Preparations are well underway for the elaborate coronation of King Charles III this year, but an errant son is threatening to disrupt the palace's best-laid plans.
The ceremony, marked by pomp and pageantry and steeped in religious tradition, will symbolically mark the passing of the crown to the new sovereign.
In reality, Charles is already acting as King, navigating his new role amid political upheaval, a cost-of-living crisis in the UK and war in Europe.
But the biggest challenge he may face as ruler may be more personal: a rift between his two sons.
There has been hurt on both sides since Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, stepped away from the royal family in 2020.
Senior royals expressed their disappointment at the decision, while Prince Harry confessed to Oprah Winfrey he had felt let down by his father, who had cut him off financially and did not return his phone calls.
The royal family and their aides may have hoped that would be the last word the couple had on the subject, but if such wishful thinking existed it was swiftly dispelled by the release of a six-part documentary series and the Duke of Sussex's emotional memoir.
Since December, the couple have dominated headlines through their Netflix special, subsequent rebuttals against the press, explosive excerpts of Harry's memoir and exclusive interviews.
And with royal watchers still poring over the details of the prince's new book, it is likely to remain a talking point for now.
It means King Charles's early reign will be "overshadowed by one of his sons," says royal commentator Giselle Bastin from Flinders University.
"Harry's public denouncements will add a layer of unwelcome stress to a period when the new sovereign is establishing his position in the public's imagination," she said.
The challenge facing the new King
As King Charles settles into his new role, he will have to make deliberate choices about what it means to be a modern monarch.
Already it appears as if he has started to address several looming problems within the family.
His brother Prince Andrew has been largely excised from royal life over his association with the late financier and sexual predator Jeffery Epstein.
But due to his rank, he has retained the title of Counsellor of State, which allows him to stand in for the monarch for official duties if the King was ever incapacitated or unavailable.
Rather than changing UK laws to cut him from the list — and probably causing a stir in the tabloids in the process — King Charles has simply expanded the pool of relatives who could stand in for him.
Now his trusted sister Princess Anne and their younger brother Prince Edward, who are both senior working royals and scandal free, can deputise when the monarch is abroad or unwell.
It is a quick fix to a festering problem within the family that had threatened to infect the whole institution.
"King Charles's tweaking of who could be a Counsellor of State is just another of these decisions that the monarch makes from time to time," Dr Bastin says.
"Having said that, Charles has made it clear that he wishes to slim down the monarchy and makes changes.
"I imagine we'll see quite a few more tweaks in the next couple of years."
Charles also reportedly plans to strip his brother of his taxpayer-funded protection, but will likely pay for private security guards — a compromise he has denied Prince Harry and Meghan.
When it comes to his son and daughter-in-law, their deeply hurt feelings and the serious allegations of institutional racism and misogyny they have raised, the King has so far been unable to find a resolution.
Prince Harry may be Charles's youngest child, but he is also a cog in the royal machine.
His statements about the palace and its aides still carry the weight of a prince who once belonged in the Windsors' inner circle.
Harry and Meghan will not stay quiet
Again and again, the couple have made it clear they want to offer an alternative view to the UK tabloids' narratives about them.
In short, they want the chance to tell their story, on their own terms.
"I will speak truth with the words that come out of my mouth, rather than using … an unnamed source to feed in lies or narrative" to the tabloid media, Prince Harry told 60 Minutes' Anderson Cooper ahead of the release of his memoir.
"Thirty-eight years of having my story told by so many different people with intentional spin and distortion, it felt like a good time to own my story and tell it myself," he explained to ITV's Tom Bradby.
The couple's Netflix series was exactly that: Their account of how they met, when they fell in love, the work they did as "modern royals", their treatment by the UK press and ultimately their decision to step away from the palace.
There were few serious allegations levelled at Buckingham Palace, though the six episodes painted a picture of an institution that colluded with the newspapers responsible for racist coverage of the Duchess of Sussex while doing little to help shield her from online harassment.
Royal correspondents concluded the palace and the rest of the royal family were delighted by the lack of bombshells.
In contrast, Prince Harry's interviews and memoir have gone much further, revealing deep ruptures inside the House of Windsor.
