Secret plan for King Charles’ death scrubs out Prince Harry

King Charles’s cancer diagnosis means a series of plans have been put in place in case of the worst – and one son won’t be happy.

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Emergencies, the royal family has known a few. An invasion by a foreign superpower (hey Normandy), revolts (see: Peasants; Glorious), plague (bubonic), finding an armada on their doorstep (the Spanish), the French trying again, Protestantism, the Dutch and the French again.

Right now, the palace is having another emergency, the only upside of which is that no one needs to worry about warships sailing up the Thames. (Hang on. Do Prince Harry and Meghan the Duchess of Sussex have a boat? Someone should check.)

On 5 February, Buckingham Palace made history when it announced that King Charles has cancer. It was brave, it ushered in a new era of palace transparency and it immediately begged the question of courtiers and aides, ummm, do you chaps have a plan? A plan for what happens if His Majesty isn’t up to carrying out his duties while he undergoes treatment?

King Charles III reads cards and messages from wellwishers following his cancer diagnosis. Picture: Jonathan Brady / POOL / AFP

The answer is yes, there is one – and one that, we now know, does not involve prodigal son and TV-producing putterer Harry.

Despite recent noises from the duke that suggest he wants to patch things up with his family and maybe even, you know, open a bridge or two to help out, the answer is in. The duke has been cut out of the picture.

Within hours of the palace putting out their big ‘C’ statement, Harry was headed for Los Angeles airport to make the 11-hour flight to see his Pa. There, however, he was given only a reported 30 minute meeting with the King because His Majesty had a helicopter to catch to weekend at his 29-bedroom country pile, Sandringham. King stuff, okay?

Still, the palace let it be known that Charles was ‘touched’ by Harry’s gesture.

This warming of trans-Atlantic relations, for the 76th time, got press and public hopes up that a tentative reconciliation might be on the cards, a situation only bolstered by the duke not immediately running off to share intimate details of the face-to-face with a friendly American TV outlet.

Then, while in Canada promoting the 2025 Invictus Games, Harry spoke to Good Morning America and said, prepare yourself, nice, warm things about his family like he thought that his father’s cancer diagnosis might help mend relations.

Prince Harry has been saying nice, warm things about his family. Picture: Gives Back Awards via Getty Images

Then came la pièce de résistance – a story by the Times’ assistant editor Kate Mansey revealing that the duke, should he be called up, was ready and willing to get his old faithful J. Crew grey suit out of storage to go back to the UK to do some supportive official royal-ing to help out the short-staffed palace.

It was an offer that got slapped down faster than that time Princess Anne suggested using Charles’s hand-sown Highgrove wildflower meadow for her steeplechase club.

What has become clear is that the palace does indeed have a Plan B ready to roll out, should Charles’s treatment start to catch up with him – and it does not require the services of the man whose publisher charged viewers $38 last year to watch him unpack his feelings via live stream.

We know this detail thanks to the eminently well-sourced Katie Nicholl of Vanity Fair who has reported that the prospect of Harry being tapped to rejoin the official royal working ranks in the coming month is “unthinkable”.

“There is a carefully mapped out contingency plan in place if the king is unable to carry out public-facing engagements over the coming months, and none of these involve Prince Harry,” a well-placed source told Nicholls.

The carefully mapped out contingency plan does not involve Prince Harry. Picture: Don MacKinnon / AFP

As a friend of William’s told Vanity Fair: “The brothers are barely speaking so the idea of William wanting Harry to come back and represent the firm is both laughable and unthinkable”.

The first moment we might see this “contingency plan” wheeled out is 11 March, which will see the royal family gather at Westminster Abbey for the Commonwealth Day service, quite the biggie on the royal calendar. While Charles has stepped back from public facing duties on the advice of doctors, it is unknown if His Majesty will be leading the delegation at the Abbey.

Per Nicholls, the Prince of Wales “is being lined up to stand in for King Charles if the monarch is unable to attend” that service.

The official line, according to the Times is that “the Prince of Wales may step in for His Majesty, nothing is scheduled currently, Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace are in constant communication and should the need arise, appropriate arrangements will be made”.

The mood music seems to be quiet assuredness as Charles continues very conspicuously and pointedly to roll into London for his weekly treatments waving like everything is fine and dandy.

Prince William “is being lined up to stand in for King Charles if the monarch is unable to attend”. Picture: Kin Cheung / POOL / AFP

However, as a courtier put it to the Guardian in 2017, “everybody who works in the palace is actually on borrowed time.”

Including the King.

We are venturing into some possibly dangerously macabre territory here but reality is a pesky thing that is impossible to avoid.

Royal staffers definitely don’t have that luxury after all.

Preparations for Queen Elizabeth’s death might have begun before the advent of TV (wild, no?) even though it only needed to be put into action after the advent of AI.

At some stage in the 1960s, the Coke bottle glasses-wearing mandarins of the palace, a lot of slightly gouty men in well-mended Saville Row suits looking askance at those mods and wondering why four men from Liverpool were making such a racket, started brainstorming.

Thick sheets of good paper, dribbly fountain pens, half-drunk cups of oolong cooling: Britain had a newish Queen, a woman only in her 30s and yet the planning for her death had to start.

The same holds true for Charles and for decades, Operation Menai Bridge, the code name for His Majesty’s passing, has been tucked away in a locked drawer somewhere.

And it’s here we have to ask the question: When Charles, hopefully decades from now, heads off to his just reward, what part will Harry play? Does or will the duke feature in these other, sadder plans?

Does or will the duke feature in these other, sadder plans? Picture: BBC

Much of that answer lies with the newly acceded King William V, a man Harry has previously described as his “beloved brother and arch nemesis”. Menai Bridge might set out the unthinkably vast minutiae of a sovereign’s death but in the hours after Charles’s death, there will be decisions only the new sovereign can make and “everything,” according to the Guardian, will need to be “signed off” by both the traditional organiser of royal funerals, the Duke of Norfolk, and the new King.

Which is to say, it will be up to William how prominent, or not, a part Harry will be given.

As an old friend of the prince’s told the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes late last year, William “absolutely f*cking hates him.”

The 2023 publication of the duke’s autobiography Spare, coming after his and wife Meghan the Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix six-parter and their royal denture-rattling Oprah interview, ushered in a new, grim phase in brotherly relations.

As that friend told Sykes: “Harry sold his family out to the media for millions of dollars, and William can’t forgive that breach of trust.”

So, given this, how might the prince behave, what choices might he make concerning his wayward sibling, in the hours and days after his accession and ahead of Charles’s funeral? Over uniforms, seating arrangements, travel and children?

The blowback on the prince, should he be seen to be punishing his brother at such a sad time, would be swift and immense but once the official proceedings are done, the possibility is that William will all but excise the Sussexes for good.

Last year, in a separate piece, a friend of the Prince of Wales told the Beast’s Sykes: “I don’t think anyone expects Harry to get an invite to William’s coronation.”

All this said, Charles is a man who has, until this year, enjoyed robust health and a diet high in seeds and low in Mars bars. His maternal grandmother lived to 101 and his parents both into their late 90s. With those impressive genes, hopefully we will have a very long time until the next coronation comes.

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 Secret plan for King Charles’ death scrubs out Prince Harry