The Queen navigates a delicate dynamic when it comes to King Charles and Prince Harry’s strained relationship
As the King and Prince Harry stand at a pivotal moment in their fractured relationship and William remains estranged from his brother, Queen Camilla is not getting involved in the turbulence between her husband and his younger son.
The Queen “stays out of it,” a source tells PEOPLE in this week’s exclusive cover story.
The family’s fractures came to light when the Duke of Sussex and his wife, Meghan Markle, stepped back from their royal roles in 2020, and today, the deep divide between the King and Harry remains one of the most painful fissures in his reign.
Harry and Meghan moved to the U.S. amid mounting family tensions and the relationship was further strained by the Sussexes’ high-profile interviews, an explosive Netflix docuseries and Harry’s memoir Spare, in which he described Camilla as “dangerous.”
In his groundbreaking 2023 memoir, the Duke of Sussex reflected on the complicated emotions he felt around his father’s 2005 marriage to Camilla — and alleged that she leaked stories about him to the press in an effort to rehabilitate her image.
“I had complex feelings about gaining a stepparent, who I thought had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar,” Prince Harry said in his memoir.
In an interview with Good Morning America in 2023, he further explained: “She had a reputation or an image to rehabilitate, and whatever conversations happened, whatever deals or trading was made right at the beginning, she was led to believe that that would be the best way to doing it.”
Asked about his relationship with her now, he said: “We haven’t spoken for a long time. I love every member of my family, despite the differences. So when I see her, we’re perfectly pleasant with each other. She’s my stepmother. I don’t look at her as an evil stepmother. I see someone who married into this institution, and done everything she can to improve her own reputation and her own image, for her own sake.”
There has been a desire to reconnect at times, but “the underlying issue is trust,” royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith tells PEOPLE.
“The King and William don’t trust Harry and Meghan with any kind of confidential conversation,” Bedell Smith says.
Insiders add that King Charles isn’t encouraged by his inner circle. The Prince of Wales has shown no interest in extending an olive branch, and senior aides like Clive Alderton, who was targeted in Spare, are unlikely to encourage outreach.
“There is not a good angel in his ear to say, ‘Be a good dad and make the first move,’ ” says Valentine Low, author of the upcoming book Power and the Palace.
Despite Harry’s plea for peace in a bombshell BBC interview after losing a legal appeal to restore his state-funded security on May 2, his comments were widely seen as another blow to the bond. The Duke of Sussex said there that the King “won’t speak to me because of this security stuff” and alleged “I don’t know how much longer my father has” in an allusion to cancer diagnosis announced last year.
“It wasn’t meant to be an attack, but it would be seen as one,” says Low. “It makes Charles reaching out even harder.”
