Prince Harry photograph that will never happen
The Duke of Sussex has been photographed his entire life but there is one moving image of him that the world is unlikely to ever see.
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One of the great tragedies of Megxit is that the world has been denied ever seeing Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex with hundreds of carats of priceless diamonds of questionable provenance perched atop of her head as she processed into the Buckingham Palace ballroom for a State Banquet.
When she and husband Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex bolted for the palace exits in 2020, done with the whole rigmarole of hierarchy and politesse and that curtsying business, they also slammed the door shut on what would have been a lifetime of iconic images of the sensationally glam duchess giving us serious frock and awe.
But there’s one shot of Harry I wish we could have seen and one that seems unlikely to ever come to pass anytime soon – that is, of him with his father King Charles, his children and his brother’s children all together.
It’s summer in the UK which means polo and other horsey days out – events at which we are often treated to seeing members of the royal family off-duty and doing some intergenerational mingling in various shades of brown and hunter green.
(It’s about as close as you can get to spotting various Windsors in the wild if you don’t happen to be a member of the Hurlingham Club or are on the Lambrook School parents’ mailing list.)
And it’s at exactly this sort of event that we might have seen our imaginary Charles, Harry, Archie and Lilli photo taken, the three generations soaking up the sunshine and enjoying the thwack of mallets on balls and tinkle of ice cubes in glasses of Pimms.
Back in 2015, this was exactly the scene with Charles, nephew Peter Phillips (Princess Anne’s son), his now ex-wife Autumn and their daughter Savannah all snapped together looking like a disturbingly regular bunch.
There Charles was, then the heir to throne, crouched down and attempting to chat with a four-year-old who had better things to do like concentrating on her ice cream.
The chances of His Majesty ever getting to share a moment much like this with Archie and Lili are up there with Prince Andrew actually learning the meaning of ‘mea culpa’.
Charles is believed to have only ever seen Archie a handful of times the five-year-old’s entire life and has only met Lili, aged three, one single solitary time.
With the rift between the House of Sussex and Crown Inc now at about Mariana Trench depth, and with no sign of anything changing any time soon, the question is, can or will the King ever get to have a relationship with his Californian grandchildren and vice versa?
While their father Harry now jets back to the UK on the reg as he ploughs on with his Invictus work and keeps fighting his various legal battles, the Sussexes as a whole have not been back to Britain since June 2022 for the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee knees-up.
Back then, Lili met her namesake great-grandmother at Windsor Castle and got to smoosh cake about the place in the garden of Frogmore Cottage for her first birthday, time inside the royal bubble that might never be repeated for a variety of reasons.
Even leaving aside all the hurt feelings, all over the place, Harry has said he does not feel it is safe to bring his wife and kids back, after they lost their taxpayer-funded protection in 2020.
Still, as counter intuitive as it might seem at first, the King is, by all accounts, quite the doting grandfather to not only the Wales kids but Queen Camilla’s five grandchildren too. (How sweet is this? He’s known as Grandpa Wales or “GW”.)
For example, when George was born Charles spruced up a treehouse at his Highgrove estate; Camilla has revealed that when the King is with his grandchildren he will “get down on his knees and crawl about with them for hours … making funny noises and laughing”.
According to the Queen, he does ‘brilliant’ voices when he reads them Harry Potter and during the covid lockdowns the His Majesty video called George, Charlotte and Louis.
In fact, “in recent years the King has become a central part of William, Kate and their young family’s lives,” according to the Daily Mail’s Rebecca English.
Last year the Mail reported His Majesty was increasingly choosing Windsor Castle for his weekends because he “wants to spend more time with his [Wales] grandchildren” who live nearby.
“There’s so much love there,” a source previously said.
This affinity was on show during the 2022 Jubilee when Charles happily dandled Louis on his knee. (Or when he held up step-granddaughter Eliza Lopes to see better on the Buckingham Palace balcony after the Prince and Princess of Wales’ 2011 wedding.)
There is no end to the ‘aww’s to be had here – until we get to Archie and Lili, who are currently growing up a world away, in every sense, from their British kith and kin.
Last month, the Mirror reported His Majesty “is absolutely committed to being present in all of his grandchildren’s lives … whatever the course of his relationship with his son, he would never be content with just seeing his grandchildren on the odd video call.”
Except, this hardly jibes with the 75-year-old having evicted the Sussex family from Frogmore Cottage in 2023 and thus taking away his grandchildren’s UK home.
Next month the extended royal family will gather at Balmoral for their annual summer break, plenty of wholesome outdoorsy bonding and gorse bushes, as cousins, second cousins and third cousins get together.
Already it’s abundantly clear how close George, Charlotte and Louis are with their Phillips and Tindall relatives, with Mia Tindall walking hand-in-hand with Louis to church at Christmas and then later joining George and Charlotte as they got in some working-the-rope-line experience.
Add in Princess Beatrice’s daughter Sienna, possibly her stepson Wolfie (who has previously joined the royal family for Christmas) and Princess Eugnenie’s two sons August and Ernest and you have quite the well-bred gang who are growing up side-by-side.
Harry and Meghan have never been to Balmoral in the summer and of course now are unlikely to start getting invitations to take part.
Last month the Mail’s Rebecca English reported when she had “asked a well-placed source whether Harry could bring his children to see the King at Balmoral this summer as a compromise, the answer was a resounding snort.”
No matter how the King might feel about his son, he does exactly seem to be doing much on a practical level to make it easier for Archie and Lili to spend time in the UK. (And it’s not as if a 75-year-old King can readily pop off to Santa Barbara for a bonding minibreak is it?
What is undeniable is how sad it is that these little kids have been caught in the Megxit fallout. That and without Balmoral stays, who will teach them the finer points of fly-fishing and kilt-wearing now?
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Prince Harry photograph that will never happen
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