King Charles has ‘no time’ to see Prince Harry during UK trip
Uneasy – and busy – lies the head that wears the crown.
King Charles has “no time in the diary” to see Prince Harry during the youngest son’s upcoming trip to the UK, a palace insider told The Mail on Sunday.
Nor is Harry, 38, expected to see his brother Prince William, 41, during a London visit for the WellChild Awards Thursday — before jetting to Germany for the sixth annual Invictus Games, the outlet reported.
The ginger-haired duke and his wife, Meghan Markle, 42, have been estranged from the royal family since stepping down as working royals in January 2020 – and subsequently airing their many grievances against “The Firm” in a bombshell Netflix documentary and Harry’s memoir, “Spare.”
The couple – who are parents to Prince Archie, 4, and Princess, Lilibet, 2 – were excluded from the royal family’s annual summer gathering at Balmoral this year, the Mail reported.
Now that Harry and Meghan relinquished Frogmore Cottage, their rent-free, grace-and-favor home in Windsor, it’s unclear if the palace will offer Harry accommodations during his brief British sojourn this week.
News of King Charles’ perceived snub comes just a few days after Harry slammed the royals for their lack of “support” after the 1997 death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a new Netflix documentary “The Heart of Invictus.”
“I didn’t have that support structure, that network, or that expert advice to identify what was actually going on with me,” he lamented of the troubling aftermath of Diana’s fatal car crash — years later the trauma he witnessed on the front lines in Afghanistan.
In “Spare,” Harry alleged Charles did not even hug him when he broke the news that Diana had been killed.
“He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?” Harry wrote of the tense moment.
Additional sources, however, told The Daily Beast that Charles, 74, is proud of Harry’s work with Invictus.
“The idea that Harry has used the series to attack Charles is a total exaggeration; he hasn’t,” the insider scoffed.
“The Heart of Invictus” – which failed to breach the Top 10 on Netflix – followed wounded veterans preparing for the 2016 Invictus Games, the multi-sport event for servicemen and women that Prince Harry founded in 2014 after being inspired by the Warrior games in the US.
Harry will return to Dusseldorf for the games later this month after a speech at the WellChild awards on Thursday – the night before the first anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s death, The Mail noted.
Last year, Harry was famously poised to speak at the same ceremony but rushed instead to Balmoral to join relatives after his grandmother became ill and later died.
Harry has been a patron of Well Child for 15 years, and maintained his involvement with the organization after decamping to California almost four years ago.
William, who is now the Prince of Wales, and his wife, Kate Middleton, are reportedly “nervous” that Harry will say something at the Thursday event that will overshadow the important anniversary, according to The Daily Beast.
The brothers are believed not to have spoken since the release of “Spare” in January.
Meghan is expected to skip the WellChild Awards because of prior commitments with the couple’s children, and will join Harry in Germany, sources added.