In a new chapter in the ongoing saga about the fractured relationship between King Charles III and his renegade son Prince Harry, People magazine has published a cover story that asserts, among other things, that the monarch has stopped taking his son’s calls.
People close to Harry say he enjoyed a positive meeting with his father in February, when he flew from California to London to see the king following his cancer diagnosis. But communication between the two has “since deteriorated,” People magazine reported. Sources this week also told the Daily Mail that their relations have reached a “low point.”
“He gets ‘unavailable right now,’” a friend of Harry’s told People. “His calls go unanswered. He has tried to reach out about the king’s health, but those calls go unanswered too.”
Last week, Harry said in a British TV interview that the “central” cause of his rift with his family was his determine to pursue a legal crusade against the British tabloid media over phone-hacking and other illegal practices — a crusade he described his heroic terms. His family has reportedly chosen a less combative approach, with Harry previously claiming that William settled a claim with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, the publishers of The Sun.
Britain’s Meghan, Duchess of Sussex talks with Britain’s Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (R) as Britain’s Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, (L) talks with Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, (2L) as they all attend the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey in London on March 11, 2019. (Photo credit should read RICHARD POHLE/AFP/Getty Images)
Now people close to the Duke of Sussex said he views his conflict with the king as basically the king’s fault. These Harry sources are trying to portray him as a husband and father who is desperate to ensure the safety of his wife, Meghan Markle, and their two children, should they ever visit the U.K.
“Harry is frightened and feels the only person who can do anything about it is his father,” a royal insider told People. Another source close to the situation said: “Harry is determined to protect his own family at all costs.”
In the interview for the ITV documentary “Tabloids on Trial,” Harry voiced his fears that negative tabloid coverage of his wife could provoke an attack on her. Meghan has become unpopular in the U.K. “All it takes is one lone actor,” Harry said, citing these “genuine concerns” as his reason for not bringing her and his children, Archie, 5, and Lilibet, 3, back to the U.K.
Harry lost the automatic right to police protection when he and Meghan stepped away from royal duties in 2020 and moved to Montecito. Ever since, he has waged a losing court battle with the U.K. government to have his security reinstated. He believes that Charles, as king, could easily make that happen.
Buckingham Palace would not comment on security arrangements for royal family members, but a palace source told People that Harry is “wholly incorrect” in his interpretation of who authorizes police protection for VIPs. In fact, constitutionally, the monarch has no governmental power in the U.K., and the power to bestow police protection doesn’t lie with Charles but with the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (RAVEC), which operates on behalf of the U.K. government, People reported.
But Harry, whose offer to personally cover the cost of police protection in the U.K. was also rejected in court, feels that his father, as king, could intervene to ensure such protection is extended.
The issue has created “an impenetrable wall” between Harry and Charles, People reported. The conversation has now shifted from “frustration” to “complete silence” from the king, Harry’s friend said.
On the other side, people close to the king have accused Harry of resorting to “emotional blackmail,” threatening the king with the possibility that he’ll never see Archie and Lilibet unless he rectifies his son’s security concerns.
Supposedly, Meghan wishes that Harry “could let go of these lawsuits” over security and the tabloids and that he could “live in the moment,” a former employee of the couple’s Archewell Foundation told People. The former TV actor and aspiring lifestyle entrepreneur would like for Harry to be “free of all of this,” but she supports him 100% and knows that “his love” for her and their children means he cannot drop the legal battle about security.
Following Harry’s ITV interview last week, the once popular British duke was widely excoriated online for saying that his determination to fight the tabloid U.K. media was the “central piece” in his broken relationship with his father, his brother, Prince William, and his sister-in-law, Kate Middleton. Harry also said it was a difficult question for him to answer questions about his relatives “because anything I say about my family results in a torrent of abuse from the press.”
Harry’s statements to ITV stoked a new round of what he might see as “abuse” but others would regard as legitimate criticism of a privileged adult who has failed to take responsibility for his own actions.
Harry’s view that his legal crusade was the “central piece” to his damaged family relations caught the attention of many readers of widely circulated news and entertainment articles on both sides of the Atlantic. Many of these readers noted that Harry left out years of context, which would also explain the rift.
The decision by Harry and Meghan to leave royal duties was followed by years of dramatic, public complaints about his relatives. The complaints came in Harry’s memoir “Spare,” in the couple’s blockbuster 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview, in their six-part Netflix documentary and in multiple other venues.
Together and separately, the Sussexes portrayed the family as racist — or guilty of “unconscious bias,” as Harry later backtracked. The couple also alleged various forms of cruelty and institutional indifference, while Harry’s memoir specifically accused William of being a controlling bully and his stepmother, Queen Camilla, of leaking tabloid stories about him to improve her public image.
In the comments section of a New York Times story on Harry’s ITV interview, someone said he should “fight the injustice of the tabloid media.” But that person also said, “I do not think though that he has the understanding that having incessantly talked about his family on a global level — in the details one would expect from 14 year-olds — has created a deep and very difficult rift to overcome. I don’t know anyone who would not be horrified if a family member made millions off of books, interviews and ‘documentaries’ that (shared) such personal information.”
In the comments section of The Telegraph, a conservative-leaning, pro-monarchy British publication, the reactions to Harry’s new claim were more harsh. One person wrote, “If Harry wishes to change the narrative around his betrayal of the royal family and move to reconcile, he needs to fully accept that it was his own words and actions, namely ‘Spare’ and Oprah, that caused the divide, not the ‘media.”
“You still don’t get it, do you Harry?” another person said, while another said, “Blame everyone except himself.”