The Prince of Wales, a future monarch, is portrayed as entitled and angry at times, having once ripped Prince Harry's necklace and pushed him into a dog bowl and insisted on turning their relationship into a "private Olympiad".
Princess Catherine was the sister he never had until the Duchess of Sussex appeared on the scene, and his stepmother Camilla, the Queen Consort, was willing to sacrifice Prince Harry at her "personal PR altar".
His father, though regarded with some compassion by his son, "had always given an air of being not quite ready for parenthood" and didn't hug Prince Harry on the day Princess Diana died.
In speaking out, Prince Harry has taken a deliberate step away from his family members and followed in the footsteps of his mother, breaking long-held palace taboos.
Rather than letting "daylight in on the monarchy", mother and son set fire to the curtains.
"The royals co-exist with the implicit understanding that they won't give interviews that sling mud at the monarchy," Dr Bastin said.
"Harry's taken a leaf out of his mother's book by going on the record to make public declarations about fault lines that exist in the royal institution and, as with the Oprah interview, it won't make him any friends within the royal system."
Does the monarchy face a crisis?
The couple broke records with their series, Harry & Meghan, which racked up 81.55 million viewing hours globally within its first four days of release, according to Netflix.
Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, has found similar success as the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever.
But the couple have faced a barrage of criticism for being so public about their lives despite stepping back from royal life.
While they have argued they "never cited privacy as the reason for" their decision to leave, Prince Harry has been accused of violating his family's privacy in a manner he once criticised the tabloids for doing.
Others have dismissed the duke's plight because of the immense privilege of his upbringing.
But questions have also been raised over the palace's stony silence in response to the allegations against officials for misleading the public and Prince William's alleged physical assault.
As Prince Harry has claimed, "no institution is immune to accountability or taking responsibility".
More than 30 years ago, the palace's lack of response in the days after Princess Diana's death prompted a public backlash so extreme it threatened to topple the monarchy.
"Don't forget, the British royal family is there by consent, they need to earn and keep the respect of the British public," Valentine Low, a journalist and the author of Courtiers: Intrigue, Ambition and the Power Players Behind the House of Windsor, told the New York Times.
"If that is ever damaged in a fundamental and permanent way, that could be very serious."
The family and its aides may be carefully weighing how to respond, given the level of scrutiny they are under.
In the all-out narrative war between the palace and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, victory may ultimately rest on which side of the pond their audience lives on.
The looming problem for Charles
While King Charles will always be Prince Harry's father, he also remains the head of the family business.
It is a dual, sometimes conflicting, role that monarchs have struggled with throughout the royal family's 1,200-year history.
The King's late mother was at times forced to make decisions as Queen rather than matriarch.
When Prince Harry and Meghan stepped back from their roles, they claimed in their documentary that the Queen's aides cancelled her plans to spend time with the couple.
"This is when a family and a family business are in direct conflict … really what they're doing is blocking a grandson from seeing his grandmother," the duchess said.
As King, Charles is facing a similar test, between his duties as ruler and as head of a family.
"[Charles] has been put in an invidious position because he has to handle the situation as both monarch and head of the Firm, and as a father to an estranged and unhappy son," Dr Bastin said.
One clear message in Prince Harry's memoir is that there is a "deep love" between the father and his "darling boy", but it is one that is plagued by an underlying tension between the institution and family.
As the 'spare' to William's heir, Harry claims his interests were sacrificed for other royals when it came to the press.
"While invoking the memory of his mother's struggles with the palace and the media, Harry fails to recognise that Diana actually came to regret her cooperation with the Morton biography Diana: Her True Story and the Panorama interview that she gave to Martin Bashir," Dr Bastin said.
"After the initial rush of feeling that she had finally told her 'truth', Diana felt the cold winds of the palace system blow in."
It's not yet clear if the coronation will provide an opportunity for both sides to clear the air, with the younger son reportedly invited.
Prince Harry, for his part, says: "The ball is in their court."
"There's a lot that can happen between now and [the coronation]. But the door is always open," he told ITV's journalist Tom Bradby.
For now, he may feel the blowback is worth it in order to present his own story independently of the UK tabloid press of which he is so critical.
But commentators warn that by continuing to court public attention, he may risk running out of media currency with his and his wife's story.
