King Charles & Prince Harry haven’t even spoken on the phone in recent weeks?

Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast wrote a big piece a few days ago, allegedly about King Charles not wanting to incur Prince William’s violent wrath by meeting with Prince Harry next week. That’s what the Royalist piece was supposed to be about, except Sykes buried some interesting information in his DB/Substack piece. Info like… Prince William really did not want to go to Pope Francis’s funeral and Charles basically had to order him to do so. Charles (through courtiers) also tried to get William to show up for VJ Day, only William shrugged it off, dismaying Charles. Basically, Sykes pointed out that Charles and William’s relationship is just as dysfunctional as Charles’s nonexistent relationship with Harry. Charles and William didn’t even spend any time together in Balmoral two weekends ago. Fascinating! Well, Sykes devoted another Substack to doling out more crumbs about the dysfunction: “King Charles’ No-Win Harry Dilemma is the Royal Family’s Dysfunction Writ Large.” Some highlights:

Friends of the King have told The Royalist that the King can’t win when it comes to meeting or not meeting Harry in London next week. One friend of the King said: “Whatever the king does, he will make his relationship with one of his sons worse. Reconciliation with Harry will be a provocation to William, who has made it very clear he does not believe Harry can be trusted.”

Another friend of the family who spoke to The Royalist delivered a stream of invective about Harry, doing little to bolster my hopes that the two are on the brink of a dramatic reset.

The immediate context is Harry’s return to London on September 8 to present the WellChild Awards. Complicating matters is the fact that the day is the anniversary of the queen’s death and royal instinct will be to make sure nothing overshadows that momentous anniversary. The working Windsor royals have no formal engagements booked for that day.

The Royalist reported exclusively this weekend that while Charles, as a father, instinctively wants to meet with Harry and reconcile with him, William, with whom he has an increasingly fraught relationship, believes that no member of the royal family should burnish Harry’s status by meeting with him or being photographed alongside him.

The friend of the king’s added, “Charles begged his sons not to make his final years a misery. Unfortunately that is exactly what they are doing.”

Buckingham Palace and Harry’s team have both declined to comment on the likelihood of the King and Harry meeting. Some have interpreted that joint silence as a positive sign that a reconciliation meeting could indeed happen, away from the cameras and without fanfare. It seems a slender reed to hang on to. The astonishing level of invective routinely deployed against Harry by the king’s circle was as viperous as ever this weekend.

I feel that if there was to be a meeting, there would at least have been phone calls between Harry and his father in recent weeks to prepare the ground. I understand that is not the case.

[From The Royalist]

I’m not trying to minimize the very real damage being done by William’s violent tantrums and general laziness and stupidity, but this situation is just so typical of Charles. Charles, forever a ditherer, incapable of showing leadership or moral courage or an ounce of humanity. Instead of making a decision one way or the other – meet Harry or continue to ignore Harry – Charles fusses about with three layers of busybody courtiers and moans about how his sons are putting him in such a difficult spot. Enough. I hoped that the meeting between Charles and Harry’s representatives was more than Charles throwing red meat at the British press. I hoped that it was a signal that Charles was committed to changing the situation in his final years. Turns out, not so much.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.