Simon Case was Prince William’s private secretary from March 2018 through August 2020. Look at those dates – Case was brought into Kensington Palace during Prince Harry’s engagement to Meghan, Case oversaw/spearheaded the smear campaign against the Sussexes throughout 2018-19, and then Case’s fingerprints were all over the mishandling of the Sussexit in early 2020. Then, with Prince William hiding his severe case of Covid for months in the early days of the pandemic, Case left KP and went to work for then-prime minister Boris Johnson. Case was Head of the Civil Service, a cabinet position. In Tory circles, Case is often referred to as a “technocrat,” as in, he’s not a hardcore Tory ideologue and he’s all about efficiency or something. I disagree – Case’s work in KP showed that there was a Tory agenda to “groom” Prince William into their ideal Tory king. Case took shortcuts and he took pleasure in targeting the Sussexes and then pushing them out. Speaking of, the Times had a big exclusive about how Case was largely the architect of the “Sandringham Summit” deal.
Prince William’s former aide, Simon Case, was responsible for drafting a key document about Prince Harry quitting royal duties, court papers state. This week, the Duke of Sussex lost his High Court attempt to have his armed police security reinstated every time he visits Britain. A legal spokesman for the duke said that he would seek “justice” by appealing against the decision. A 51-page judgment in the case revealed how the details of the Sussexes’ departure from royal duties were reached.
On January 8, 2020, after spending time in Canada, Harry and Meghan announced that they were stepping back from official royal duties. The Sussexes said that they planned to split their time between the UK and North America. Palace sources said at the time that Queen Elizabeth had not been consulted before the couple published their statement and was “disappointed” by their stance. The Sussexes’ announcement sparked a frenzied few days with royal aides scrambling to respond.
Documents now show that Case, who had previously worked for David Cameron and Theresa May, authored a paper on behalf of the royal household which set out the steps for the Sussexes to quit royal duties. Court papers state: “On January 8, 2020, an announcement was made in relation to the claimant [the Duke of Sussex] stepping back from official royal duties and a public role. On January 11, 2020, Sir Edward Young [the late Queen’s private secretary] emailed the claimant with a draft paper, which was largely the work of Simon Case, concerning the detailed arrangements to give effect to the announcement.”
“Following a meeting at Sandringham on January 13, 2020, what the claimant describes as ‘an agreement of sorts’ was reached, which has been described in the media as the ‘Sandringham Agreement’.”
It is understood that Case’s paper listed a series of five bullet point options for the Sussexes. Harry wrote in his autobiography, Spare, that option one was the status quo: “Meg and I don’t leave, everyone tries to go back to normal.” Option five was “full severance, no royal role, no working for Granny and total loss of security”. Option three was “somewhere in between … closest to what we’d originally proposed”.
But Harry went on to describe the entire meeting as a “fix” because an aide got up after nearly an hour of debating the options, “handing out a draft of a statement the Palace would soon be releasing. Announcing implementation of option five.” Harry adds: “In other words, the fix was in, this whole time? This summit was just for show?”
The fact that Case, acting for Prince William, was so integral to the final outcome of Harry’s departure from royal life will cast further doubt on whether the brothers can ever be reconciled. The duke is also said to have learnt that members of the royal household sat on the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (Ravec), the body which makes decisions about the security provision for members of the royal family.
An insider said: “Case wasn’t always on Ravec but at this time he was there to do a job for the royal household as an institution. Very few people know the amount of delegated power the household wields on Ravec. Case was a professional technocrat with a gift for navigating the awkward nitty-gritty of a situation and getting a desired result.”
The more we learn about everything that happened behind-the-scenes from January through March 2020, the more I believe that QEII genuinely wanted Harry and Meghan to be treated fairly, that she wanted the Sussexes to have security and some money, but she was no longer in charge of anything. This was all Charles, William and the Men in Grey, and they were all united in their need to push the Sussexes out, to leave them in mortal danger, to force them into divorce or failure. Yes, of course Case had a huge role in it. So did Edward Young (QEII’s private secretary) and so did Christian Jones, William’s press secretary who was leaking every detail to Dan Wootton.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.