King Charles’ failure to acknowledge his estranged son Prince Harry is back in the UK is very telling, according to a royal expert. The Duke of Sussex has been in London since Sunday and the past two days has been at the Royal Courts of Justice where he is challenging a change to his security arrangements in the UK.
The hearing has clashed with his father the King and Queen Camilla heading to Rome, where they have been on a historic state visit to Italy. It emerged that both father and son were in the capital at the same time on Sunday but no meeting between the estranged pair was forthcoming. Harry is believed to have last seen his father more than a year ago when he dashed to the UK from the United States when it was announced that the King had been diagnosed with cancer.
The Duke also visited the UK without meeting his father in May last year, during a trip to celebrate his Invictus Games. He said at the time that he hoped to see his father “soon” after the King’s “full programme” meant a reunion was not then possible.
Many have now been left wondering if a reconciliation between the pair can ever be possible. And royal expert and historian Dr Tessa Dunlop believes the current situation makes Harry look more sidelined than ever.
She told the Mirror: “On the day of the King’s 20th wedding anniversary Charles and Camilla are busy hob-knobbing in Italy, enjoying the spring sunshine alongside Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
“As they packed their bags for the trip, were they even aware that Harry had landed in London? Has the royal machine registered that the Duke of Sussex is back in Britain, slugging it out once more in His Majesty’s courts? Because they certainly haven’t acknowledged it.
“Apparently Harry, with his exploding charities and legal gripes, is a problem best forgotten, or at least sidelined. Lest anyone doubted the enduring power of Britain’s monarchy is it best summed up in the contrasting fortunes of Camilla and Harry over the last two decades. As Harry brutally explained – once upon a time his ‘wicked stepmother’ was the ‘villain’ in the story. Not anymore.
“Today Camilla is a symbol of enduring love and triumph in the face of adversity, meanwhile the Californian Prince has been relegated to little more than a litigious footnote in the nation’s story. Or in the words of his lawyer ‘singled out for different, unjustified and inferior treatment.’”
So if the pair are to have any chance of a reconciliation, who should be the first to make the first move on the road to repairing their rocky bond? For Tessa, there is only one man who should.
She added: “In among the legal nettles at the Court of Appeal, trying to claim his exceptional need for national security in a country he doesn’t like but can’t do without the Duke’s difficult journey is grist to the mill of that mantra so keenly associated with the late Queen – ‘never complain, never explain’.
“Harry tries to do both, with a father who is less available than ever. While we all applaud Charles’s avuncular appeal in old age, I can’t be the only one who wishes for a paternal gesture of goodwill and forgiveness. He is the King after all, and it is so much easier to be gracious from a position of power.”
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