The fact is Charles COULD have seen Harry, but it’s often upsetting for him. He won’t get well if he’s overwrought. A close friend of the King tells RICHARD KAY the real story behind the meeting that never was

Echoes of the past were everywhere. An estranged royal waving to cheering fans, while on the other side of town the reserved applause appropriate for a dignified palace garden party.

For a moment it was like throwing a switch back to the 1990s when for five brutal years, support for the House of Windsor oscillated between those backing Princess Diana and those standing with Prince Charles and the rest of the Royal Family.

It is not quite a re-run of the poisonous ‘War of the Waleses’. How could it be? But there was something eerily familiar — and profoundly sad — as two rival royal camps staked out their ground this week.

Today, Harry is the Diana figure — or at least that is how he wishes to be seen. The outsider, nobly fighting the same cruel and insensitive institution that his late mother railed against.

To her they were the ‘men in grey suits’, the palace courtiers who wanted to control her royal life and, she believed, to destroy it. To Harry they were not just undermining him but also his wife Meghan, ignoring her cries for help and not caring that she was pregnant and suicidal. He also had a memorable — and sinister — phrase for the figures he blamed at the top of the Palace hierarchy: ‘The bee, the wasp and the fly.’

King Charles and Queen Camilla listen to the national anthem as they attend a royal garden party at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday, two miles away from Harry’s event 

The closer you look, the more striking the parallels are. In the face of the hostility she often had at home, where she was constantly accused of upstaging her royal in-laws, Diana found consolation on official visits overseas.

This weekend Harry and Meghan are attempting to shore up their own damaged reputations with a faux-royal tour of Nigeria.

When Diana launched her first major post-separation foreign trip, in Nepal, it provided the first sign of an attempt to diminish her status. The band that welcomed her on the runway at Kathmandu airport played Colonel Bogey, not the National Anthem.

But the Princess’s star quality was too dazzling and too powerful for any clumsy diplomatic downgrading. She was an asset that was simply too precious to be sacrificed. Harry once had that megawatt appeal, but four years of criticism of his family has left only a fading memory of those starry days. There was one final sequence before Harry left Britain in the early hours — but this was in private.

The reunion between the Prince and Meghan took place in the soulless surroundings of the Windsor VIP suite at Heathrow.

His wife, unable or unwilling to set foot in her husband’s home country, had flown from Los Angeles and he was waiting to join her for their onward British Airways flight to Abuja.

As a postscript on his three days in London, it was as telling as the gates that were shut to him at Buckingham Palace. And by stressing the ‘unofficial’ nature of this 72-hour mini royal tour, Harry will be hoping to sidestep any debate about how he is classified on the international scene.

No red carpet, no problem.

There will be, however, some comparisons with his mother that Harry won’t like. For Diana chose to stay and fight for her future inside the Royal Family and not flee.

The break-up of his parents’ marriage saw not just staff take sides but friends too. Similar rifts have opened up three decades later. Those friends who were once close to William and Harry have had to choose which royal prince to stand by — or had the choice made for them.

So the sight of Diana’s Spencer family allies — his uncle Earl Spencer and aunt Lady Jane Fellowes — supporting Harry at the service at St Paul’s Cathedral this week celebrating ten years of the Invictus Games was intriguing.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit a primary and secondary school in Abuja, Nigeria, as part of a three-day-tour of the country

One of Diana’s first acts after the split from Charles was to make her eldest sister Lady Sarah a lady-in-waiting. She was a lively and dependable companion on the Princess’s overseas adventures who would always have her back.

The message was implicit — Spencer blood was thicker than water. But the two were also incredibly close.

Tours were punctuated by their laughter as they giggled over unforeseen mishaps.

When a hapless equerry opened a diplomatic pouch containing a vibrator which had been bought as a practical joke, Lady Sarah was on hand as Diana gravely observed: ‘Oh, that must be for me,’ before both women dissolved in guffaws.

Away from duties they were close, too, with Diana sometimes taking food prepared by her palace chef to Sarah’s Chelsea flat for a gossipy supper.

So what should we make of the presence of Harry’s aunt and uncle at his side in St Paul’s and whom he greeted with affectionate hugs? Three of his Spencer first cousins were at the service, too.

On the surface, their attendance would seem significant.

But it also would be a mistake to assume that it was somehow deliberately provocative.

As the wife of Lord Fellowes, the late Queen’s long-time private secretary, Lady Jane spent years supporting both her husband’s royal masters and her sister. It didn’t always work and there were times when the two women were estranged.But ever since Diana’s death, both of her sisters have been close to Harry.

