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Prince Harry’s deep-seated resentment of his stepmother, Camilla Parker Bowles, who had a long-running affair with Prince Charles while he was married to Princess Diana, appears to be poisoning the chances of a meaningful reconciliation between Harry and the rest of his family.
His animosity is also influencing his reported decision to refuse to attend his father’s eventual coronation as king.
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“The perception is that Harry has never given Camilla the slightest chance and is still refusing to,” a friend of Camilla’s told The Daily Beast. “It’s a real shame because Camilla is the kind of person that we all turn to for a heart-to-heart when things are difficult. Camilla has never said a word about it, that is not her style, and she would be the first to understand how difficult it has been for Harry and William, but the idea that she was busily scheming away to ‘replace’ Diana when Charles was married is just nonsense that has been given more credence than it should have by The Crown. Camilla just had the bad luck to fall in love with a prince.”
Harry’s inability or refusal to accept Camilla has expressed itself in various ways in recent months. He notably failed to congratulate his step-mother on her formal elevation to queen-in-waiting by the royal decree of the current queen, Elizabeth, who used the occasion of the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne to announce that it was her “sincere wish” that Camila would be known as queen when her husband becomes king.
Duncan Larcombe, a biographer of Prince Harry who was for many years royal correspondent for British tabloid the Sun, told The Daily Beast of the queen’s announcement: “That was the opportunity for Harry to show that what we have been told by the palace for many years—that he has made his peace with Camilla—was true. The fact he didn’t do so is a strong indication that it is not the version of the narrative he subscribes to.”
Harry’s coolness towards Camilla is widely thought to be due to his mothers influence—growing up he would have heard much negative commentary from Diana on the woman she publicly blamed for making her marriage “crowded”. Camilla reportedly first met William when he was 16, after which Camilla emerged to say, “I really need a gin and tonic.” Harry is said to have met her soon afterwards. Hopes of a breakthrough in the relationship came when, on his 21st birthday, Harry said Camilla was “a wonderful woman and she’s made our father very, very happy, which is the most important thing.”
Some of the nervousness at the palace around reports that Harry’s book goes after Camilla could be connected to long-standing allegations that Mark Bolland, Prince Charles’ chief strategist at the time, had little compunction about using the young princes to detoxify Camilla and Charles’ relationship. If Harry suggests in his book he was lent on to make the warm statement about Camilla, that could land Charles in a real mess.
There is deep unease in the palace that Harry is going to use his memoir, due to be published later this year, to attack Camilla, says Larcombe.
Adding to the sense of doom were reports this week in the British news magazine Private Eye that Harry is expected to refuse to attend his father’s (hopefully long-distant) coronation if, as expected, Camilla is crowned by his side.
Harry has reportedly identified this as a new “red line,” Private Eye said.
“If Harry uses the book to hit his stepmother with a series of ‘truth bombs’ all bets are off,” says Larcombe. “Charles facing a high-profile boycott of his coronation by his son is the stuff of nightmares for him as it goes right to the core of his credibility. Harry has long suggested that Charles was a bad dad; it is not a huge jump from there to say that he is not fit to be king. If that happens it will be a hammer blow to Charles’ hopes to hit the ground running. Charles has to fix it.”
Prince William has also not spoken out to congratulate or acknowledge Camilla on her new status. However he is understood to be more accepting of Camilla than his brother. Indeed, William’s decision not to publicly hail the advent of Queen Camilla could be seen as a diplomatic effort not to worsen the split with his brother by putting him on the spot.
There is no question that William, as next in line to the throne, will appear at perhaps hundreds of events alongside Queen Camilla over the next few decades. His presence will be a visual endorsement of his acquiescence to her elevated status. William, ultimately, now has a vested interest in Queen Camilla being a triumph and will put away what ever personal reservations he might have once harbored. But Harry, it could be argued, might draw plenty of satisfaction from bringing Camilla down.
The possibility of Charles repairing the bridge with Harry may be a forlorn hope, according to the writer Christopher Andersen, whose new book Brothers and Wives sensationally claimed that Prince Charles was the royal racist referred to by Harry and Meghan in their interview with Oprah Winfrey. Charles’ camp has vigorously denied this.
Andersen told The Daily Beast that all the signs are that Harry’s estrangement from the rest of his family has led to his mother’s memory assuming an outsized place in his mental landscape, as evidenced by his bizarre comments to Hoda Kotb in an interview on the Today show when he suggested an interventionist spirit of Diana was actively giving him aid in preference to his brother, saying: “It’s almost as though she’s done her bit with my brother and now she’s very much helping me. She’s got him set up and now she’s helping me set up—that’s what it feels like… I feel her presence in almost everything that I do now.”
Andersen said: “Charles promised to the British people at the time of his wedding to Camilla in 2005 that he would never seek to give her the title that would have gone to Diana if things had turned out differently. William and Harry believed him, and now, for Harry at least, the prospect of watching while Camilla is crowned alongside Charles at Westminster Abbey—on the very spot where Diana’s funeral was held in 1997—is just too much to bear.
“Harry would logically view it as a callous betrayal of his mother’s memory. Now that he’s outside looking in, he has a clearer view of things—he is seeing the world through a wider lens than the rest of his family. And what he sees is that, simply put, the woman who caused his mother so much pain and ultimately broke up his parents’ marriage stands to become Queen Camilla. This may well be something that Meghan, as an American who followed Diana’s story closely, feels strongly about as well. Even if Camilla’s being crowned queen is inevitable, Harry may not feel the need to actually be there watching it happen.”
Few doubt that Harry and Meghan’s estrangement from all aspects of their former life in the U.K. is becoming more entrenched, rather than easing, with the passing of time.
For example The Daily Beast understands from sources that Harry has “zero contact” with many of his old friends, including even those who were still close to him at the time of his wedding to Meghan.
And, as the author Tina Brown told The Daily Beast recently, all the available evidence seems to suggest that Meghan “hates” the U.K. and has little interest in spending significant amounts of time in the country she rejected.
For now, it looks like the only remaining bridge between Harry and the institution of the monarchy is his beloved grandmother.
The fragility of that connection is not hard to see.
When the queen goes, and it is Charles’ turn to step up to the role he has been waiting to occupy since he was 4 years old, with a bitterly resented Queen Camilla by his side, it is not hard to imagine how much worse Harry’s attacks on the monarchy might become.
