The reasons for this father-son feud? Threefold. One is money: Prince Harry is reportedly upset that his father severed financial support in the wake of the Sussexes’ move to Montecito. ‘I recognised the absurdity, a man in his mid-30s being cut off by my father,’ he wrote in his bombshell memoir Spare. ‘But Pa wasn’t merely my father. He was my boss, my banker, my comptroller, keeper of the purse strings throughout my adult life.’ Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have since looked to raise funds through a series of Hollywood-style projects, from the Duke’s upcoming polo documentary to Harry & Meghan, the couple’s Netflix show about their life as estranged royals and, of course, Spare itself.
Though the second cause for King Charles’ anxiety over this second Difficult Duke is this very propensity for the Sussexes to tell all – and the constitutional risk it may entail. Since 2020, Prince Harry has been embroiled in a legal drama regarding the Home Office’s refusal to pay for his security protection on trips to the UK (ruled as a ‘legally sound’ decision in February, though the Court of Appeal granted the Duke the right to appeal the case in June). Harry has said that he refuses to bring Meghan, Archie, and Lilibet back home to Britain because he fears for their safety. ‘All it takes is one lone actor, one person who read this stuff, to act on what they have read,’ Harry explained to ITV, ‘and whether that is a knife or acid … they are genuine concerns for me, they are one of the reasons I won’t bring my wife back to this country.’
This legal battle presents quite the conflict of interest for King Charles: his son, suing his government, in the chambers of his court. According to royal insiders, the King is reluctant to reconnect with his son because any private conversation they share regarding Harry’s security details may well be used by the Duke in court. If Prince Harry were to reveal information told to him by King Charles, the case could collapse – just as it did in 2002, when Paul Burrell, a former butler to Princess Diana was accused of theft after hundreds of the late Princess of Wales’ possessions were found at his home. The case was abandoned after the late Queen Elizabeth recalled, in private, how Burrell had said he was looking after the objects for safekeeping.