Prince Harry wants to fix a five-year rift with his family, saying that he does not know how long King Charles III has left to live amid the British monarch’s battle with cancer.
In an interview with BBC News after losing a legal appeal to reinstate his UK security, the Duke of Sussex said he wanted to reconcile with his loved ones, even though he acknowledged that they may never forgive his actions since 2020.
“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point in continuing to fight anymore, life is precious,” Prince Harry said. “I don’t know how much longer my father has [left to live]. He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff, but it would be nice to reconcile.”
King Charles III was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in February 2024 and has been receiving ongoing treatment. Buckingham Palace has never released details about his prognosis or the effectiveness of the care he is receiving.
Despite pleas for peace, Prince Harry still criticized King Charles for failing to resolve the security issue. He described his court defeat as a “good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up,” adding: “I never asked him to intervene — I asked him to step out of the way and let the experts do their jobs.”
The Duke of Sussex, who moved to California with his wife Meghan Markle in 2020, said the decision to remove his automatic royal security would prevent him from bringing his children to the UK. “I love my country, I always have done, despite what some people in that country have done… and I think that it’s really quite sad that I won’t be able to show my children my homeland,” he said.
Prince Harry said the security tussle was the last ongoing fissure with his family, but he said it was possible that “some members of my family” will never forgive him for writing a book and “lots of [other] things.”