With His majesty the King seemingly reluctant to meet with the Duke of Sussex, a royal correspondent has made a gloomy assessment chances of reconciliation

The King has found little time to see Prince Harry (Image: Getty)

Relations between Prince Harry and his father King Charles seem to be at ‘full disintegration point’ according to a royal expert.

The pair have barely seen each other since the Duke of Sussex stepped back from royal duties in 2020. Since then, he has appeared in several interviews and documentaries as well as written a memoir in which he criticised aspects of his time within the Firm. Reports suggest it has had a damning effect on his relationship with his father.

Speaking on the Royal Beat – Book Club podcast, Newsweek’s royal correspondent Jack Royston detailed a number of recent occasions on which the King had refused to meet with his youngest son.

He explained: “When [Harry] found out that his father was ill, had cancer, he flew straight to Britain. He got half an hour, or 45 minutes, with his dad before Charles went off to Sandringham. Then he came in May and he was told he couldn’t see his father. He released a public statement, through a spokesperson, saying Charles had other priorities.”

Harry concluded the statement by expressing his hope that he would see his father “soon”. But there’s little prospect of that as it presently stands.

King Charles is reportedly planning a full schedule of royal duties for 2025 (Image: Getty)

Jack added that despite Harry’s two further trips to the UK, there’s no sign that his father has made time to see him. He went on: “That is probably, I think, the biggest warning sign that [their relationship] could actually be at full disintegration point now.”

Harry is clearly carrying lasting trauma from one parent, Jack added, a trauma shown by “painful” footage of him going back to retrace his mother Princess Diana’s final moments in Paris.

He continued: “Imagine admitting to the whole world that you determinedly felt that your mother was not dead, that she was in hiding. And you’d convinced yourself that this must be true.”

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Jack added that Prince Harry only fully accepted his mother’s death after going through “incredibly graphic” police documents showing photographs of that fateful crash scene in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel.

Podcast host Kate Thornton added that the sense of loss must have been inescapable for both William and Harry, when they were unable to look at a newspaper or news broadcast without risking seeing an image of their dead mother.

King Charles resumed his public duties following his cancer diagnosis at the end of April, when he visited a cancer treatment centre with Queen Camilla. He has recently returned from a whirlwind tour of Australia and Samoa.