After complaining in June that King Charles III had stopped taking his calls, Prince Harry managed to snag 45 minutes with his estranged father Wednesday for their first face-to-face meeting in more than 19 months, with observers saying that the meeting could be the first step in their reconciliation.
But key to the father and son mending their tattered relationship: Harry needs to be careful about saying anything about the meeting for public consumption. While Charles was keen to meet with Harry, any long-term reconciliation is up to the California-based Duke of Sussex maintaining discretion and not sharing details about the meeting to friendly reporters.
“The King has always left the door open for Harry to come back to Britain. Charles genuinely misses him and it pains him that there is a rift, but the ball is in Harry’s court,” a source close to the king told Vanity Fair. “If details of their meeting are leaked, then it will be a short-lived reconciliation. The issue of trust is very important to the King, and has been breached in the past.”
The meeting took place at Charles’ London home, Clarence House, after he flew to London from Balmoral for a day of official meetings. Meanwhile, the California-based Duke of Sussex has been in the UK this week to attend events for nonprofits that he is involved with.
The meeting, over a cup of tea, was brief because of the king’s busy schedule and because Harry had to go to an Invictus Games event on Wednesday evening, said Charlotte Griffiths, the editor at large at the Mail on Sunday said. But Griffiths also said that Harry tried to keep his schedule open in case his father could free up some time for him. The meeting was arranged at the last minute, in part because Harry was supposedly nervous about leaks, Griffiths also said.
But royal insiders would say that Charles should be the one to be concerned about leaks. Former Buckingham Palace butler Grant Harrold told Page Six this week: “The king doesn’t trust Harry, because of what Harry has said. He’s done what household members typically do and spilled the beans. It’s a big thing for the family to have one of their own do this.”
It could be said that Harry has “spilled the beans” in multiple ways since he and his wife, Meghan Markle, left royal life and moved to California, starting with their bombshell 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey and followed by their 2022 Netflix docuseries, “Harry and Meghan.”
In Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” he shared private family details about Charles, from revealing that the former Prince of Wales did daily headstands in his boxer shorts to alleviate back pain to alleging that his father, his stepmother, Queen Camilla, and their communications teams planted negative stories about him and Meghan in the British press.
Harry also wrote about a tense, supposedly private meeting that he had with his father and his estranged brother, Prince William, after the 2021 funeral of Prince Phillip. At that meeting, which took place in a cemetery near Windsor Castle, Charles tried to broker peace between his two sons, who’d had a bitter falling-out after Harry’s marriage to Meghan. Harry quotes his father as saying, “Please, boys, don’t make my final years a misery.”
More recently, Harry gave an off-the-rails interview to the BBC after he lost his U.K. court appeal over the levels of taxpayer-funded police security that he and his family receive when they’re on British soil. During the May interview, Harry made all sorts of incendiary claims, alleging mistreatment by his father and supposed shadowy figures in the royal establishment. He claimed that these figures have been in cahoots to “harm” him and his family, like his mother Princess Diana, by denying them appropriate levels of security for the few days each year they might be in the UK.
At the time same, Harry spoke of wanting to reconcile with his family and lamented that his 76-year-old father, who has been battling cancer, won’t speak to him because of his court battle over this “security stuff.” But, according to the Daily Beast, Harry especially upset royal insiders by raising doubts about the king’s health by saying, “I don’t know how much longer my father has.”
Even when Harry could say that he has good intentions in sharing news about his family, he seems to get things wrong. Consider when Harry last saw his father face-to-face in February 2024, after the king announced he had cancer and begun treatment. Harry revealed to the world that he had jumped on a plane to fly to London to see him.
But The Telegraph reported that Harry’s impromptu “dash” to London reportedly forced his father to change his plans at the last minute and delay his trip to the country where he hoped to rest after his treatment. Harry’s critics accused the duke of pulling a publicity stunt with his quick trip to England to see his father for what turned out to only be a half-hour meeting.
Harry’s trip to the U.K. this week wraps up Thursday, when he expected to return home to Meghan and their children, Archie and Lillibet. Meanwhile, Charles was expected to return to Balmoral Wednesday night. But as much as Harry’s visit with his father offers him hope of further contact between him and his father, he doesn’t appear to be any closer to healing his relationship with William. Vanity Fair reported that Harry has had no contact with William during his visit to the U.K.