There was a clear sense of the King wanting to reset royal operations after the medical problems which befell the monarchy in 2024. By the end of that year, routine royal news reports would make no mention of his health. He had been around the world, visiting Australia in mid-October ahead of the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, and next-to-normal duties had resumed at home. The public had to be periodically reminded that he was still undergoing treatment for cancer<\/a>. The King was not trying to conceal or minimise the fact; he just preferred not to be defined by it.<\/p>\n Alongside the return to royal near-normality, however, came a resurgence of what one courtier had called \u2018headwinds\u2019, those external challenges which had seemed to abate a little while the family were battling through 2024.<\/p>\n Of all the \u2018headwinds\u2019, it was, once again, the two \u2018difficult dukes\u2019 who were generating the most heat and headlines. Since losing his allowance from the King after refusing to move from Royal Lodge on the edge of the Windsor estate, the mystery surrounding the Duke of York\u2019s private funding arrangements was partially explained in December 2024.<\/p>\n Court documents revealed that an alleged Chinese spy had been banned from entering Britain and that the man, later revealed as businessman Yang Tengbo, had developed an \u2018unusual degree of trust\u2019 with the Duke. Tengbo had been involved in trying to create business opportunities for the Duke in China<\/a> following his disastrous 2019 BBC<\/a> Panorama interview and subsequent departure from public life. Though there was no suggestion that the Duke had any inkling that his former associate was under suspicion (and Tengbo has denied the allegations), it all painted an excruciating picture of a royal outcast trying almost anything to secure money and a scintilla of international credibility.<\/p>\n With Christmas<\/a> looming, the last thing the monarchy needed was the Duke grinning alongside the rest of the family in public while a new scandal broke over his head. Even so, it proved an uphill struggle to keep the Duke away from the royal Christmas festivities, though he was finally persuaded to see sense by his ex-wife (one reason why Sarah, Duchess of York<\/a>, has become an increasingly familiar presence back in the royal fold).<\/p>\n The Duke was finally allowed to join the family for Easter<\/a>. By then, it was the Duke of Sussex<\/a> making the headlines. Following the King\u2019s diagnosis, Prince Harry had maintained a low profile with regard to the Royal Family<\/a> for a year. The Duchess had been busy with new business ventures, including a lifestyle show on Netflix<\/a> called With Love, Meghan and a range of household goods under a new brand, \u2018As Ever\u2019 (replacing her short-lived \u2018American Riviera Orchard\u2019 marque). The Duke, meanwhile, had been busy with his lawyers.<\/p>\n With great sadness, he had resigned from Sentebale, the Lesotho charity he had co-founded twenty years before. He had stepped down in solidarity with trustees who had left after falling out with the chair of the charity\u2019s board. Days later, he appeared in Britain as his legal team took his long-running case against the British Government to the Court of Appeal. There was no need for him to appear. Many legal experts could see no reason for his presence in the court, scribbling on Post-it notes and sipping water as his barrister pressed his challenge to a Home Office decision to remove his right to automatic police protection in the UK. \u2018He seemed to be pitch-rolling ahead of what was likely to be a humiliating court decision,\u2019 was how the King\u2019s team regarded his short visit to London, especially as there was no prospect of seeing his father, who was away on his state visit to Italy.<\/p>\n Yet after hearing he was coming to London, the King had still offered him accommodation at Buckingham Palace during his stay. \u2018Once again, he said no \u2013 presumably because the Palace is still so unsafe \u2013 and ended up staying in a hotel,\u2019 said a member of staff, struggling to hide the sarcasm in light of what the Duke did next.