Prince William allegedly doesn’t want Prince Harry and King Charles III to mend fences.
Journalist Petronella Wyatt, a friend of Queen Camilla’s since she was 18 years old, wrote a column in the Daily Telegraph Tuesday where she blamed William, 41, for the royal estrangement.
She claimed that a “former palace official” who used to work with the siblings told her: “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.”
Harry, 39, has been estranged from his family since he and wife Meghan Markle quit their royal duties and moved to California in 2020.
He didn’t see any of his family members when he was in London last week for the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Invictus Games.
The last time Harry saw Charles, 75, was in February when he briefly flew home after learning of the monarch’s cancer diagnosis.
A friend of William and Kate Middleton’s told the Daily Beast that “there is a grain of truth” in Wyatt’s claims.
“Although William wouldn’t dream of telling his father what he can or can’t do in relation to his other son,” the friend noted. “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.”
In her column, Wyatt claimed that William and Charles treated Harry in an “inhuman” way before the Duke of Sussex gave up his royal life.
But Wyatt thinks that Harry should return to the royal family, regardless of the drama, 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.”
When Harry was in the UK, friends of the king claimed that Charles offered Harry to stay in a royal residence, and Harry rejected his father’s offer.
However, sources close to Harry alleged that he made a request to see his father well ahead of his trip to his birth country, but Charles chose not to see his son.
Charles’ friends claimed that is not true.
“While it is true that the King is understandably wary about meeting with Harry, given the publicity circus that seems to surround all such visits, he did of course agree to see his son at the most vulnerable moment of his illness, and at very short notice,” a friend of the monarch told The Sunday Times.
The rift between the father and son widened even more when Harry allegedly “forced” Charles to choose between him and Camilla, 76, a friend of the Firm claimed to the Daily Beast.
“Harry has made it very clear, very publicly, that he despises her,” the insider shared. “He has forced Charles to choose, which was a very silly thing to do because Camilla and he both chose each other a long time ago.”
Harry shared his feelings for his stepmother in his protocol-shattering memoir, “Spare,” in which he sensationally branded her “dangerous” and “the villain.”
The father-of-two also accused William of physically attacking him during an argument about Markle in his book, which completely fractured their relationship.
Harry has not made up with any of his relatives since “Spare” came out.
