Truth about Charles, Harry and Meghan: Bombshell new ebook exposes ‘fury’ at Sussexes, precisely why King fears chatting with them AND why Harry refused to remain in Palace – plus why the monarch has lastly minimize off Andrew. Read ROBERT HARDMAN’S revelations right here

Less than a year and a half into the reign of Charles III, the monarchy had to come to terms with two grave personal challenges.

In February 2024, it was announced that the King had cancer. The following month, the Princess of Wales revealed that she, too, had been diagnosed with the disease. Each had a different (but unspecified) form of cancer and both began treatment immediately.

At a human level, the impact was as distressing as it might be for any family. For the House of Windsor, so soon after a change of monarch, there were clearly operational questions, given the reduced capacity of an already depleted workforce.

Some commentators called it a full-blown ‘crisis’. If it felt like that some of the time, it also succeeded in making the monarchy feel perhaps more relatable than ever.

Regardless, there would remain one long-standing issue which would not go away: the ‘difficult Dukes’ – the King’s younger son, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, and the King’s younger brother, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.

In the hours before the announcement of his diagnosis, the King telephoned all the members of his family, including the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in California. The King’s younger son immediately made plans to fly to London to see his father, arriving at lunchtime the day after the announcement.

‘I jumped on a plane and went to go see him as soon as I could,’ the Duke told an American interviewer the following week. ‘I love my family. The fact that I was able to get on a plane and go see and spend any time with him, I’m grateful for that.’

The King had been due to leave with the Queen for Sandringham, but delayed his departure so that he could see his son at Clarence House. It was not a long meeting – less than an hour – and the Palace released no details. Crucially, nor did anyone in the Sussex camp.

Given the vast amount of awkward baggage to be unpacked following the Duke’s multiple swipes at the monarchy over the previous three years, this was not a moment for anything other than simple, urgent expressions of love and compassion.

Friends of the family were quick to caution against any over-interpretation of Harry’s visit. The fact that the conversation has remained entirely private is seen not so much as a stepping stone as a sign that all is not lost.

Yet within Buckingham Palace it is accepted that the King is open to some sort of rapprochement with the Sussexes – not least because he has barely seen his US-based grandchildren Archie and Lilibet, now aged five and three. And any sort of serious medical diagnosis tends to focus the mind on the passing of time.

‘He always had an iron discipline about not stirring things up with the Sussexes,’ says a former member of staff.

‘It can take a huge effort to do nothing when you’re being criticised.’

However, when Prince Harry returned to Britain in May, alone, for events to mark the tenth anniversary of one of his finest achievements, the Invictus Games, there was no meeting with the King.

The Palace pointed to the King’s programme of public events and declined to comment further. A spokesman for Prince Harry said: ‘It unfortunately will not be possible, due to His Majesty’s full programme. The Duke, of course, is understanding of his father’s diary of commitments and various other priorities and hopes to see him soon.’

The King and his staff had been well aware of Prince Harry’s travel plans, however, to the extent that the monarch had even offered his son accommodation at Buckingham Palace.

The Prince had chosen to stay at a hotel instead. ‘We were told it was for security reasons,’ says a member of the King’s staff. ‘I’m not sure you could get anywhere more secure than the Palace. Maybe he was worried about the mice.’

Sources close to the Sussexes explained that any Palace accommodation would, by definition, be inside a high-profile location and, without appropriate ‘security provision’, it would be safer to stay at an anonymous hotel.

It later emerged that the King had found time during Harry’s visit to meet the footballer David Beckham at his Highgrove home for a private discussion about his King’s Foundation.

To the wider world, this situation seemed both sad and baffling. The real reasons for the apparent remoteness between father and son – though unspoken by either side – were pragmatic and, it turns out, understandable.

The first involves money. Prince Harry has made clear several times that his charge sheets against the monarchy includes the lack of a financial settlement.

‘I recognised the absurdity, a man in his mid-30s being cut off by my father,’ he wrote in his autobiography Spare.

‘But Pa wasn’t merely my father. He was my boss, my banker, my comptroller, keeper of the purse strings throughout my adult life.’ He has also previously spoken of his quest for ‘a proper conversation’ with his father and brother, telling Mail columnist Bryony Gordon: ‘What I’d really like is some accountability. And an apology to my wife.’

