Prince Philip: Charles reflects on 'choosing words carefully'
Harry, 36, is understood to be prepared to drop everything to attend the service at Windsor next Saturday. He was last night said to be making plans to return to Britain from his California home without wife Meghan, who is six months pregnant. But Covid rules requiring him to self isolate for at least five days on arrival mean he would need to fly today or tomorrow.
An insider said: “Harry will absolutely do his utmost to get back to the UK and be with his family.
“He will want nothing more than to be there for his family, and particularly his grandmother, during this awful time.
“Meghan is obviously pregnant so she will need to take advice from her doctors about whether it is safe for her to travel, but I think Harry will definitely go.”
Another source said: “Harry was extremely close to his grandfather. He will, of course, be there, no matter how difficult relations are between the Sussexes and the family.”
The Duke of Sussex’s relations with other senior royals have been strained since he and Meghan, 39, quit royal life then gave their Oprah Winfrey interview.
William, 38, was particularly stung by the couple’s suggestion to US chat show queen Oprah that the Queen’s family might hold racist views about their son Archie.
The explosive comments intensified differences which had already contributed to the Sussexes stepping back from royal duties and moving to America.
But Prince Charles’s sons are expected to rally round in a similar show of unity to the one that captured the nation’s hearts at their mother Princess Diana’s funeral 24 years ago.
In a raw display of togetherness, William, then 15, Harry, 12, Prince Philip and the boys’ uncle Earl Spencer joined Charles to walk behind Diana’s coffin.
The brothers’ bond was seemingly broken barely a year after Harry’s fairytale 2018 Windsor wedding to Meghan.
In 2019 she revealed her difficulties with the traditions she married into, stunning the Royal Household when she told ITN journalist Tom Bradby she was “not OK” during an official tour of Africa.
The couple’s departure from royal life, dubbed Megxit, came in January last year, casting a cloud over the Queen’s traditional winter break at Sandringham.
The Sussexes issued a statement without warning her, announcing plans for a dual role – cutting back to junior royal duties while earning their own money. The Queen called an emergency summit with Harry, William and Charles but the attempt to broker a mutually-acceptable solution failed.
Harry and Meghan ended up agreeing not to use their HRH titles and to leave the monarchy completely to make a crust overseas.
Critics said the Oprah interview was particularly insensitive because the Duke of Edinburgh remained in hospital when it was broadcast.
The Duchess told Oprah she found life inside the royal circle so tough that sometimes she “didn’t want to be alive any more”.
Both Meghan, who is mixed race, and her husband raised the ugly spectre of royal racism when she said an unnamed family member – not the Queen or Duke – asked “how dark” Archie’s skin might be.
Harry also told the TV star that he was now free but his brother and father were “trapped within the system” of the Royal Family.
He then accused the family of cutting him off financially and claimed that at one point Charles stopped taking his calls.
But he also told Oprah that he loved William “to bits” and wanted to heal both their relationship and that with his father.
The Queen later issued a statement saying “while some recollections may vary”, the issues raised would be taken “very seriously” but dealt with privately as a family.
And in a break with the norm, Prince William responded to a shouted question by a reporter at a royal engagement on the issue. He told the massed media: “We’re very much not a racist family.”
Since the fallout from the Oprah Winfrey programme, hopes of a truce have risen after Harry and William agreed on the final
design for a memorial statue to their mother.
They approved the plans and friends believed they may both attend the monument’s unveiling at Kensington Palace on July 1 – what would have been Princess Diana’s 60th birthday.
The brothers set up a working committee to oversee the project to construct the statue and it is thought Harry will have been sent pictures of the design.
Sources said their cousin Zara Tindall and her husband Mike had played peacemakers over the last 12 months.
Top sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley, 68, whose portrait of the Queen appears on all British coins, is working on the statue.
A source close to him said recently: “It will have been signed off by William and Harry.
“He did work closely with the boys and I think it will be incredible.”
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