Prince Harry gives ‘peace offering’ to royal family
Prince Harry has reportedly made a peace offering to the royal family to reduce tensions between him and his father, the King.
The Duke of Sussex offered to share his official diary engagements to avoid repeating a date clash with the Queen’s birthday earlier this month, reports The Mail on Sunday.
Harry’s trip to Angola, where he retraced his mother’s footsteps through a minefield, knocked coverage of the Queen’s 78th birthday portrait off the front pages in Britain.
Instead, images of the duke with throwback pictures of Princess Diana raising landmine awareness 28 years ago dominated media coverage.
Harry’s diary-sharing arrangement is even believed to extend to Prince William’s court at Kensington Palace, reports The Mail on Sunday.
The move could lead to Harry and the King finding a date in their busy schedules to meet face-to-face.
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A source told The Mail on Sunday the offer to share the duke’s schedule was a significant milestone.
Harry’s chief communications officer, Meredith Maines, and Meghan Markle’s head of PR, Liam Maguire, were pictured meeting the King’s communications secretary, Tobyn Andreae, at the Royal Over-Seas League near Clarence House.
“Before that meeting between their aides in London, conflicts of interest or clashes of publicity were relished and even perhaps encouraged by the Sussexes,” the source told The Mail on Sunday.
“Now, Harry has shifted into a new way of thinking. The tone is now all about ‘deconflicting’ with his family.
‘That’s why his household agreed to draw up a “grid” of his activities and share them with Buckingham Palace, and by extension with Kensington Palace.
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“Harry still doesn’t like being controlled by the Royal machinery, and that won’t change.
“However, if the Royal Family have full sight of his movements they can at least plan accordingly. It’s a significant gesture.”
Prince Harry in Angola. Photo: AAP
Earlier this month, Prince Harry followed in his late mother’s footsteps by donning a flak jacket and walking down a path in an active landmine field in Angola to raise awareness for a charity’s work clearing explosives from old war zones.
The Duke of Sussex was in the southern African country with the Halo Trust. Princess Diana worked with the same group on her own trip to Angola in January 1997, seven months before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.
Diana’s advocacy and the images of her walking through a minefield helped mobilise support for a land mine ban treaty that was ratified later that year.
The rift between the Sussexes and the royal family escalated following their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, during which they alleged a member of the family was concerned about their son Archie’s skin tone before he was born.
Then the duke claimed in his controversial memoir, Spare, that the Prince of Wales had physically attacked him, and the King put his own interests above Harry’s and was jealous of Meghan.
Harry’s security changed in 2020 when he and Meghan stepped down as working royals and moved to the US. He has since said the royal family and officials hoped his realisation of the increased safety risk “would force us to come back”.
In May, Harry failed in an appeal against the dismissal of his High Court claim against the British Home Office, over the decision of the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures to reduce his level of taxpayer-funded security.
