Over the weekend, the Times of London published a curious piece about Prince Harry’s relationship with his father. The piece heavily quoted Harry’s Spare, a memoir in which he wrote about the neglect of his childhood, but came across as a man who loved his father deeply and has spent years trying to understand his father. I think the Times’ narrative was supposed to be “Harry and King Charles have always been at odds, and it’s not really Charles’s fault.” As in, this was likely another palace-commissioned piece, tasked with absolving Charles for being such a dogsh-t father. Well, something curious happened after that Times piece came out: the Daily Beast’s Royalist thought it would be fun to point out that Prince William has also had a historically “frosty” relationship with Charles. Huh. Some of the Royalist’s “King Charles and Prince William Reunite in Frosty Royal Ceremony.”
With so much focus on Prince Harry and King Charles‘ estrangement, it’s easy to forget that Prince William has also had a tricky relationship with his father. William and Charles made a rare joint appearance this week at the Order of the Bath service at Westminster Abbey to mark 300th anniversary of the order, and William didn’t seem entirely thrilled to be there.
Meanwhile, a flattering report in The Sunday Times rejected any characterization of Charles relationship with his sons as “distant.” A “royal insider” is cited in the piece as saying, “I don’t think he was emotionally distant. That was one of the great myths and one of the great untruths that Diana propagated, that Charles was cold and not fun with the children, and that she was the fun one.” It is truly incredible that some people in the Windsor orbit are still interested in rubbishing Diana’s name, but this renewed effort to rewrite history to portray Charles as a warm and avuncular father should not stand unchallenged.
In Spare, Harry describes Charles as a “loving, but sometimes distant father” who rarely showed physical affection. In the 2021 Apple TV+ series The Me You Can’t See, Harry recalled his father saying to both boys at unhappy moments during their childhood: “Well, it was like that for me, so it’s going to be like that for you.” However, Harry had a damning verdict on this stiff-upper-lip philosophy: “That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered, that doesn’t mean your kids have to suffer,” he said.
Moreover, there is little argument among William’s friends that Charles’ emotional remoteness extended to his relationship with William. Charles even reportedly became jealous of the public adulation William and Kate had generated.
“Pa and Camilla didn’t like Willy and Kate drawing attention away from them or their causes,” Harry wrote in Spare, noting that “they’d openly scolded Willy about it many times.”
Harry also described how William discovered that Charles (and Queen Camilla) had a hand in leaking unflattering stories about William and Kate to the tabloids. Harry writes that his brother was left “seething” and “justifiably incandescent” upon learning that “Pa and Camilla’s people had planted a story or stories about him and Kate, and the kids” in the press.
A friend of William’s told The Royalist, “The boys certainly did have a difficult relationship with Charles after their mother died. It was part of what brought them so close together and why their estrangement today is so awfully sad.”
As I’ve pointed out consistently, if you watch the briefings coming out of Prince William’s office, those “sources” never really have a problem with anything Harry says or writes about Charles. William is constantly incandescent with rage over what Harry has said about William or Kate, and William is blinded with fury that Harry “chose” Meghan over him. But William is totally fine with Harry whacking Charles. William didn’t even have a problem with Harry saying that he didn’t know how much time Charles had left. Because William agrees with Harry on that – William behaves as if he believes he’ll be king very soon. I’m reminded again of how well Camilla played Diana’s sons against each other – this is largely her handiwork, and she nurtured this brotherly grudge for many years.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
