Just weeks after King Charles reportedly spent time with his California-based grandchildren, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, at Highgrove for the first time in four years, Prince Harry is said to be preparing another gesture toward reconciliation. Royal sources claim the Duke of Sussex hopes to invite his father to attend the Invictus Games in Birmingham in 2027 — and is, apparently, optimistic the King will say yes.
But if I may offer one blunt warning to King Charles, it is this: accepting that invitation would be a serious misjudgment — and one many of his most devoted supporters would struggle to forget.
One insider has suggested that “Harry would love the King’s support.” No doubt he would. Yet the uncomfortable reality is that a public royal show of backing for the Duke could leave many in Britain deeply dismayed.
For countless loyal monarchists, it would feel less like healing and more like surrender. These are the people who stood firmly behind the King while Harry and Meghan built a lucrative public platform around attacks on Charles and Camilla, William and Kate, and the monarchy itself.
No one has forgotten the turmoil that overshadowed the final years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. Prince Harry’s break with royal life placed the late Queen in an agonising position, caught between the instincts of a grandmother and the responsibilities of a sovereign, particularly when she rejected the Sussexes’ proposed “half-in, half-out” role.
Through that painful chapter, many of us remained unwaveringly on the side of the Queen and her heir, Charles. We stood by them as Harry and Meghan levelled damaging allegations against the Royal Family, including the racism claims raised in their Oprah Winfrey interview — accusations that Meghan made and Harry supported, and which had the potential to inflict lasting harm on the institution.
Prince Harry, pictured with King Charles at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, brought anguish to the late monarch’s final years, argues Amanda Platell — while loyal supporters stood by her and her heir
An invitation for King Charles to attend the 2027 Invictus Games in Birmingham may look like an olive branch, but critics see it as a calculated move that serves Prince Harry’s interests
Which is why King Charles would be letting down every one of us if he put fatherhood before duty and gave in to Harry’s pleas.
The Invictus invitation is not an ‘olive branch’. For Harry to dress it up as such is a cynical ploy for his own gain, which sees him fall even lower in our already low expectations of the dim-witted prince.
I can see Harry’s plea for what it really is: Not a genuine appeal for father and son to reunite to celebrate his Invictus Games together, but another squalid attempt to promote his and Meghan’s profile. After all, as we say in the media world, let’s look at the optics.
Harry opening the 2027 Invictus Games in Birmingham solo wouldn’t necessarily make the front pages, let alone go viral on social media, even if Meghan is clinging limpet-like to his arm. But pictures of King Charles alongside his once-estranged son certainly would, as the cunning money-grubbing Sussexes are fully aware.
Just look at the global coverage King Charles’s State Visit to Washington DC in April, hosted by an over-excited President Trump, garnered.
In those few days, with his passionate, dignified and humorous address to the two houses of the US Congress, King Charles confirmed his place as a global figure.
A less kind person than I might conclude that the only reason Harry wants the dad he berated in his memoir Spare and vilified in the Sussexes’ Netflix series on board is to increase his and Meghan’s dwindling social media profile and money-making capacity in America.
King Charles is enjoying his highest ever approval rating and, after his sparkling State Visit to Washington DC in April, he has certainly confirmed his place as a global figure
Some might say that the only reason Harry wants the father he vilified in the Sussexes’ Netflix series on board is to increase his and Meghan’s dwindling social media profile
Now the King must ask himself one simple question: who really benefits from his son’s invitation?
After all, Spotify binned the couple’s £18million deal, with one executive famously branding the Sussexes ‘grifters’. And despite Meghan’s best efforts, her £75million Netflix deal has failed to turn her into the mum-fluencer star she’s aspired to be. In other words, despite a promising start they have discovered that life outside the monarchy isn’t nearly as lucrative or glamorous as they imagined, when talent is in short supply.
The deluded prince – even his mother Princess Diana always said he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box – has somehow convinced himself that the hour-long meeting he had at Highgrove on July 10 with his father and his grandchildren after four years apart means that he’s back in his dad’s good books.
It’s said to have ‘buoyed up’ his hopes of a reconciliation with his father and more family get-togethers in the future. In your dreams, Harry.
We are told that the Invictus Games organisers are behind the plan to invite King Charles. Yet it is, as many have commented, ‘inconceivable’ that organisers of an event of which Prince Harry is Patron and Founder would not have consulted him first.
So King Charles must ask himself one simple question: who really benefits from his son’s invitation?
Charles is currently enjoying his highest ever approval rating: 68 per cent of the British public now consider the monarch to be performing well, six points up since the Spring. He would be a fool to squander that support.
I was heartened that Buckingham Palace’s official response to Harry’s invitation was: ‘The King would welcome the opportunity to see his grandchildren again.’
Of course, His Majesty – a gentle and sentimental father and devoted grandfather, now 77 and still undergoing cancer treatment – must be desperate to spend more time with Archie and Lilibet.
But in my book, to publicly endorse the son who spent years attacking his own family would be a disaster.
