A bruising war of words over Prince Harry‘s recent meeting with King Charles is making it increasingly difficult for the pair to ever reconcile, it was warned tonight.
Father and son’s 54-minute tea at Clarence House on the prince’s recent trip to UK, the first time the pair have met for 19 months, has sparked a flurry of ‘briefings’ from sources apparently close to the Sussexes.
This prompted one well-placed royal source to tell the Mail reprovingly tonight: ‘The reality is that senior aides have been working privately to improve what is an important family relationship.
‘Such public pronouncements only serve to make that endeavour more difficult.’
Buckingham Palace is understood to be increasingly ‘bemused’ – and, clearly, not a little irritated – by the latest, increasingly wild, conspiracy claims.
The Mail on Sunday reported at the weekend that Prince Harry has ‘lambasted the men in grey suits’ – the nickname his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales gave to the courtiers she so hated – of ‘trying to sabotage his reconciliation with the King’.
In an extraordinary intervention, it said the Duke of Sussex was ‘infuriated’ at what he sees as a concerted attempt by officials to ‘torpedo his efforts to strike a rapprochement with his father by giving hostile briefings to newspapers’.
‘The relationship between the Duke and His Majesty The King is a matter for the two of them and the two of them only,’ a source said.
Prince Harry with the then Prince Charles at the World Premiere of Netflix’s Our Planet at the Natural History Museum, in Kensington, in 2019
‘The men in grey suits should stay out of it.’
This has come as something of a surprise to those involved in arranging the original meeting between father and son amid huge secrecy, complex family relations and a complete media blackout.
Not a word was said publicly in advance of the event and only the briefest statement issued afterwards.
While no further meetings have been scheduled in between the two, neither have they been ruled out, the Mail understands.
However it is fair to say, given the repeated attacks Harry has made both on his closest family and the institution of the monarchy in recent years, that there is huge wariness both in palace corridors and amongst senior family members.
Royal aides were certainly watching closely to see if anything pertaining to the meeting – at which only father and son are believed to have been present – leaked out.
Just two weeks later the first briefing was apparently made, in which ‘Team Harry’ crowed it signalled a ‘thawing of their relationship’ and the ‘acceptance’ of his family ‘back into the royal fold’.
The same sources also suggested it could even be the start of a new working model for the ex-royal.
They revealed Harry now apparently plans to return to Britain ‘four or five times year’ for ‘public events’, both for his own charitable initiatives – and, potentially, in support of the Royal Family.
And they added that high level talks were underway to gradually bring King Charles and his estranged son together in a public show of unity for the first time in at least six years.
However the report also waspishly referred to recent claims of growing tensions between the King and Prince William over his approach to royal duties, suggesting that having Harry around might help to ‘lighten the load’.
Prince Harry is seen leaving Clarence House after meeting his father King Charles III on September 10
This was a step too far for many in royal circles, with an insider telling the Mail at the time: ‘Whoever is behind them seems to have mistaken a brief tea and a slice of cake for the Treaty of Versailles.’
The briefings escalated again in recent days, with sources complaining to The Sun newspaper that Harry’s meeting with his father had been ‘distinctly formal’ and claiming he had later described it as ‘very official, like an official visit’.
It also cited insiders suggesting the ‘awkward exchange’ was carried out in a similar style to that of dignitaries visiting royal residences, seen as an implicit criticism of the much-hyped meeting.
Intriguingly, the newspaper’s sources were also well-placed enough to know that Harry personally gave his father a framed photograph as a gift, and received a present for his 41st birthday in return.
However a spokesman for the prince has since denied the picture was one of himself and wife Meghan with their children, leading many to conclude it was of the King’s grandchildren, Prince Archie, six, and four-year-old Princess Lilibet, whom he has barely seen since they were born.
The whole debacle has led to concern that ‘Team Harry’ is wildly over-spinning a loving gesture by a father, who has been dealing with significant ill-health, to his son to meet, and in doing so is eroding any possibility of developing trust between those involved.
Meanwhile others have said they find Harry’s treatment particularly of the late Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, in the latter years of their lives as ‘unforgivable’.
Buckingham Palace has declined to comment, while Harry’s spokesman said at the weekend: ‘Recent reporting of the Duke’s view of the tone of the meeting is categorically false. The quotes attributed to him are pure invention fed, one can only assume, by sources intent on sabotaging any reconciliation between father and son.’
