmistakable: you may not like it, son, but this is my family, and this is how I am going to run it.

History is full of impatient heirs waiting in the wings. What history has never seen is a monarch who faced death, was rescued by medical science, and came back determined to wrestle power back from an heir who had acquired a taste for it.

The conflict between Charles and William is at the core of everything happening in the royal family right now, and Harry is currently the proxy battle.

Friends say Harry awoke on Saturday "buoyed, very happy and really energized." Of course he did. He had just endured the worst week of his public life with the only verdict he actually cares about: his father ruled in his favor.

At the Scotty's event, Harry told bereaved military children that he marks his mother's anniversaries with lemon drizzle cake, and that "a laugh at the end of a hard day is the best medicine served." On Tuesday, minutes after his court defeat, he told an Invictus audience: "What brings us together is far more important than what sets us apart."

What sets this family apart is a memoir, two documentaries, an Oprah interview, six years of litigation and a statement attacking the king's own court, none of it withdrawn, none of it regretted, and all of it, as of Friday night, rewarded.

Want more royal gossip, scoops and scandal? Follow all Tom Sykes' reporting at The Royalist on Substack or listen to The Royalist podcast on YouTube.