A friend of Queen Camilla has claimed that Prince William is obstructing a reconciliation between Prince Harry and his father King Charles III.
Urging the royal family to “bring Harry home,” the society journalist Petronella Wyatt said in a column in the Daily Telegraph that William was “equally liable” to Harry for the breakdown in royal relations.
Wyatt has known Camilla since she was 18. She is the daughter of the late life peer and friend of Queen Elizabeth II, Baron Woodrow Wyatt, who attended Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. She is a friend of Camilla’s and has previously described her as the “nicest person I have ever met.”
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In a column in the Daily Telegraph she cited a “former palace official” who used to work for both Harry and William “before the good times stopped rolling” as saying: “There is a public misconception about William and Harry. It is William who was often the difficult one, and it is William who is preventing his father from having a proper reconciliation with Harry. This isn’t helpful at a point in time when the country would be buoyed up by seeing them together again, as would the King.”
A friend of William and Kate Middleton’s told The Daily Beast: “There is a grain of truth in what she is saying, although William wouldn’t dream of telling his father what he can or can’t do in relation to his other son. But what is true is that Charles’ absolute priority is the unity of the monarchy, and given the extent of William’s animosity to Harry, Charles can hardly roll out the red carpet and invite Harry and the kids to stay at Balmoral for the summer holidays—however much he would like to.”
Friends of Charles and Camilla have told The Daily Beast that the king was deeply hurt by Harry’s aggressive attacks on Camilla in his memoir, Spare, and that this is another barrier to reconciliation and father and son spending a significant amount of time together.
Harry last saw Charles when he made a frantic dash across the Atlantic in February after Charles revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer. Harry spent under an hour with his father and was not invited to stay the night at his country home, Sandringham.
Prince Harry speaks to well wishers as he leaves after attending the Invictus Games Foundation 10th Anniversary Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral, in London, Britain, May 8, 2024.
Toby Melville/ReutersThe issue was brought into sharp focus again last week when Harry visited London and issued a statement suggesting his father had declined to meet with him. Harry was in London for a church service celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Invictus Games, the Paralympic-style event for wounded veterans which he founded. Royal sources subsequently briefed the Sunday Times that Charles had not received a request to meet Harry and had offered him a royal residence in which to stay, but that Harry had opted to stay in a hotel.
Harry’s team said in response that they did not believe that Harry’s request to meet his father would have been missed.
Wyatt said that William and Charles’ treatment of Harry was “beginning to look inhuman,” and said Harry should be brought back into the royal family because “the royal family is a microcosm for every family in Britain, and that a divided family, like a divided political party, has an intrinsic weakness.”
Buckingham Palace did not respond to a request for comment on Wyatt’s comments.
