Prince Harry to visit King Charles for rare meeting
The Duke of Sussex’s mercy dash from California to London this week is raising hopes the King’s cancer diagnosis could help rebuild relations between the pair.
The Duke of Sussex had been reflecting on the funeral of his grandfather, Prince Philip, when he drew on a confrontation between him and his brother.
“Please, boys … don’t make my final years a misery”, Charles is said to have told his sons, according to Prince Harry’s incendiary memoir, Spare.
These words have taken on a new poignancy since the news about the King’s health on Monday. Harry, 39, has confirmed that he is flying back to the UK to visit his father, raising hopes that the diagnosis could help rebuild relations between the pair.
“The duke did speak with his father about his diagnosis. He will be travelling to the UK to see His Majesty in the coming days,” a source close to him said. It is not known whether the Duchess of Sussex will join him or if she will remain in California with their children, Archie and Lilibet.
Harry has not visited the UK since September, when he attended an awards ceremony for Wellchild, the children’s charity. He is not thought to have seen his father or brother during the brief visit.
It was his first trip to the UK since June, when Harry had appeared in court as part of his claim against Mirror Group Newspapers. He had also travelled to be present for the King’s coronation the previous month.
Harry caught a commercial flight home to Montecito soon after the service held at Westminster Abbey on 6 May had concluded.
It means the upcoming visit will be the first time they have properly spoken to each other in person since Queen Elizabeth’s funeral well over a year ago.
Contact between the monarch and his youngest son is thought to have been minimal since the release of Harry’s book Spare, which made damning accusations against the royal family. Harry wrote that he and William begged their father not to marry the Queen and described her as “the Other Woman”. He also recalled contemplating if she would turn out to be “like all the evil stepmothers of the fairy tales” — and claimed he was unsure about having a step-mother who had “sacrificed me on her public relations altar”.
Other revelations include the claim that Charles did not hug Harry when telling him about the death of Princess Diana.
However, Harry still telephoned his father in November to wish him many happy returns on his 75th birthday. Archie and Lilibet are understood to have recorded a video of themselves singing happy birthday to their grandfather during the conversation. The call was thought to have been the first time that they had spoken in months.
