The path to a royal reconciliation between Prince Harry, Prince William and King Charles III could take years, though progress could already be underway, a new episode of Newsweek's The Royal Report podcast has discussed.
During a recent visit to Canada to mark the one-year waypoint to the 2025 Invictus Games, Harry told Good Morning America "I love my family" and added that he believes his father's recent cancer diagnosis has the power to bring his family closer together, as any illness might.
In 2022, the prince swerved answering a journalists question during the Invictus Games over whether he missed his brother and father following his move to the U.S. in 2020 with Meghan Markle.
Despite Harry's positivity, and his recent visit to Britain to see King Charles following his cancer diagnosis, Newsweek's chief royal correspondent, Jack Royston, told Royal Report listeners that the true path to reconciling the royals will be a long and drawn-out process dependent on whether Harry can earn back his family's trust.
"Charles and William, I'm sure, will view Harry as having persistently betrayed them on multiple occasions over several years, including during times of grief, such as when Prince Philip died or when the queen died. So obviously, they're not going to just completely forget all of that straight away and go from open warfare one minute to innate implicit trust the next..." he said. "But none of that means that Harry's olive branch is an error or a mistake."
"I think this is not a situation that's going to be healed overnight and is one that is going to require persistence over a long period of time. I think he's going to have to pursue this path of reconciliation, maybe even for years before the family are even willing to entertain the idea of actually trusting him again and opening up and kind of telling secrets and things like that."
"They need to see with their own eyes that the things they tell him do not end up on Netflix or in a book or on a podcast."
Though Charles, as a father would understandingly be more quick to forgive his youngest son, Royston noted that his brother could have more reservations, particularly given the attacks made in Harry's memoir Spare.
"Particularly Prince William, I think it's going take years before he would ever trust Harry again," he said. "They obviously had a conversation after Prince Philip's funeral, where they spoke privately...and it wound up in Harry's book, and Harry kind of divulged what William and Charles had shared in the immediate aftermath of Prince Philip's funeral. So, you know, after something like that has happened, it's going to be a long way back to reconciling again."
Charles and William have not publicly commented on Harry's Invictus Games interview, nor did they comment on the prince's memoir or Netflix show and the claims made within them.
As Charles undergoes treatment following his cancer diagnosis earlier this month and William continues to care for wife, Kate, during her recuperation from abdominal surgery at the beginning of the year, public focus on relationships within the royal family has strengthened.
During his interview with Good Morning America, Harry revealed that it will not be long before he visits Britain again.
"I've got other trips planned that would take me through the U.K. or back to the U.K," he said. "So, I'll stop in and see my family as much as I can."
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more