LONDON — The drama that seems to surround Prince Harry returns to the UK this week, and the previews already have the British press buzzing with anticipation.
King Charles III’s wayward son is traveling to the land of his birth for a series of charity engagements that begin Tuesday. But for most royal watchers that’s just background noise.
For the past 10 days, British tabloids and news broadcasts have been filled with speculation about whether Harry’s wife, Meghan, will accompany him and, more importantly, whether they will bring their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, so they can finally get to know Grandpa Charles. But everything is up in the air as Harry seeks to arrange protection for his family after a government committee refused to authorize taxpayer funded security.
“With just days to go until Harry’s first public engagement in the UK on Tuesday … very little is guaranteed at all,” the Times of London reported on Saturday. “For Archie and Lilibet to meet the king, it’s now or never,’’ wrote the Telegraph.
The kids' trip hinges on adequate security measures
Harry, a British army veteran who served in Afghanistan, planned the visit to mark a year before the Invictus Games, the Paralympic-style competition he founded to motivate and inspire military veterans around the world as they work to overcome battlefield injuries.
Not on the official schedule but very much in the media spotlight, however, is a decision Tuesday at the High Court in London, where the judge will reveal his verdict in Harry's invasion of privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail.
The decision about whether to bring the children, according to reports based on off-the-record briefings and unidentified people close to the royals, hinges on whether the U.K. government agrees to provide security for Harry and his family. It is an issue that has hung over every trip the prince has made to Britain since he and Meghan decamped to North America six years ago.
British authorities say Harry isn’t entitled to blanket protection because he is no longer a working member of the royal family and they will assess his security on a case-by-case basis, just like any other celebrity. Harry says it is unsafe for his children to travel to Britain without protection because his family remains a target simply by virtue of their royal status.
The decision rests with a government committee known as Ravec, that rules on who should get state-funded protection.
The outcome could be problematic for the royal family, which is trying to show that it provides value for money after months of embarrassing headlines about the links between the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
“In the paranoid atmosphere of waiting for more Andrew shoes to drop, Ravec and the royals themselves are terrified of public blowback if taxpayers are asked to fund protection for the House of Sussex,’’ royal commentator Tina Brown wrote on X. “The issue is not a hill that either the king or the government wants to die on, and who can blame them?’’
Harry wants his children to get to know their grandfather
After initial reports that Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, would visit the U.K., plans began to wobble after the Daily Telegraph reported that Ravec had again rejected Harry’s request for protection.
The Times of London reported that Harry was “distraught” after the decision and told friends he wouldn’t let his children be “chased by paparazzi” through the streets of London.
By Sunday, it was clear that the family wouldn’t accompany Harry when he arrives in the capital on Monday, though there was still a chance they would join him later in the trip.
Nonetheless, Harry has said that he wants to reconcile with his 77-year-old father, who is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer. And he really wants his children, who first met the monarch during celebrations for the late Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, to spend time with their grandfather now that they are old enough to remember the experience.
Harry's relations with the palace have been tense
Tension within the House of Windsor have been strained ever since Harry and Meghan gave up royal duties and moved to California to pursue lucrative media deals free from the pressures of royal life in London.
They reached a new low after Harry published an explosive memoir that included unflattering depictions of the royal family and damning allegations of a toxic relationship between the monarchy and the press.
Harry's description of royals leaking information about other members of the family in exchange for positive coverage of themselves is just one of the tawdry allegations in his book, "Spare." The prince was especially scathing about Queen Camilla, accusing her of feeding private conversations to the media as she sought to rehabilitate her image, after her longtime affair with Charles when he was heir to the throne.
After losing a court battle over the security issue last year, Harry said he hoped to rebuild relations with his family, even as he suggested that the royals had sought to prevent him from receiving police protection to punish him for walking away from royal duties.
“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point in continuing to fight anymore,” Harry told the BBC. “I don’t know how much longer my father has.”
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