LONDON — Senior aides to King Charles III and Prince Harry were pictured meeting in London on Sunday, fueling speculation about a royal reconciliation between the estranged father and son.
Photos obtained by The Mail on Sunday newspaper showed Meredith Maines, Harry’s chief communications officer, meeting with Tobyn Andreae, Charles’ communications secretary, at the Royal Over-seas League, a private club near Buckingham Palace.
“There’s a long road ahead, but a channel of communication is now open for the first time in years,” a royal source told the newspaper about the meeting.
It comes after Harry, who is the fifth in line to the throne, saying he would “love reconciliation with my family,” during a BBC interview in May. “There’s no point in continuing to fight people,” he said.
His comments came after he lost his appeal against the British government’s decision to axe his publicly funded security detail, an issue that he said had driven a wedge between him and his father.
“He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff,” Harry said, adding that he didn’t know how long his father had left to live after Charles was diagnosed with cancer last year.
Relations between the pair became strained after Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, announced that they would take a step back as senior members of the royal family in 2020, saying they would split their time between the United Kingdom and the United States.
As a result, the couple was stripped of their taxpayer-funded security, spurring Harry’s legal challenge with the British Home Office.
Harry has been a regular in British courts in recent years, challenging both his security arrangements and tabloid newspaper publishers for allegedly hacking phones and using private investigators to snoop on his life for news stories.
Harry has also openly expressed his frustrations with his family, who were the source of pointed criticism in his best-selling book, “Spare,” two years ago, which saw him claim that he had been physically attacked by his brother William, the Prince of Wales.
This came after Harry and Meghan alleged in a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey that a member of the royal family had expressed concerns over the skin color of their son, Archie, before he was born.
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