Second, if the King embarked on bilateral discussions with his younger son, he might jeopardise his rapport with his elder son, who last spring had more immediate, pressing personal worries of his own following the cancer diagnosis of the Princess of Wales. Any talks involving the King would need to include Prince William, and now was not the time.

Besides, among the King’s team were those for whom previous dealings with the Duke of Sussex had been a reminder of the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished. Prince Harry had been witheringly critical of his father’s staff in his memoir.

Yet some of those very same officials had tried to give both the Duke and Duchess extra support during their brief royal existence. ‘It was Clive [now Sir Clive Alderton, private secretary to the King] who said that if we could get this right for Harry, we’d be creating a blueprint for future younger sons for generations,’ recalls one staffer from those days. ‘And Clive said, ‘These two need more staff.’

‘And we seconded people from Clarence House, very expert people, to help them, but the Duchess wouldn’t trust them. Those two were offered considerable resource, and then later said that they had been offered no help. And that was completely wrong.’

Third, and most compelling of all, is a constitutional point. One veteran royal adviser sums it up with a single name from the royal past: ‘Paul Burrell’.

The collapse of a 2002 court case involving the former royal butler remains fresh in Palace minds. 

Since 2020, Prince Harry had been fighting the British government over a decision to downgrade his security following his departure from the UK and from royal life. In 2023, he had lost a legal action challenging the Home Office’s refusal to allow him to pay for police protection when he was in the UK.

In February this year he lost another claim that the security downgrade had been unlawful. A 52-page High Court ruling declared that the Home Office decision had been ‘legally sound’.

The Prince’s lawyers requested an appeal. In April, the High Court rejected this challenge.

Undeterred after three defeats on the subject and with an estimated legal bill in excess of £1 million, the Duke and his lawyers applied to the Court of Appeal. In June, that court granted him permission to appeal (though he lost a further request to have that case expedited).

The Duke of Sussex had many other legal actions in hand against the media, but this ongoing quarrel with the Government was especially problematic for the King as the ‘fountain of justice’.

‘Here you have the infelicitous situation where the King’s son is suing the King’s ministers in the King’s courts,’ points out one senior constitutional expert and adviser to the family. ‘That is pulling the King in three directions. You also have the situation where the King’s son publishes accounts of private conversations, some of which have been, shall we say, wrong.’

The adviser points, by way of example, to the section of Spare in which his account of being told of the Queen Mother’s death was a fabrication.

Harry had painted a forlorn picture of a lonely Eton schoolboy being told, by a lackey, of the death of his adored great-grandmother: ‘I took the call. I wish I could remember whose voice was at the other end: a courtier’s, I believe. I recall that it was just before Easter, the weather bright and warm, light slanting through my window, filled with vivid colours. ‘Your Royal Highness, the Queen Mother has died.’ ‘

Harry was actually in Switzerland, skiing with his father and brother, when all three received the news.

‘So imagine the situation,’ says the adviser, ‘if the Prince were to talk to his father about his court case and then later to describe that conversation – or, worse, a conversation which was not entirely accurate. There would be serious legal jeopardy.’

Nor is that a hypothetical situation. The adviser points to the acute embarrassment of the 2002 court case involving Paul Burrell. The former royal butler was standing trial for theft after police discovered hundreds of items belonging to the late Diana, Princess of Wales at his home.

After the Queen’s private recollection that Burrell had told her he was looking after Diana’s things for safekeeping, the prosecution pronounced its case ‘no longer viable’ and the trial was abandoned.

‘Harry would only have to say, ‘My father said this’ and a court case could collapse,’ says the adviser. ‘That’s not just awkward. That’s bad. That is deep legal and constitutional jeopardy when you are head of state and of the judiciary and it is His Majesty’s Government.’

As the year has unfolded, however, there have been some indications that the Duke’s attitude towards the monarchy might be mellowing. Sources very close to the Sussexes insisted that any reports that the Duke or Duchess might be writing any fresh memoirs were ‘void of truth’.

Weeks later, Prince Harry’s publishers announced that Spare would be published in paperback in October. Tellingly, it was also announced that the author would not be providing any new material.

