It’s forgive, but perhaps not forget for the royal family, particularly for Queen Camilla. As Prince Harry and King Charles met last week, making a possible full reconciliation between them more than just a dream, reports indicated that Queen Camilla was supportive of her husband. But that, apparently, doesn’t mean she’s ready to just let bygones be bygones.
“He has been extremely unkind to her in print and in word, and she doesn’t forgive easily,” a palace insider told the Times of London about Prince Harry. “The royal family make elephants look like they have short memories,” the insider added.
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What Harry said about Camilla was reportedly one of the reasons father and son were not getting along. “When Harry branded his stepmother Camilla a ‘villain’ in his book and revealed that both he and William initially begged their father not to marry her, Harry committed what Charles regards as a cardinal sin,” Christopher Andersen, author of The King, told Fox News Digital last year.
“No one disses Camilla in royal circles and gets away with it – not even a son of the king,” he added.
Among other things, Prince Harry claimed Queen Camilla leaked stories about other royals to the press in order to boost her own popularity. “I have complex feelings about gaining a step-parent who I thought had recently sacrificed me on her personal p.r. altar,” he wrote in the book. He also referred to Camilla as the “other woman,” a reference to King Charles’ affair with Camilla while he was still married to his mother, Princess Diana, and said meeting her was like getting an “injection,” writing, “Close your eyes and you won’t even feel it.”
Courtesy of: Random House.
As for Queen Camilla, she was reportedly very upset as well. “When the docuseries [Harry & Meghan] came out, Camilla was furious,” a source told Us Weekly. “Then, when Spare [was released], Camilla was saddened by what was said about her. She was heartbroken and confused.”
However, not everything Harry has said about his stepmother has been negative. In a 2023 interview with GMA, he admitted it had been “a long time” since he’d spoken to Camilla, but nonetheless seemed to contradict the villain image. “She’s my stepmother. I don’t look at her as an evil stepmother. I see someone who married into this institution and has done everything that she can to improve her own reputation and her own image, for her own sake,” he said.
And recent reports even indicated that, while Prince William was pushing back on the meeting with Harry, Queen Camilla was not. Instead, Rob Shuter’s ShuterScoop reported that Queen Camilla was supportive of the decision, as she “knows how deep the wounds run.”
Whatever the relationship between Prince Harry and Queen Camilla is now or can one day be, it seems clear that his relationship with his father, King Charles, is now on the mend. And everyone else in the family will just have to adjust to that reality, sooner rather than later.