They were coming – all four of them. Then, less than 24 hours later, the whole trip was up in the air.
After being so enthusiastic about ‘Operation Reconciliation’ – which was how one friend of Prince Harry depicted plans for his landmark family visit to the UK when speaking exclusively to me on these pages last Saturday – emotions rapidly changed.
A briefing was then suddenly issued saying an ‘upset’ Harry was now thinking twice about travelling to his homeland.
He might not come at all, it was said, and the idea of Meghan and their two children coming was definitely now moot. Security concerns were, again, cited.
However, as we enter the final, exhausting, days before the Sussexes’ long-planned visit, we are at last reaching some sort of clarity.
‘He is coming,’ says a friend. ‘That is 100 per cent. He is honouring all of his commitments in the public eye, and Meghan is coming with him for sure as well.’
Indeed, I understand that Meghan will be at her husband’s side when he launches the Invictus Games ‘one year to go’ event next weekend in Birmingham.
The line from Harry’s friends is that Meghan understands how meaningful the event and the injured veterans’ charity are to him, and she wants to be with him at this significant moment.
She will almost certainly be with him when he visits a children’s hospital in Birmingham too. ‘They are coming as a couple,’ I’m told.
As for their children – Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five – at this stage, the couple are saying very little to very few people, including the Palace, about their plans.
Friends of the couple point out that this trip to the UK will be ‘paid for in full by Harry and Meghan, they are covering 100 per cent of all cost’
However, friends of Harry believe it is highly likely the children will come too, at least for a few days, so they can privately spend time with their grandfather, the King, no matter what the Sussex Office briefed last week.
A source close to Prince Harry tells me: ‘Harry is really, really keen to bring the kids.
‘He wants to ground them in the UK, in their heritage and their family heritage. They need to see their grandfather and they need to understand more about where they come from.
‘Their lack of knowledge of the UK is becoming apparent, along with their lack of connection to it.’
The friend adds: ‘The problem [with the most recent unravelling of the plans] is that the children are just so excited about this visit. They were told already some time ago that they are coming and they are beside themselves with excitement.
‘They have been hopping up and down about coming here. They are really excited about the trip. They have been talking about it for months. Harry and Meghan have been telling them about the UK.
‘Harry doesn’t want to disappoint them. There’s nothing from him to say either way at the moment for sure, but the feeling I get is that he will find a way to make it happen for them [the children] in a way that everyone is happy with. He will try to be the bigger person and bring them anyway.’
That last statement is likely to have a few people sucking in their breath. The fact that this visit has so quickly become so fraught has left many thinking the last thing demonstrated is that Harry is ‘the bigger person’.
Indeed, one charge levelled at him over the continuing row about security suggests he has been manipulative.
‘Emotional blackmail’ is how a source in royal circles described it to me. Nevertheless, no matter how you view it, there’s no doubt that next week’s visit is going to be a significant moment.
Friends of Harry believe it is highly likely the children will come too, at least for a few days, so they can privately spend time with their grandfather, the King
What happens, and on what terms, will set a precedent for how the Royal Family deals with Prince Harry and his family following all the pain of Megxit, the Oprah interview, his autobiography Spare, to name but a few flashpoints.
At present, the Sussexes are understood to be in Europe enjoying a private summer holiday. That much was briefed to the American magazine People – for many years their favoured mouthpiece – this week.
It has been said they are in Portugal but the belief among their crowd is that this is deliberate misdirection, and they’re actually staying with a very close, wealthy friend elsewhere in the Mediterranean.
From this secure place, they will be able to strike the UK quite easily and nimbly – the speculation is they can whizz in and out for the day if it’s deemed preferable in the end. Prince Harry already has a favoured private jet broker, and is also within range for a helicopter journey.
They have been offered the use of a royal palace to stay in, which will afford security while he and his family are there. The indications are that he means to take up the offer.
The picture being painted at the time of writing is of a prince who just wants to ‘reconnect’ with his father and his country.
The Sussexes have not been in the UK as a family since the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022. Charles was then crowned in May 2023 and his cancer diagnosis was announced in February 2024.
The source close to Harry said: ‘He is just trying and trying to reconnect with the UK. Harry has been terribly nervous, struck with dread really, about his father’s illness. It was more than a scare. To be in that position where your father is ill and you realise that the children have literally briefly met their grandfather a few times hit pretty hard.’
And so, from January this year, plans started to be formulated by which Harry could bring his family along while he launched the 2027 Invictus Games, and have them meet the King.
