At some point last week, representatives from the Sussexes’ team met with King Charles’s communications secretary in London. The Mail on Sunday published the photos from the meeting and a story was spoon-fed to the Mail: the first steps towards reconciliation, an opening between father and son to at least try to thaw their relationship. The Mail’s coverage did not include any information about Prince William, nor did William have a representative at the meeting. The photos and story landed like a bomb on Saturday evening, and it looks like William’s people spent all of Sunday morning screaming down the phone at various royal reporters. The problem is that William can’t even decide if he wants credit for the meeting or if he feels squeezed out by his father. From the Mail:
While royal experts have claimed a wounded Prince William will feel less inclined to resolve the feud than his father King Charles, they added the monarch would have undoubtedly consulted the heir to the throne before conducting any peace talks with Harry’s aides. Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told MailOnline: ‘The King and Harry are currently, we understood from Harry’s interview on the BBC, not speaking. This meeting obviously is a sign things are moving forward. The King would never have made these moves without William’s support and understanding. William and Catherine are the future of the monarchy.’
‘He has undoubtedly been furious at the way the Sussexes have behaved and undoubtedly regards Harry’s behaviour as treason of a sort. They reportedly have not spoken in over two years. Ideally, the Sussexes might like to drive a wedge between the King and the heir to the throne. They won’t succeed.’
Royal author Phil Dampier added: ‘The King is more anxious to patch things up than William, who I believe will never be close to his brother again. I don’t think William will feel he has missed out on these talks as he is not in a frame of mind at the moment to make it up with Harry, and Catherine is certainly not interested in having a relationship with Meghan. I have grave doubts that William will ever forgive his brother and this will confirm his worst fears that Harry and Meghan are trying to manipulate the situation to their own ends.’
Yeah, sounds like William was blind-sided by the meeting and he rushed around trying to convince everyone (and himself) that his father would never choose Harry over him, and that whatever Charles decides to do about the Sussexes, William will reverse when he’s king! Plus, it sounds like William blames everything on the Sussexes, and he won’t even acknowledge that Charles was the one to set up this meeting (not to mention setting up the story in the Mail). In case you wanted even more histrionics from Team Peg, the Daily Beast’s Royalist got a briefing too:
Photographs published in the Mail on Sunday show King Charles’ communications secretary meeting with two of Prince Harry’s senior aides at a private members’ club in London. Notably absent from the peace summit this week were any representatives from Prince William’s team—and given the deep personal animosity between the brothers, that is no surprise.
As The Royalist has long reported, William’s loathing for Harry runs deep. As one longtime friend of the Prince of Wales once bluntly put it to us, “He absolutely f***ing hates” Harry.
Asked about speculation that William would have supported the meeting, the friend told us this weekend: “William will never, ever forgive Harry for what he has done. Charles is the king; he can do what he likes. But make no mistake: William believes with every fiber of his being that giving Harry and Meghan back any royal imprimatur is a huge mistake.”
It’s understood that Harry has formally invited King Charles to attend the 2027 Invictus Games, which will be held in Birmingham. This week’s meeting has fueled speculation that the king may accept the invitation, marking the most public show of unity between them in years. But William is unlikely to welcome any warmth between the king and his younger son. Prince William and his father have had their own periods of tension in recent years, and William reading about the meeting in Sunday’s papers will not go down well, sources say.
This has always been a three-way dynamic, not a simple father-and-son dispute. Any reconciliation that doesn’t include William risks deepening the divide between the king and his heir. While Sunday’s photographs may mark the first flicker of a royal reunion, the path to true peace remains long.
So we went from the Mail’s argument of “Of course this meeting would have never happened without William’s blessing” to the Royalist admitting that William learned about the meeting like everyone else, by reading about it in the papers. Anyway, my take is that the Royalist has the real narrative coming from William’s side: panic, rage, incandescence, hatred, fury.
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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
