Angela Mollard: Self-pitying prince is the clue to why Harry and William will reconcile

Striking similarities between Charles and his son at the same point in their lives means two things: Harry will eventually find happiness, and he and William will reconcile, writes Angela Mollard.

Ahead of King Charles’s visit to Australia later this month, I’ve been doing some research. Not because I’m a girly swot and hope to impress the monarch if we manage a few words. Rather I wanted to see if he really does love our nation like the late Queen adored Malta and the Queen Mother had a soft spot for Canada, and Prince Harry cleaves to Africa.

Anyway, during my deep dive I stumbled across an interview the then Prince did with Ray Martin exactly 30 years ago. It was 1994 – not a great year for the heir, but then not many of them were that decade. Outed as a cad for cheating on his wife, a weirdo for wishing he could be reincarnated as a tampon and a loon who talked to plants, Charles might well have wished the bloke who took a shot at him in Darling Harbour days earlier had succeeded in knocking him off.

Imagine with all that going on, having to sit down with Ray with his enviably good hair. Behind Ray’s splendiferous barnet there’s a bouquet of flowers. Carnations and gladioli. You can see what the Prince is thinking: how bloody awful.

But what’s truly extraordinary about the 15-minute interview with A Current Affair is that Prince Charles comes across exactly how Prince Harry does now. He’s despondent, angry at the world, disenchanted with being royal and so furious with the press that he manages to make the word “media” sound like an expletive.

The then Prince Charles during his tour of Australia in 1994.

If you closed your eyes and de-poshed the voice a little, Charles could be his younger son. He tells the puppy-eyed Martin that coming to Australia is not a holiday and that it’s preposterous to suggest he got to “smell the wildflowers” while in the Outback, what with the irksome press around. As for the growing interest in Australia becoming a republic, the royal family didn’t “own the place” Charles responds petulantly. “It’s not as if we’re making money out of it,” he snaps.

“Was his visit a PR exercise?” queries Ray, at which Charles rants that the media has “written the agenda nine times out of 10 before you go anywhere”. They’d also created “a soap opera which bears very little relation to reality”. A more waspish Martin might’ve pointed out that, what with the publication of Diana, Her True Story in 1992 and the intercepted “tampongate” phone call between Charles and Camilla published just 12 months before, journalists hardly had to make it up.

The point is that the King was having a dummy spit, perhaps a midlife crisis of sorts, just as Harry is currently having his. Then 45, just a few years older than Harry is now, Charles was clearly fed up with the monarchy, frustrated at the public view towards the woman he loved, and intolerant of the nasty press. He was also fighting impending baldness.

Extrapolated, these striking similarities between father and son at the same point in their lives, means two things: Harry will eventually find happiness, and he and William will reconcile.

How do we know? Because the self-pitying Prince who sat in front of Martin eventually grew up. He stopped railing against his lot, focused on projects that meant something to him and, interestingly, became less prince and more man. He stopped blaming others for creating roadblocks around his relationship with Camilla, hired an excellent adviser in the form of Mark Bolland, and respected that the public would take time to mourn the death of Princess Diana and embrace his long-time love. Charles, today, is a man who has learned the benefits of self-examination, acceptance and patience.

Like his father, Prince Harry will come good. Picture: CBS Sunday Morning

Three decades from now, Prince Harry will not be the man he is now. He’s tasted Hollywood with its monster egos and candy floss promises and is already moving back to purposeful work that genuinely matters.

He and Meghan are heading in different directions professionally and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Prince soon hires his own adviser. His marriage may not last – goodness knows few partnerships could withstand the criticism theirs has faced – but there’s a lot of life in 30 years. Like his father, Harry will come good.

So, too, will William. Just as Charles and Diana were not exclusively villain and victim but a poor pairing of incompatibility and circumstance, William and Harry are smart enough to recognise that both have a part to play in their relationship breakdown. Even if William is reluctant, his wife has now confronted her own mortality. Cancer forces a re-examination and my bet is that Harry has been sending his sister-in-law messages over the last 10 months and that she recently wished him a happy 40th birthday. It’s in neither’s interest to disclose.

And so to the King’s visit. I’d love Ray to reinterview the 75-year-old King 30 years on. Perhaps with a bunch of wattle or wildflowers in the background. Finally, nothing would better illustrate the redemptive powers of time and acceptance than Camilla sitting by his side.

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