The closer the broadcast of the supposedly scandalous Netflix documentation of, with and about "Harry and Meghan" gets, the more the upper lips stiffen in Buckingham Palace.
The king and his wife were "not worried, just tired," a palace official assured the Mail on Sunday, adding that the royal family "would not be thrown off course by a breeze across the Atlantic."
Jochen Buchsteiner
Political correspondent in London.
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The Palace source has denied rumors that behind-the-scenes "crisis talks" were being held between London and California, the Sussexes' adopted home.
Rather, there is "frustration and exhaustion" at the couple's never-ending grievances over their treatment by family in England.
If you believe the reports, the royals just roll their eyes at "that it's starting again".
“No one sees what happens behind closed doors”
Even if the family appears unperturbed on the outside, their nerves seem strained.
The broadcast of the Netflix trailer, with which more than six million people have already tuned in to the broadcast date this Thursday, is said to have caused little amusement.
As an affront - one newspaper even spoke of a "declaration of war" - the palace considers the point in time, because the American film platform put the preview online on the very day when Harry's brother William was visiting Boston with his wife. to present its "Earthshot" award for exemplary climate protection projects.
Some were reminded of a moment a good three years ago, when Harry and Meghan had already eclipsed a trip abroad by today's crown prince.
At the time, William and Kate were out and about in Pakistan when Meghan, in tears, reported on British television about their "fight" in the London palaces.
The current trailer begins by asking the couple why they actually wanted to make the documentary for themselves, and first answers it with a series of rapidly changing photos that contrast the tender love affair with the brutally rattling media machine.
"Nobody sees what happens behind closed doors," says Harry, as Meghan is seen apparently sobbing in an armchair.
She also owns the final word, for which she slips into her tried and tested double role as victim and avenging angel: "When there is so much at stake, doesn't it make more sense to hear our story from us?"
Netflix whetted the appetite with a written announcement that the documentary "deals with the difficulties that compelled them (the Sussexes) to leave their full-time role at the institution."
That sounds like new or at least embellished allegations against the family, which Harry and Meghan had already accused of racism and mental cruelty in a television interview last year.
The couple and probably also the broadcaster may have been somewhat inconvenienced that the promise of unembellished truth was clouded by research by British journalists.
The photo with which the trailer showed the journalistic pack that has been robbing the privacy of the reclusive couple for years had nothing to do with the Sussexes.
The interest of the featured paparazzi belonged to the stars of a Harry Potter film premiere that took place five years before the couple first met.
On the other hand, the pictures in which the two present themselves as an iconographic couple in early historicizing black and white are highly likely to be authentic.
Sometimes you see her radiantly in love under an umbrella, then rather lost and from behind in Buckingham Palace.
Sometimes they pose pensively on a meadow, tracking Harry's guitar sounds, sometimes in sensual anticipation on a kitchen block.
Most of the witnesses in the documentary "never spoke publicly about what they witnessed," Netflix assures.
The six-part series will not only shed light on the story of a couple in love, but will also provide information about the "state of the British Commonwealth today" and thus "paint a picture of our world and how we treat each other".