Prince Harry’s Calls to King Charles “Go Unanswered”

It’s been 18 months since Prince Harry published Spare, a memoir that painted his father King Charles III, brother Prince William, and stepmother Queen Camilla in a negative light. Though the relationship between Harry and the king was rocky in the aftermath of the book’s release, there were signs earlier this year that the freeze between the pair had started to thaw. In February, Harry rushed to his father’s side in London after the king announced his cancer diagnosis, but during his May visit to the country, neither Charles nor William had a face-to-face encounter with Harry.

On Wednesday, People reported the father and son have suffered a break in communication due to Harry’s ongoing battle over his security arrangements in the UK. “He gets ‘unavailable right now,’” a friend of Harry told the magazine. “His calls go unanswered. He has tried to reach out about the King’s health, but those calls go unanswered too.”

Since 2022, Harry has been challenging the British government in court over their 2020 decision to strip the prince and his family of their access to publicly funded armed security inside the country. After a previous legal effort centered on Harry’s offer to pay for his own armed security failed in May 2023, the prince and his legal team have shifted tactics to focusing on the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known by the acronym RAVEC, which makes security arrangements for royal and others inside the UK who are deemed to warrant enhanced protection. In June 2024, Judge David Bean of London’s High Court ruled that Harry would be allowed to make an appeal arguing that RAVEC did not follow its own stated policies when revoking his automatic right to security in February 2020.

In a recent interview for Tabloids on Trial, an ITV documentary about efforts to sue British media companies over their past behavior, Harry said that he continues to fear for the safety of his wife, Meghan Markle, and children Archie and Lilibet, in the UK due to previous threats of violence. “It’s one of the reasons why I won’t bring my wife back to this country,” he added.

A royal insider told People that the current strain between Harry and his father is due to a dispute over the king’s alleged influence on the process. “Harry is frightened and feels the only person who can do anything about it is his father,” the source said. Buckingham Palace declined to comment when reached by People, but a palace insider told the magazine that Harry’s idea that his father can affect his security is “wholly inaccurate.”

Though the king is not a member of the RAVEC, a few of his employees are. The committee is made up of representatives from the Metropolitan Police, senior government officials, and members of the royal household, who meet to make recommendations for the UK’s Home Secretary. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, her private secretary Sir Edward Young, was a member of the committee, and in a January 2020 letter to then-cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill, Young noted that the queen had wanted Meghan and Harry to have access to security due to “public profile by virtue of being born into the Royal Family, his military service, The Duchess’s own independent profile, and the well-documented history of targeting of the Sussex family by extremists.”

The friend who spoke to People emphasized that Harry welcomed a reconciliation with his father. “At the end of the day,” said the friend, “you can’t undo bloodlines. He’s not asking his dad for a nicer house or nicer cars. He’s asking because of the reality of the situation. He is at risk.”