After King Charles’s hotly anticipated reunion with Prince Harry this week, insiders have claimed that the monarch is getting on better with his younger son than Prince William at the moment
It’s no secret that Prince Harry has been at odds with some of the Royal Family for some years now. Since quitting royal life and moving across the pond, the Duke of Sussex and his wife, Meghan, have not held back when it comes to lobbying bombshell allegations about their relatives and palace aides.
From their sit-down with Oprah in 2021 that sent shockwaves across the nation, to Harry’s bestselling memoir Spare, the public knows much about the private lives of the House of Windsor, and the sometimes dysfunctional relationships inside it.
When Harry’s car pulled up at the gates of Clarence House this week, it marked the first time that he had seen his father, King Charles, in 19 months, the last time being shortly after the monarch was diagnosed with cancer. It was widely speculated that father and son might reunite during Harry’s trip back home, and now royal insiders have made shock new claims, alleging that the King isn’t getting on with one of his sons, but it’s not the one you might expect.
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Tina Brown, a magazine editor who was friends with Princess Diana, claimed on her Substack newsletter that the King is actually far less “irritated” with Harry than he is with his older son, Prince William, at the moment.
“The king is, I am told, currently less irritated with the prodigal Harry than he is with his elder son and heir,” she wrote.
This is, in part, due to the number of engagements that William undertakes, which is a lot lower than the King’s own packed schedule. William’s long understood to prefer and prioritise high “impact” engagements, like his awards to find solutions to the climate crisis, and his project Homewards, which aims to end homelessness, over volume.
He has also made it clear, jointly with his wife, Princess Kate, that parenting will always be his number one priority, with the future King and Queen preferring to do things like the school run themselves when they can. However, this family focus has also become a point of contention, Brown claimed.
“Somehow, William’s parenting dedication always seems couched as a tacit criticism of the king’s own paternal deficiencies”, she wrote.
The expert added, “And after five confirmed family vacations in the past seven months, William’s first-week-back diary pulsated with two outings: a father-daughter excursion to a Women’s Rugby World Cup pool match and a stroll through the Natural History Museum’s new gardens. Charles, despite his battle with cancer, has carried out official engagements on 175 days during the past 12 months”.
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Harry’s whistlestop visit to the UK saw him embark on something that looked pretty similar to official royal engagements, visiting programmes he supports, making a whopping £1.1 million donation to Children in Need, and attending the WellChild Awards.
However, Brown claimed that the cheers he received and the success of the visit were “bad news for the Prince of Wales. “
Brown called it a “reset” for Harry, and noted, “It cannily unleashed for William the uneasy question of what exactly the 43-year-old Prince of Wales is doing with the £23million a year”.
But Brown isn’t the only insider who has claimed relations between William and Charles are somewhat strained, with a palace courtier telling the Standard that “William never phones his Dad directly but has to schedule a call through the King’s private office” and that the heir and the monarch have had a “tricky relationship” for a long time.
Harry himself noted this in his memoir Spare, when he wrote that his brother and father were “normally squabbling”.
Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.