As I revealed last week, Harry was asked for an assurance that any family meetings he had would remain private – no Instagram, no cameras, no briefings – and he agreed ‘in a heartbeat’.
Meghan will be at her husband’s side when he launches the Invictus Games ‘one year to go’ event next weekend in Birmingham
The source tells me: ‘Everything Harry does now is as a father. As a father, not as a prince, he wants his children to know his own father. He wants them to spend a period with him and the family. That will mean a number of days, in private. Yes, the visit is about Invictus, but for months now it has also been about the children. They are a big motivating factor for the visit.’
Prince Harry met with Charles in September last year in a visit which lasted a little under an hour. Queen Camilla – who he had labelled ‘dangerous’ in his tell-all memoir Spare – was not in the room. This time, though, he wants something more meaningful.
In return for keeping details of his family encounter private, his friends say it was accepted he will get to do charity events and hospital visits and make speeches as if he was still a ‘working royal’.
We know from his speech in Ukraine this April that this is very much how he sees himself.
The story from his camp goes that the tacit agreement between Harry and the royals is that as long as he and Meghan undertake no commercial work while in the UK, he can be treated as a part of the Firm once more.
They believe there’s ‘an acceptance’ that he will need to continue to try to make money while living in the US as the couple are financially independent of the Royal Family.
Indeed, friends point out that this trip to the UK will be ‘paid for in full by Harry and Meg, they are covering 100 per cent of all cost’.
Plans at present involve Prince Harry in a number of public-facing events, including giving a speech at the non-profit international think-tank Chatham House on Tuesday. However, by dismaying chance, this is the very day on which the judgment is due to be handed down in the lawsuit Harry has brought against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, over alleged ‘bugging’ and ‘hacking’ dating back many years.
Associated Newspapers strongly deny wrongdoing and have said many of the Prince’s claims are ‘absurd’. It seems likely that the verdict will cast a shadow over the visit.
Harry was asked for an assurance that any family meetings he had would remain private – no Instagram, no cameras, no briefings
Prince Harry met with Charles, but not Camilla, in September last year in a visit which lasted a little under an hour
That won’t be the only sideshow, though. For the vexed question of Harry’s security arrangements, which he has tried and failed multiple times to fix to his satisfaction via court action, remains.
It was this which was at the heart of the chaos last week, when his office issued an operational note to let journalists know details of the trip on Friday – and then promptly issued entirely contradictory guidance on Saturday, to say that he might not come after all.
What had changed? The Home Office say nothing at all. It appears they reiterated what has been the case since the Sussexes quit royal duties and moved to North America to seek their fortune in 2020: the couple no longer qualified for automatic, taxpayer-funded security because they had moved overseas, but would instead be protected according to the need they assessed was warranted.
Some say that all this amounted to was Harry being given the telephone number of a police officer.
The prince’s friends plead his case for protection with great passion, pointing out that, as well as still being a member of the Royal Family, he is also a former serviceman who is fronting an event for servicemen.
This week I was told: ‘Without royal security they don’t get the threat intelligence and that means that his guys (his private security) are flying blind on the ground. He thought that royal security was all arranged, so what happened over the weekend was a reaction to that.
‘There is a fear that this sets a precedent and if he comes without it, people will say, “See you are fine without it.” But he still wants it. He feels he cannot make proper decisions about the safety of his family without having the support of the royal protection on some level.
‘He feels that he’s being asked to make a decision about the security of his family without having all the information he needs.’
In response to this, several commentators have described what they see as Harry weaponising the security issue for his own benefit.
However, on Wednesday night ITV News had an exclusive backing the Prince’s viewpoint: it revealed that Harry is the focus of no less than six terrorist plots, five of them originating in the UK.
The broadcaster was given a ‘Threat and Vulnerability Risk Assessment’ which had been prepared in February by Harry’s own US-based private security firm. It had been submitted to RAVEC, the committee which decides which politicians and royals receive police protection funded by the Home Office. They were unmoved, however.
ITV News reported that the security firm detailed dozens of threats, including an al-Qaeda document calling for Harry’s assassination and ‘at least six plots’ from jihadist and Right-wing actors.
There has been no response at all from the Palace to the report.
A friend of Harry’s said: ‘H’s view is that what is being offered is disproportionate. It is less than a visiting diplomat would get, let alone the son of a King. He thinks the argument that he is a private individual is dangerous rhetoric, all the more so when he is promoting a significant Armed Forces event.’
The arguments, the pressure and the rancour continue, then. Was there ever such a drama over a grandfather taking tea and cake with his grandchildren?