They took on maternal duties, turning up at school football matches to cheer on Harry and William just as Diana used to, and, later, were frequently in attendance at landmark moments. They were both guests at his son Archie’s Windsor Castle christening and appeared in the official photographs.

Growing up at Kensington Palace, Harry’s Fellowes cousins were close family companions and there were frequent joint holidays.

Prince William speaks to schoolchildren as he visits St Mary’s Harbour in the Isles of Sicily yesterday

Kate, William, Harry and Meghan put their differences aside as they arrive to view flowers and tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II following her death in September 2022 

But being there for Harry this week does not imply any less support for Prince William — who, after all, has as much claim on his mother’s legacy as his brother.

When Lord Spencer took up his fight with the BBC over the Panorama interview, revealing to this paper how Martin Bashir had manipulated his sister, he was grateful for William’s powerful intervention in which he accused the broadcaster of fuelling his mother’s ‘fear, paranoia and isolation’. In the war between Harry and the Royal Family, the Spencers have been non-combatants, neutrals with a foot in both camps.

But at the same time, their presence alongside Harry sends a signal to the royals that not all the family have abandoned him. It also has an uncomfortable reminder of Lord Spencer’s oration at Diana’s funeral where he promised his sister’s ‘blood family’ would look out for William and Harry. Some are bound to wonder that now Harry is no longer part of the Royal Family, the Spencers have laid claim to him all over again.

They may yet play a more crucial role as go-betweens if and when there is any sign of reconciliation between the warring brothers. How complicated and how delicate it must be for the Spencers, despite their long family history of serving the monarchy.

Amid all this turmoil, it was no wonder that the King, battling to return to public duties while receiving treatment for cancer, could not face the emotional heartache of a face-to-face meeting with Harry when his younger son swooped into London for his whirlwind visit. 

Officially, of course, it was all blamed on the ‘curse of the diary’. The King, according to his son, was simply too busy to be interrupted. As an excuse, it was certainly convenient but it came with a chilly undercurrent.

For it was a clear message that there would be no repeat of what happened when he made his transatlantic dash in February just after it was announced that the King had received a cancer diagnosis. Then, no sooner had he returned to the U.S. after seeing his father than he was giving an interview to ABC’s Good Morning America breakfast show.

It scarcely mattered that he said little about his father’s prognosis or his treatment — probably because he didn’t know. What did matter was that he was prepared to talk about it at all.

His observation, in the same interview, that his father’s sickness could be a catalyst to bring the family together, has apparently gone unheeded. Three months on, his dream that the King’s cancer would have a ‘reunifying effect’ for his family is no closer to reality.

‘The trouble is it did nothing to restore trust,’ says a close friend. ‘And Harry is not trusted.’

Charles, only just back to work and still undergoing cancer treatment, does have a lot on his plate.

As the King’s friend said: ‘The fact is Charles could have seen Harry — there are plenty of odd hours in the day when he’s doing paperwork. But seeing Harry is often upsetting for him.

‘There is so much unfinished business from the past and he won’t get well if he is overwrought.He has never found fatherhood easy. The nearest he gets to a relaxed and unstressed relationship of the sort he ought to have with both his sons is with his daughter-in-law Catherine, the daughter he never had.’

And so the gulf between father and son grows ever wider. If it wasn’t clear to Harry before, then surely he now realises the goalposts on his relationship with the King have fundamentally changed.

‘Harry seems to think he can drop in on his father when it suits him when really it should be the other way round,’ says a courtier who has known Harry since he was a boy.

‘The message couldn’t have been clearer. He may have flown in from the other side of the world but there was still no welcome mat. It speaks volumes about the chasm that has opened up.

‘On the King’s part, there was also an element of calculation. In a way, not seeing him was as risky as seeing him because he knew it could be perceived as a snub.’

Judging by the reaction on social media, there was broad approval for the strategy. Harry’s decision to answer the speculation himself — in an authorised statement — was also revealing. He said he had been hoping for a meeting with his father, though in royal circles there was a difference of opinion as to whether a formal request had been made.

As his father rarely uses a mobile phone, Harry has, in the past, attempted to reach him either via his police bodyguards or through his military equerries.

But in recent times when such calls have come through, Charles will often be unavailable. ‘He’s got wise to this,’ I am told. ‘If he sees someone coming toward him with a phone, he will wave them away.’

One question troubling royal advisers is they do not know exactly what Harry wants. The simple answer may be nothing more than a fresh start and to be loved uncomplainingly by his father again. But experience has taught them that they cannot be sure.

For now all eyes will be on Nigeria. After revealing she had 43 per cent Nigerian heritage, Meghan wishes to ‘explore her ancestry and lineage’.

Who knows, there may be a lesson in family and history for her husband, too.