Egregious Paranoia Department - HRH Prince Harry

If you've read this blog at all it might have occurred to you that I tend to worry as a form of innoculation. I figure as long as I'm worrying about something it'll never come to pass, and a couple of sleepless nights is the least I can do to prevent some dread inevitability or other from coming about. So why not turn this worry into something entertaining and thought-provoking for my readers? Well, my reader, anyway.

Some of you may recall that the Fleet Street media in the UK has often cast aspersions on the paternity of Prince Harry; not to sell papers, mind you, but because they just care so much. Notwithstanding that the Spencer line is loaded with redheads, and that both of her boys overwhelmingly favour their Spencer progenitors (which is why they hired her in the first place - duh!), there are those who have dared to insinuate that, while the Princess of Wales is undoubtedly his mother somehow the Prince of Wales is not Harry's father. That somehow James Hewitt -- the Princess' ne'er-do-well ex-boyfriend -- is Harry's real father.

FACT: The Princess never met James Hewitt until Harry was two or three years old. Since much of their affair is on the public record and easily checked (Diana was on the shortest possible leash from Buckingham Palace and Fleet Street until just before the affair started, etc.) this ought to be enough to put the rumours to rest. Alas, the public's memory is even shorter than its attention span.

FACT: Harry, like The Princess Royal, favours the Duke of Edinburgh's side of the family rather than The Queen's. Harry's resemblance to the Duke of Edinburgh at the same age is remarkable.

FACT: The Royal Family takes these matters very seriously, since marching bunches of hotties around in front of old palaces in archaic costumes and supporting charitable causes is about all they do when they're not micromanaging the bloodline. Just to be on the safe side they allegedly had his DNA tested (and while Diana was still alive too -- nice!).

Now it seems that, despite repeated assertions by Sandhurst Academy, the Ministry of Defence, and the Palace to the contrary, Prince Harry is to serve with the British army in Iraq in keeping with his new status as a Second Lieutenant.

If Prince Harry dies in Iraq there will be blood on the hands of everyone from 10 Downing Street to the Palace responsible for putting him into harm's way in the first place. Of course, this is just how conspiracy theories are born, a fact which all involved must know well enough, given how the chattering classes have mercilessly picked apart Diana's death for nearly a decade when the cause of Diana's death was that -- wait for it -- she wasn't wearing a seatbelt.

If I'm right (and the gods know I don't want to be) then I'll be hailed as a seer, and make a tidy living selling whatever else I can spew to Star magazine a la the late Jeane Dixon for the rest of my (hopefully) long life. If I'm wrong, and Prince Harry dies in his bed, peacefully, as a very old man, being known as an occasional crackpot and sensationalist (or what we in the business like to call "a Novelist") is the least I can do to ensure the safety of Diana's legacy.
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