It’s not just Prince Andrew who won’t be celebrating Christmas with the royals at Sandringham this year. Prince Harry will also not be getting an invite, according to a friend of the royal family.
Despite Prince Harry’s recent face-to-face meeting with King Charles, “it’s not the case that Harry is going to be welcomed back with open arms and certainly not in time for Christmas,” a friend of the royal family told Vanity Fair. “As far as the king is concerned, the door has always been left open for Harry, but Harry has to pass the trust test. If he does, then I think there could well be another meeting in the new year.”
Although King Charles has been willing to meet with Harry, Prince William has “no intention” of speaking to his brother, the source said. “With things being so dire between William and Harry, I’m not sure Harry would even want to be at Sandringham for Christmas,” the source added. “It would be very awkward. He knows he’d probably get quite a frosty reception from most of the family.”
Prince Harry has not spoken to his brother since Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in 2022, according to The Sun. William was said to be upset with how Harry and Meghan Markle announced they were standing down as working royals, but since then the relationship has deteriorated following Harry going public about why he left Britain. In addition to Harry’s bombshell interview with Oprah, the publication of his explosive memoir, Spare, included many damaging revelations, including an alleged physical altercation between the brothers.
Harry has, however, said he wants to reconcile with his family and recently met with his father during a visit to the UK. However, following that meeting. A source told The Daily Mail that Harry has accused “men in gray suits” (King Charles’s advisers) of trying to sabotage his attempts to reconcile with his father. Harry has taken aim at palace courtiers in the past, referring to their “Machiavellian maneuvers” in his 2023 memoir, Spare. But palace aides have dismissed as nonsense the suggestion that they tried to sabotage the reunion, as King Charles’s head of press negotiated the meeting with Harry’s director of communications this summer, which eventually led to the estranged duo’s September 10 meeting.
Harry is said to be desperate to repair the rift with his father and family. This week, he hit back at a report in The Sun that the meeting with his father had been “distinctly formal.”
“Recent reporting of the Duke’s view of the tone of the meeting is categorically false. The quotes attributed to him are pure invention fed, one can only assume, by sources intent on sabotaging any reconciliation between father and son,” a spokesperson for Harry said. The Sun reported that Harry had given King Charles a framed photo of his children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. The spokesperson did confirm that Harry had given his father a framed photograph, but said that the “image did not contain the duke and duchess.”
When reached for comment by Vanity Fair, a spokesperson for Prince Harry declined to comment on his Christmas plans. Buckingham Palace did not respond to a request for comment.
