Prince Harry’s Significant Gesture of Reconciliation with the Royal Family

Prince Harry has offered to share his official diary engagements with the Royal Family in a bid to further reduce tensions between him and his father, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The peace offering is aimed at avoiding a repetition of the date clash that resulted in his trip to the African country of Angola knocking coverage of Queen Camilla’s 78th birthday portrait off the front pages earlier this month.

Images of the duke retracing his late mother’s footsteps through a minefield – accompanied by throwback pictures of Princess Diana in the same location 28 years ago – dominated almost every UK newspaper.

The new diary-sharing arrangement is even believed to extend to Prince William’s court at Kensington Palace.

And it is also hoped the move to ‘deconflict’ their diaries could lead to the King and his younger son finally being able to fix a date in their busy schedules to meet face to face.

It comes as lines of communication between the Sussex household and Buckingham Palace have continued to remain open since The Mail on Sunday exclusively revealed earlier this month that peace talks had been held between representatives from both sides.

The King’s head of communications Tobyn Andreae and the Sussexes’ chief communications officer Meredith Maines were pictured in the MoS a fortnight ago meeting on a London club balcony, accompanied by Harry’s UK press officer Liam Maguire.

Last night, a source described the latest development to share the duke’s schedule as a significant milestone.

Images of the duke retracing his late mother’s footsteps through a minefield dominated almost every UK newspaper – knocking the Queen’s birthday portrait off the front pages

They added: ‘Before that meeting between their aides in London, conflicts of interest or clashes of publicity were relished and even perhaps encouraged by the Sussexes. Now, Harry has shifted into a new way of thinking. The tone is now all about ‘deconflicting’ with his family.

‘That’s why his household agreed to draw up a “grid” of his activities and share them with Buckingham Palace, and by extension with Kensington Palace. Harry still doesn’t like being controlled by the Royal machinery, and that won’t change. However, if the Royal Family have full sight of his movements they can at least plan accordingly. It’s a significant gesture.’

The duke’s crossing of the cleared minefield mirrors Princess Diana’s in January 1997, when Angola experienced a brief period of peace following a two-decade civil war that had left the country contaminated by more than 15 million landmines.

Harry also walked the minefield back in 2013, which has now been transformed thanks to clearance by Angolan men and women trained by the charity, the Halo Trust.

In comments shared to Harry and Meghan’s Sussex.com website after his participation in the landmine safety education session in the remote village of Mawano, the duke said what he had witnessed ‘breaks my heart’.

Referring to his children Prince Archie, six, and Princess Lilibet, four, he said: ‘As a father to young children, it breaks my heart to see innocent children still living and playing next to minefields.

‘All of us have a duty to protect children and future generations from the harms of war, both present and past.’

During his visit, Harry also repeated safety instructions in Portuguese, which is the official language of Angola, taught local children how to recognise and avoid landmines and spoke to families.

But the resulting publicity from the unannounced trip led to the Queen’s birthday portrait of her smiling in the sunshine and leaning on a metal gate by a meadow at her Wiltshire home Ray Mill House, perhaps getting less coverage than it otherwise might have done.

The King’s head of communications Tobyn Andreae, the Sussexes’ chief communications officer Meredith Maines and Harry’s UK press officer Liam Maguire met in London a fortnight ago

In May, Harry let slip in an interview with the BBC that ‘I don’t know how much longer my father has [left]’

The Angola trip was only the latest in a number of personal appearances by the California- based couple which overshadowed coverage of a series of official engagements and good works by the Royals.

This year, matters have been further complicated by Harry’s wife Meghan starting up two social media pages offering glimpses into her home life with Harry, which inevitably dominated the news agenda in the UK.

This state of affairs cannot fail to have upset King Charles, who is known to be a stickler for ensuring Royal Family members do not schedule engagements that clash with each other.

It is understood that, while the new regime will stop short of Harry giving his brother the power to control his diary, the duke is – for the first time since hostilities began in 2020 – open to Prince William being given knowledge of his movements.

It could be an initiative that William comes to appreciate when he travels to Brazil to promote his Earthshot Prize, which recognises ‘game-changing innovations that will repair our planet’, in early November. But it is a reconciliation with his father rather than his brother that appears to be at the top of Harry’s list of priorities.

In May, he let slip in an interview with the BBC that ‘I don’t know how much longer my father has [left]’.Yesterday, a friend told the MoS: ‘Harry hopes to see his dad later this year, or next year. Things are moving in the right direction but, as always with the Royal Family, they are doing so at a glacial pace. So, meeting up as early as September might be wishful thinking at this rate.

‘But at least all is going in the right direction and that meet up will happen eventually. The right people are still talking to one another with that in mind.’

Harry will fly to London for three days in late September to promote WellChild, a charity that supports seriously ill children and of which he is patron.

While he has no plans to go to Balmoral, where his father will be staying until October, the King intends to travel to London on a weekly basis during the summer to visit the doctor overseeing his cancer treatment.

If a window presented itself for the King to see Harry, it might well be during one of these trips.

Buckingham Palace and the Sussexes both declined to comment.