‘Gotten worse’: Sign Prince Harry and King Charles’ relationship is doomed
More than seven months after King Charles first revealed he had cancer, things seem to have gone from bad to worse for the family.
William Banting, JH Kenyon, Leverton & Sons. Over the last 200 years, these firms have knocked up 10 coffins for monarchs – or maybe make that 9.5, given Queen Victoria was so short she probably only needed one about the length of an Ikea coffee table.
It is not known at the time of writing precisely what size one the relationship between Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and his father King Charles might need as the mournful death knell peels across London for their filial bond. (Let me just dial up the mawkishness a scotch more … there).
Harry will very soon turn the big 4-0, meaning that the UK papers have started putting out long-form, long-read post-mortems about the crusading duke and quite what a complicated
life he seems to have ended up with.
However, what is most interesting is not details like his precise meditation routine (30-40 minutes, scheduled) or that one of his friends called him “an angry boy”, but what’s not in there anywhere.
What is lacking is any suggestion from any source, insider or friend – from either the Sussex or Windsor camps – who seems genuinely optimistic about the possibility that the King and his son could or will truly mend things.
Someone call Paul Burns, the royal piper, to honk out Sleep Dearie, Sleep, the guaranteed tear-jerker he played when the late Queen was laid to rest. The chance of things being patched up in any meaningful way anytime soon seems to be DOA.
Back in February 5, things looked far, far more optimistic when, only hours after the King revealed he had cancer, Harry peremptorily jumped on a plane to visit his father. Clearly, shocking bits of news and bad diagnoses makes a man, even a man living on the other side of the world with all the vast lawns and $1000 blenders Netflix’s money can buy, do some thinking.
(The same, of course, goes for sovereigns who’ve been busy practising hard lines and tough love and trying to restrain their lady wife from burning down the next WH Smith she sees still moving copious copies of Spare).
Immediately, hackneyed phrases like “silver lining” and “ray of hope” were being pulled out of column writers’ bottom drawers to talk about His Majesty’s cancer. Horrible news, of course, but maybe this would be the shocking twist that would spark some wonderful coming together for Charles and Harry.
So on February 6, the duke arrived in London and the King, according to reports, delayed leaving for Sandringham and a lot of photographers were forced to stand around on a winter’s afternoon to capture a dour-looking duke in the back seat of a Range Rover arriving at Clarence House.
Just 45 minutes later Harry was gone, charging off to travel to an unknown five-star hotel, because as of June last year, he and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex have been sans fixed address in the UK.
His visit would seem to have done, precisely, nothing at the end of the day. Here we are, seven months later, and the needle has not only not really moved in terms of Montecito-London relations, but unfortunately, if anything they have gotten worse.
In August, a group of Sussex friends told People that His Majesty no longer takes his son’s calls and former Sun royal correspondent Emily Andrews, writing in Grazia, has reported that “apparently all Harry does is berate [Charles] about security”.
So, as the Duke of Sussex stares down his milestone birthday and the delight of having to patrol his hairline for lurking grey hairs (his heirline?), it would seem to be without any real prospect of a rapprochement with his Pa. If the events of this year can’t do the trick, then maybe we have to accept that nothing ever will.
But let’s leave Harry in front of one of the mirrors of his 16 loos and cut to a misty morning in Scotland, the King out having a solitary amble across a blustery heath or something, his ever-present kilt failing to really keep his nether regions warm as he ruminates, ruminates, ruminates. It is his birthday in November, and he will turn 76 years old as a man who has a relationship with only one of his children and only knows one set of his grandchildren.
In some Montecitan preschool that serves bone broth at little lunch and where the Clag is locally sourced and artisanally made, the sixth and seventh in line to the throne are growing up with no connection to the institution from which their titles originate and to their father’s family.
It is very tempting to repeatedly keep using the word “sad” here.
It will puzzle (and frustrate) me forevermore why, back in 2019 when things were clearly going so very badly sour with the Great Sussex Dream Factory, that more seasoned and pragmatic palace heads didn’t get together to try and stave off exactly what ended up happening.
The King and Queen Camilla might have had little interest in having to hear about Meghan’s idea to start stocking dream journals in the Buckingham Palace gift shop (motto: extorting obscene amounts of cash out of cooing American tourists in cargo shorts since 1993), but they should have understood how badly Crown Inc needed (and needs) their particular star dust. The palace should have found a way.
So I wonder, as Charles does his Scottish wander, does he have regrets? And how must he feel as he begins the trek towards 80, the oldest person to have acceded to the throne, his youngest son about to turn 40, and things appearing outwardly to have reached an intractable place with Harry?
It has been stressed that His Majesty loves both his sons, a fact that the events of recent years have not changed in the least. However, this cannot be how he envisaged his time on the throne – battling cancer, his sons not speaking to one another, with one of them having set up shop on the other side of the world and a small British prince and princess who probably think that chips are called “French fries”.
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
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