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Prince Harry was only told of the queen’s death by his father King Charles five minutes before the official announcement was made, it has been revealed.
Victoria Ward, the respected royal correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, made the astonishing claim Sunday, amid a deepening sense that relations and trust between Harry and the Windsors are at rock bottom, and that carefully curated presentations of a united front are merely cosmetic.
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If the claim by Ward is accurate, and there seems little reason to doubt it, it means that the prime minister, Liz Truss, knew the queen was dead at least two hours before the queen’s own grandson, Harry.
The Daily Beast was told by a reliable source that the queen was dead shortly after 5 p.m.
While Charles is understood to have called both his sons telling them to get to Scotland on morning of the Thursday that she died, Ward says that Harry “received that call some time after Prince William.”
Ward implies that Harry was not invited to join the RAF flight that conveyed William, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and his wife Sophie to Scotland, saying that instead his aides were left struggling to book his own private charter which took off from Luton Airport at 5:35 p.m., which, Ward says, was an hour after Truss had been informed of the queen’s death.
Charles was ultimately able to reach Harry on board his privately chartered aircraft, and after that call, the statement was released at 6.30pm. Harry’s plane landed 16 minutes later.
He did not see his father or his brother on Thursday evening, as they were whisked away to a private dinner at Charles’ house on the Balmoral estate, leaving Harry to eat with Andrew, Edward, and Anne.
Harry is also said to have been devastated when the military uniform he was given to wear to a vigil for his grandmother was not bedecked with the late queen’s royal EIIR cipher, which signify the wearer is a trusted “aide-de-camp” to the monarch, the Telegraph said.
A military source told The Daily Beast: “It was a snub to Harry, as Andrew was allowed to wear them while also no longer an ‘in service’ Royal. It’s twisting the knife a bit.”