<\/p>\n There was considerable irritation that the Prince and the BBC had arranged a landmark interview about royal security issues yet the first the Palace was aware of it was minutes before broadcast<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Following the King\u2019s diagnosis, Prince Harry had maintained a low profile with regard to the Royal Family for a year<\/p>\n<\/div>\n King Charles with sons Harry and William. ‘It was starting to feel a little more than coincidental that when the King was on important business overseas, the Duke of Sussex would suddenly emerge from his hard-won privacy to make a high-profile public appearance,’ writes Hardman<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After leaving London, he went to Ukraine to meet wounded soldiers. Aside from the glaring inconsistency of claiming that Britain was fraught with danger one day and then travelling to a war zone the next, Prince Harry also had the satisfaction of stealing a march on his brother. The trip to Lviv had certainly come as a surprise to Prince William, who, as an ex-serviceman himself, had long wanted to visit Ukraine<\/a>. The Duchess of Edinburgh had been the first member of the family to visit the embattled nation in 2024 when she met President Zelensky and his wife and talked to survivors of sexual violence and torture. Thus far, however, the Prince of Wales had been limited to a visit to the Mercians, of which he was Colonel-in-Chief, in Estonia.<\/p>\n One month after his trip to court, the Duke of Sussex received news of the court ruling at first light in California. It was, as many expected, a robust and unanimous rejection of his appeal by three senior judges. The Duke knew it was coming and had prepared the ground for venting his disappointment in advance by inviting a BBC news crew to be ready at a borrowed house. Having granted the New York-based journalist Nada Tawfik ten minutes, he then spoke for more than thirty, clearly emotional at moments as he blinked and swallowed. He sounded, variously, naive, furious and implacable in his conviction that dark forces, some of them within the Royal Household, had conspired against him.<\/p>\n At the outset, he said that his case had been unwinnable, adding with a grim smile: \u2018I wish someone had told me that beforehand,\u2019 a remark which sounded rather like a rebuke to his lawyers. Prefacing many responses with \u2018I have to be careful what I say\u2019, he went on to claim that the Government committee reviewing his security had been infiltrated by royal officials and had operated outside the law to deprive the Sussexes of a level of protection readily granted to others (though the one official whom he named, Sir Clive Alderton, now private secretary to the King, had not actually been on the committee at the time).<\/p>\n It all felt like a \u2018good old-fashioned Establishment stitch-up\u2019, the Duke half-joked, before alluding gravely to his mother\u2019s death: \u2018Some people want history to repeat itself and that\u2019s pretty dark.\u2019 For the foreseeable future, Britain would remain too dangerous for his children.<\/p>\n There was a wistful but jarringly tactless note at the very end, when the Duke was asked about reconciliation: \u2018I don\u2019t know how much longer my father has \u2013 he won\u2019t speak to me because of this security stuff but it would be nice to reconcile.\u2019 Prospects for that, however, had just receded further. Within royal circles in Britain, some were \u2018frankly appalled\u2019 by his glib choice of words about the King\u2019s health. While on the one hand saying his court battle was over, he had also repeatedly \u2018called on\u2019 Keir Starmer and the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, to \u2018step in\u2019. The King\u2019s \u2018legal jeopardy\u2019 dilemma, therefore, remained unresolved; for as long as his son was pursuing his ministers on a judicial question in his courts, the King, as \u2018fountain of justice\u2019, could not risk any private discussion for fear that Prince Harry might air some of the details (or his version of them) in public.<\/p>\n The Home Office merely said it was \u2018pleased\u2019 by a ruling that reflected its \u2018rigorous and proportionate\u2019 security system.<\/p>\n The Palace\u2019s response was short, but managed to convey the sense of weariness after five years of this saga: \u2018All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.\u2019 Within the Royal Household, there was both exasperation and incredulity that Prince Harry could expect any sort of rapprochement after springing yet another effusion of scattergun accusations on the family via the media<\/a>. There was considerable irritation that the Prince and the BBC had arranged a landmark interview about royal security issues yet the first the Palace was aware of it was minutes before broadcast. \u2018As the Duke of Sussex might say, it felt like a bit of a stitch-up,\u2019 reflected one member of staff.<\/p>\n![\"Following](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2025\/08\/22\/16\/101467817-0-image-a-31_1755875043522.jpg\")
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