What a strange private meeting that took place last week between Prince Harry’s representatives and a senior courtier of the King’s in a London club.
The purpose, of course, was good – to build bridges within the fractured Royal Family, and ultimately to effect a reconciliation between Harry and Charles.
But why don’t the two men meet together, and have a heart-to-heart talk? There is a danger in relying on flunkies, who are likely to have their own agendas, and are inevitably lacking in the one quality that should bring father and son back together: love.
There is something absurd about Harry being represented by Meredith Maines, his chief communications officer hot off the plane from California, and Liam Maguire, who runs the Sussexes’ PR team in the UK. Is this really about public relations?
Meredith has no doubt already returned to the Sussexes’ home in Montecito, and given Harry and Meghan an account of the meeting, possibly along with graphs and bullet points. This hardly seems the right approach.
King Charles and Prince Harry at the Our Planet global premier in 2019
Tobyn Andreae, the King’s communications secretary
As for the King’s suave ambassador – Tobyn Andreae, his communications secretary – since he is a former colleague of mine I can vouch for his being one of the most sinuous and peaceable men in England. If anyone could smooth the path to a settlement it would be Tobyn.
Anyone, that is, other than the King and his wayward younger son themselves. But for that to work Harry would have to set aside his well-thumbed notebook stuffed full of grievances, and face up to some home truths.
With one exception, which I’ll come to later, all the fault lies with the Prince. It was Harry who bad-mouthed the Royal Family in an interview with Oprah Winfrey; Harry who wrote an incendiary book in which he claimed to have been assaulted by his elder brother; Harry who has openly disparaged his father.
Worst of all, perhaps, Harry decided to turn his back on the Royal Family and Britain and duty in a notably graceless way. Is it any wonder that he has left a lot of battered and bruised relatives in his wake, not to mention a bewildered country?
Quite absurdly, in 2023, Harry even demanded that the Royal Family should say sorry to Meghan for their allegedly beastly treatment of her.
It’s Harry who should be apologising. There’s no case for a negotiation between two sides as though blame were equally shared. Harry must ask for forgiveness. He should be contrite.
I don’t know how attentive the Prince was during his divinity lessons at Eton, and it’s possible he wasn’t fully concentrating when his masters referred to what may be Jesus’s most moving parable: the Prodigal Son. He should open the pages of the Gospel of Luke when he has a moment. It will tell him about himself.
The prodigal – and younger – son asks his father for his share of inheritance, and ‘took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living’. America is certainly a long way away, though there is no suggestion that Harry’s life with Meghan has been particularly riotous.
Anyway, things don’t go well for the prodigal son and he is soon feeding pigs in a field, wishing that he could fill his stomach with ‘the husks that the swine did eat’. When he reflects that his father’s servants have ‘bread enough and to spare’, he recognises that his life has taken a wrong turn.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their interview with US TV star Oprah Winfrey
Again, the parallels aren’t exact. Meghan and Harry haven’t gone short in Montecito, though following reports that their contract with Netflix could be ending, they are almost certainly not making as much money as they would like.
The point is that the prodigal son realises that he has let down his father – in fact that he has sinned against him – and resolves to return to his old home, and ask for a job as one of his father’s ‘hired servants’.
There then follows one of the most beautiful passages in the New Testament. ‘But when he [the prodigal son] was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.’
The prodigal son says that he has ‘sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son’. But the father asks his servants to ‘bring forth the best robe’ and ‘put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet’. A fatted calf is called for, and a celebration ensues.
Because he is aware of the wrong he has done, the prodigal son is able to be forgiven. It is as though he has never gone away. The parable shows the power of parental love. It is about the indestructibility of divine love since the father of course represents God.
Isn’t this the way for Harry? He has wronged his father in all sorts of ways. Yet, unlike the prodigal son, he seems unaware of it, and therefore sends emissaries to hammer out some sort of settlement when, in truth, he should be going in person to tell his father how sorry he is for what he has done.
There is admittedly one distinction between the father in the parable and the King. Although the fault in recent years appears all to be on Harry’s side – the desertion, the blaming and the accusations – Charles was many years ago unfaithful to Harry’s doomed mother, Diana, with the then Camilla Parker Bowles.
It is perhaps this ancient betrayal that gnaws away in Harry’s soul beneath all the grievances, and provides at least a partial explanation for them. If so, Charles himself has some atonement to make.
The parable has a final twist that is relevant to the Royal Family. The father’s elder son learns about the return of his feckless brother, and hears ‘musick and dancing’. He is extremely angry and refuses to join in the festivities.
If the younger son has something in common with Harry, the elder son’s predicament is not dissimilar to Prince William’s. He complains to his father that he has been a loyal and virtuous son, and yet no party was ever thrown for him. He even accuses his younger brother of having consorted with ‘harlots’.
The father tries to set his distraught son at ease. ‘Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine… Be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.’ The parable doesn’t tell us the elder son’s response. In the end, I suppose you can’t argue with God.
If there is to be a family reconciliation, Prince William, who like his father has been wronged, will have to behave as we hope the elder son in the parable does.
What a fine lesson it would be for the nation, as well as a boost to our spirits, if the Royal Family were to succeed in sorting out its differences. The sometimes pig-headed and self-righteous Harry will first have to acknowledge his mistakes, which he is not good at doing. Yet there are others not wholly without blame.
King Charles is getting on. He has not been well. He loves his younger son, as his younger son loves him. The way forward is set out in the New Testament. Get rid of the flunkies!
