The key obstacle to a meeting between King Charles III and Prince Harry when Harry visits London next week is Charles’ strained relationship with Prince William.
William and Charles are at loggerheads because William thinks Charles’ monarchy has not modernized as much as it should have; it still radiates pomposity and looks out of touch thanks to Charles’ love of uniforms and ermine. William also disdains Charles’ prioritization of duty over one’s health and wellbeing. Charles, on the other hand, thinks William is shirking the most basic element of the job: appearing in person all over the country, rain or shine, prioritizing family life over royal duty.
Charles is hugely afraid of making his relationship with William even worse than it already is. And he undoubtedly will do this if he goes against William’s strongly held belief that no member of the royal family should confer legitimacy on Harry by meeting him or being photographed with him after he made millions of dollars by betraying the Firm in his memoir and TV shows.
William is being guided on the issue not just by his own grievance but also by domestic public opinion, which shows a huge majority of the public does not believe Charles should grant Harry an audience, thereby effectively re-admitting him to the royal fold.
A friend of William told The Royalist this week that William believes his hand has been strengthened by the renewed disgrace of Prince Andrew, over whose fate Charles has vacillated. This week, Andrew threw a fit at workers installing a speed bump outside his home.
The friend said, “William always said, ‘Just cut Andrew off completely. It’s not appropriate to have an alleged sex offender breaking bread with the royal family.’ Charles was so desperate to be seen as embodying the spirit of Christian forgiveness that he let Andrew back in.”
“William was right about Andrew, and he is right about Harry,” the source added. “Charles is weak. William is anything but weak.”
Ultimately, however, William won’t make waves if Charles meets Harry.
“Ultimately, William is a loyal soldier. He respects his father’s rank, and he respects his father’s right to make his own decisions, and he won’t make a fuss if it happens,” the friend said. “But he thinks a Harry meeting is a terrible, terrible idea.”
But the friend doubts Charles will meet Harry as he did with Andrew.
“Now, is history going to repeat itself with a photo of Harry and the king having tea?” the source said. “It’s absurd to even imagine that after what Harry said—unless there is some form of direct apology from Harry.”
Harry’s closest advisers also say they do not know if a meeting will happen.
Another family friend of the royals described the relationship between William and the king to me this week as tense, difficult, formal, and fraught, with William having a deep-seated resentment of his father rooted in his childhood trauma, a pertinent issue on the anniversary of Diana’s death.
The two men only rarely speak informally, with the vast majority of their communication mediated by their private secretaries, this source said. They do not meet informally as a rule.
One former Buckingham Palace staffer who maintains good contacts with current staff told The Royalist that William and the king had, incredibly, spent no time at all together privately one-on-one when William and Kate were in Balmoral last week, with the king preferring to withdraw to the privacy of his own private home, Birkhall, eight miles away from the castle on the enormous Scottish estate.
The former staffer said, “Charles believes in tradition and continuity above all. William thinks many aspects of his father’s approach are outdated, preferring a more modern interpretation of monarchy.”
I asked this source about two rumors I have heard this year. William apparently demurred at being sent to the Pope’s funeral because his soccer team, Aston Villa, was playing on the same day. The king was aghast when William’s position filtered back to him, and ultimately, William went. However, William was not persuaded to attend the VJ Day commemorations earlier this month, a decision that I have been told dismayed the king.
The source said, “Both absolutely true. To William, continuing to run the monarchy as though it were still an Edwardian institution feels absurd. To Charles, his son’s more casual approach can feel like a lack of respect for duty and tradition.”
The clash, William’s friends believe, also reflects a deep personal rift between father and son. William has long carried the trauma of his parents’ marriage and divorce and his father’s affair with Camilla..
Charles, despite attempts to recast himself as an engaged father, was a poor parent. He was often absent and remains distant from his Welsh grandchildren. William is doing things as differently as he can in a living rebuke to his father.
Against this backdrop, William has made it clear he opposes any rapprochement with Harry. He blames his brother for the upheavals of recent years, feels betrayed by Spare and the Netflix series, and fears any reunion would be exploited to revive the Sussex brand, already faltering, as Meghan’s latest Netflix outing, With Love, Meghan, appears set to drop out of the top 50 when official figures are released Tuesday.
Charles, by contrast, would like to see his younger son. But William’s position as heir is more significant now than ever given the king’s cancer diagnosis. No one knows how long Charles will live, and this uncertainty has courtiers watching William more closely than the king himself. Aligning with Charles against William could be a career-ending misstep at court.
So Charles is boxed in. He is king, but not all-powerful. His role is political, requiring him to constantly balance competing interests.
We have, of course, been here before. Last year, speculation about a possible meeting on the sidelines of WellChild ended only when Harry issued a terse statement saying he had wanted to see his father, but Charles had “other priorities.” The sharpness of the response did nothing to mend fences between the monarchy and Montecito.
This year the rumors have been fueled by news that Harry’s and Charles’s press teams held an informal session last month to discuss diaries—an unusually conciliatory gesture from Harry’s side after palace staff were left fuming by Harry’s carefully staged walk through an Angolan minefield, echoing Diana’s iconic visit, which knocked a carefully planned Camilla birthday portrait off the front pages.
Scheduling clashes like these have always plagued the Windsors; in Spare, Harry recounts that William was warned not to let Princess Kate be photographed with a tennis racket during one engagement because Charles had a sporting appearance on the same day and risked being eclipsed. Jealousy is as old as the institution itself.
So once again, we watch and wait. Will Charles risk angering William to embrace his son? Or will duty to the heir outweigh a father’s instinct? That is the royal story to watch in the coming week.
There was a story in the Mirror this week, the headline of which said Charles and Harry would meet. The article itself was more circumspect; the truth is that even Harry’s core allies do not yet know if a meeting will happen. So don’t place your bets quite yet.
The Daily Beast has approached William, Harry, and the king’s office for comment about a meeting with Harry next week.
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