Prince Harry ‘preferred’ Camilla not be present during his King Charles visit: report

A new claim about the duke’s whirlwind visit to see his cancer-stricken father has exposed the deep tension that still exists within the family.

Prince Harry refused to be in the same room as Queen Camilla during his fly-in, fly-out visit to the UK to visit his father recently, it’s been reported.

British journalist and friend of Camilla, Petronella Wyatt, told the UK’s Telegraph that the Duke of Sussex made his preference clear as he arrived in London to see King Charles in the wake of his cancer diagnosis.

“Harry, I hear, preferred not to be in the same room with his stepmother when he spoke to the King,” she claimed.

The prince, who quit royal duties and moved to California with wife Meghan Markle in 2020, spent less than an hour with his father last week after making an emergency solo dash across the Atlantic to offer his support after Charles’ illness was revealed.

The pair reportedly met at Clarence House in London shortly before the King took a helicopter to Sandringham, in England’s east, where he is recuperating after his first cancer treatment.

Harry returned to England for just over 24 hours. Picture: Odd Andersen/AFP

Charles and Camilla were spotted on Sunday, just days after his cancer diagnosis was revealed. Picture: Justin Tallis/AFP

It’s not clear whether Harry’s request to see his father privately, without his stepmother, was approved.

The extent of their troubled relationship was brutally laid bare last year by the duke in his tell-all memoir, Spare, in which he blamed Camilla for leaking stories about the royal family in order to boost her own reputation.

“I have complex feelings about gaining a step-parent who I thought had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar,” Harry wrote in Spare.

“ … I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy.”

During his press blitz to promote the book, Harry dug in deeper on why he viewed her as “dangerous”.

“Because of the need for her to rehabilitate her image … Because of the connections that she was forging within the British press.,” he told US journalist Anderson Cooper.

“And there was open willingness on both sides to trade of information. And with a family built on hierarchy, and with her, on the way to being Queen Consort, there was gonna be people or bodies left in the street because of that …

“If you are led to believe, as a member of the family, that being on the front page, having positive headlines, positive stories written about you, is going to improve your reputation or increase the chances of you being accepted as monarch by the British public, then that’s what you’re gonna do.”

Charles was reportedly “disappointed” by Harry’s words about his wife in Spare. Picture: Henry Nicholls/AFP

A source told the Telegraph afterwards that Charles had felt “disappointment” at Harry’s depiction of his wife, while an aide told The Sunday Times that Camilla had had an “eye-roll response”.

A close friend of the Queen’s, Fiona Shelburne, also told the publication that “of course” the description by her stepson “bothers” and “hurts” her, but she “doesn’t let it get to her”

“Her philosophy is always, ‘Don’t make a thing of it and it will settle down – least said, soonest mended’.”

Meanwhile – and unsurprisingly – it’s understood Harry did not catch up with his estranged brother, Prince William, during his quick trip back home.

The pair have not spoken for months amid the fallout from Harry and Meghan’s numerous public criticisms of the royal family, which regularly focused upon William and Kate.

Originally published as Prince Harry ‘preferred’ Camilla not be present during his King Charles visit: report