Prince Harry and Meghan have three days to prove they can behave

The Sussexes have landed. Fresh from launching their newly rebranded website, complete with coat of arms, Prince Harry and Meghan are in Canada for three days in the spotlight.

They will spend Valentine’s Day hobnobbing with athletes and families at an event to countdown to next year’s Invictus Games with a speech from the Duke later this week and hugs a plenty.

The question back in Britain is: will that be it?

With the world’s television cameras on site in Vancouver and Whistler, will there be interviews, “secret” charity visits and a quasi-royal tour complete with wall-to-wall social media commentary to promote the Games and the Sussexes?

Their fragile peace with the Royal family, tested to its limit over the last few years, hangs in the balance once again.

It would be fair to say there is some trepidation.

Gone are the days when the palace waited anxiously to discover which truly image-shattering bombshells would rain on them in Netflix documentaries, books and Oprah interviews.

“What is left to say?” one source said.

But the timing, while the King is behind closed doors recuperating from his second round of cancer treatment and the Princess of Wales bounces back from abdominal surgery, still leaves something to be desired.

Not only is there a marked absence of real working royals from the public eye - the Queen and the Princess Royal soldiering on, notwithstanding - but the Duke is fresh from a 30-minute face-to-face meeting with his father for the first time since the Coronation.

His team appear to have reached a truce with the Buckingham Palace aides the Duke distrusts: neither side has leaked a squeak of information about the meeting so far.

Sources close to the Sussexes confirm that the Canada trip is intended to be strictly on-message at Invictus, with no extra visits around Vancouver on the schedule.

With three days out and about stretching ahead, the chances of the Duke being asked about his father are high. He usually takes part in multiple television interviews as well as being surrounded by endless mobile phone cameras with the capability to video and upload his conversations to social media.

Palace insiders will be watching from afar with morbid curiosity to see what their cross-Atlantic outpost will say and do.

Last year, at the Dusseldorf games, he was overheard telling a well-wisher he had not received a message from his family on his 39th birthday.

The year before, shortly after having a private tea with his unwell grandmother in April 2022, he told a US television interviewer he was “trying” to overcome security issues to bring his children to meet her.

In words which infuriated and baffled the palace in equal measure, he added: “I’m just making sure that she’s protected and has got the right people around her.”

This year, the Duke is expected to use his Vancouver speech to detail “how special Canada has become” to him and his wife.

It is just the sort of thing the King would hope to say in person, had his health allowed him to travel to the Realm since his accession.

In another world, the Duke of Sussex could deliver that message on behalf of King and country. Instead, he is working freelance but still wields the power to boost or damage all-important international relationships.

It is a decade since a young Prince Harry, so nervous he was shaking, delivered his inaugural speech at the first Invictus Games in London, his proud father, brother and stepmother in the crowd.

He will now be accompanied by the Duchess, fresh from a relaunch of their “Office” with a website fans hope suggests a burst of activity is coming.

The next three days will be make or break. More than ever before, the Sussexes must make a decision.

If they want to salvage a relationship with the remaining Royal family, they must prove their discretion. In palace terms, that means keeping schtum.

But in a world where they need to build their brand to pay the Californian mortgage and ever-present security bills, they also need to generate publicity.

As admirable as the achievements listed across nearly 1,000 words on their website are (Prince Harry a “humanitarian”; Meghan “one of the most influential women in the world”), they have so far meant little without their royal status.

If it sounds complicated, it actually isn’t. Promote Invictus, talk about competitors, save any mention of the Royal family to short, warm well wishes.

And if they are in any doubt, a quick re-reading of their public promises to the late Queen should do it.

“The Sussexes have made clear that everything they do will continue to uphold the values of Her Majesty,” their spokesman said in 2020.

This is another chance to prove it.