The King has a duty to protect Harry. But the public drama must stop, writes Shelagh Fogarty

Their children have reportedly started school here, although only for two days before the family changed schools. That is hardly a settled arrangement, and it raises the obvious question: what happens next?

The King has a responsibility towards Harry. Whatever has happened between them, Harry is his son. And the security of the Royal Family is not something that can simply be separated into neat categories of working and non-working royals.

The family faces real dangers, particularly given the number of people involved, the public events they attend and the attention directed towards them. There has to be some awareness of those risks, and some provision for them.

But Harry and Meghan have made this much more difficult than it needed to be. Their timing, particularly in relation to the late Queen and Prince Philip, was dreadful. There was a way to raise concerns about security without making everything so public, so adversarial and so painful for the people still working at the heart of the institution.

And I do wonder whether, beneath all of this, there is still a wish to have a more central role.

Who wants to be second billing in their own life? Nobody. I understand that. But the monarchy cannot work like that. It cannot rotate around every member of the family. It rotates around one monarch, and everyone else has to find their place in relation to that.

William appears to have made peace with his role. He knows he is not the King yet, and that he has things to do, responsibilities to carry and compromises to make in the meantime. That is the nature of being a senior royal.

Harry and Meghan have never seemed entirely reconciled to that reality. They wanted independence, privacy and the freedom to make their own decisions, but they also appeared to want some of the visibility, status and protection that came with being central figures in the Royal Family.

You cannot necessarily have both.

Look at Zara Tindall. She is the King’s niece, and she has built a life and a career outside the working monarchy. She has her own interests, her own public profile and her own professional commitments. She is not trying to be a working royal, but she is still part of that family.

That does not mean there are no questions about security. It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether adult children of senior royals should receive some protection, particularly when they are in Britain and attending public events. But those questions should be considered calmly, rather than turned into another public confrontation.

And perhaps that is what is happening now. Perhaps the security review is a sign that reality has bitten.

I may be proved wrong, but Harry and Meghan are back in Britain. Their children are here, at least for now. Harry is the King’s son, and he is not entirely detached from the risks faced by the rest of his family.

The question is whether everyone can now deal with that reality without another round of public recriminations.

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Listen to Shelagh Fogarty from 1-4pm Monday to Friday on the LBC app.

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