Harry and Meghan to speak at opening of Invictus Games – The Guardian

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are expected to speak on stage at the Invictus Games opening ceremony on Saturday night.

Harry and Meghan are set to address the spectators, including members of the Dutch royal family and the Netherlands prime minister, at the televised event in The Hague.

The couple appeared at The Hague’s Zuiderpark after a low-key reunion with the Queen and Prince of Wales in Windsor on Thursday, the duchess’s first trip back to Europe since their exit from formal royal life.

A film crew is accompanying Harry and Meghan at the games, as part of the upcoming Netflix documentary Heart of Invictus. It is the first show of their $100m (£76.5m) deal with the streaming firm, and is being produced by Archewell Productions, the royal couple’s recently launched television production company.

The documentary will take a behind-the-scenes look at athletes competing at the Invictus Games, an international sporting event founded by Prince Harry for wounded, injured and sick servicemen and women.

The Invictus Games Ukraine team manager, Oksana Horbach, 39, will appear in the documentary. Horbach, who is in the Ukraine armed forces working with food supply chains in Kyiv, said: “I spoke with Meghan about the importance of having a voice and she totally understood that – be heard, be vocal, have a voice, just tell your own truth, your experience. It’s very important to her.

“And she told me that it is something that they support profoundly, with full heart, to have this platform, Invictus Games platform, for the nations, especially for Ukraine, to be able to have that voice.”

While in the Netherlands, the pair are said to have VVIP status and Dutch police protection. They have cited security concerns as a reason why they were absent from the Duke of Edinburgh’s memorial service in London last month.

Harry is bringing a claim against the Home Office after being told he would no longer be given the same degree of personal protective security when visiting from the US, despite offering to pay for it himself.

The duke wants to bring his children to visit, but he and his family are “unable to return to his home” because it is too dangerous, his legal representative has said.

The opening ceremony of the Invictus Games will be shown on the BBC.