Within the Royal Family, however, the feeling would persist that, as long as Prince Harry continued to be a very busy litigant, a rapprochement would be extremely difficult. ‘Even then,’ points out an aide, ‘you still have the trust issue to be resolved.

‘And then, having predicated this whole case on the fact that Britain is insecure, would Harry bring the children over anyway? That is the tragedy of all this. It’s a mess – but it is not one of our making.’

On September 15 Prince Harry marked his 40th birthday in California. In the preceding weeks, there had been reports that the King had been seeking the advice of faith leaders on how to reach some sort of truce. Such speculation was quashed robustly by those close to the King.

A few days earlier, towards the end of August, Prince Harry had made a brief, unannounced return to the UK to attend the funeral of Lord Fellowes, his uncle by marriage.

Robert Fellowes had been the private secretary to the late Queen during the darkest period of the 1990s. It had been a position complicated by his marriage to Lady Jane Spencer, sister of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Unfailingly old school and honourable both to his boss and to his wife’s family, he was equally dear to the Windsors and the Spencers. After the death of Diana, it had been Lady Jane and her elder sister, Lady Sarah, who had been especially close to Princes William and Harry and remained so, regardless of the schism between the two brothers.

So, as Lady Jane mourned her husband of 46 years, her two royal nephews were determined to pay their respects at the private funeral in the Norfolk village of Snettisham. It could have been the moment for some sort of preliminary interaction. According to those present, however, it was not to be.

The King’s dealings with the other ‘difficult Duke’, Prince Andrew, had been tempered this year by the fact that the latter’s ex-wife was herself dealing with cancer, and living for some of the time at his substantial home on the Windsor estate, Royal Lodge.

However, the King and his officials could see no reason why that should prevent the Duke of York from moving into Frogmore Cottage, the considerably smaller property inside the Windsor security cordon vacated by the Sussexes.

Prince Andrew had certainly proved to be a more tenacious tenant than many had expected. It had been thought that he was safe at Royal Lodge for as long as the late Queen was alive and covering his substantial security costs.

However, it transpires that even she wanted to find the Duke another home. ‘Had she lived another year, he would have been out,’ says a former adviser to Elizabeth II firmly.

‘It was her plan to move him out, to end the lease for the Sussexes at Frogmore Cottage and to move Andrew in there. It was mainly a money thing, as she could see it was becoming unsustainable.’

Many of the late Queen’s staff were more than happy to make it happen, too, given the Duke’s conduct prior to his disastrous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview and the end of his career in public life. The Queen’s staff had wasted no time annexing his rooms inside Buckingham Palace.

‘No one felt guilty about taking over his office because he and his people had become bullies by the end. They would tell the security people that no one needed clearance to come in if they were ‘a personal friend’ of the Duke,’ says one. ‘That is how he got Newsnight in there without people knowing. He’d told us he wasn’t doing a TV interview and then said he wouldn’t do one during an election. Then he did both.’

The Duke had certainly been faring better than expected since his brother succeeded to the throne. He continued to enjoy access to Windsor facilities and a living allowance which, according to a well-sourced newspaper article, amounted to £1 million annually.

The cost of the private security contract to guard the property, which sits outside that Windsor cordon, was running at what one insider called ‘a substantial seven-figure sum annually’. In August it was widely reported (and not disputed) that the King was no longer prepared to renew that contract beyond the autumn of 2024.

The Duke had another 50 years to run on the lease from the Crown Estate, as long as he could meet certain maintenance obligations. If those were met, it would give him a strong legal position, on paper, to stay put, even if the King wanted him to leave.

It was also known that the Duke hoped to bequeath the lease to one of his daughters, though, in reality, it is understood that the Princesses have little interest in taking on a property of that size and nature.

However, the Duke might soon find the private security bill prohibitive if it became his responsibility. It is not just his personal protection that has to be considered, but the security of the historic artworks and furniture which he has been loaned from the Royal Collection Trust to furnish Royal Lodge.

On top of that, he would still be expected to fund expensive maintenance repairs, plus the substantial staffing costs.

Of even greater concern to the Duke of York – or so one might have thought – was a stark warning from the monarch’s advisers. If he were to reject the King’s offer of Frogmore Cottage and insist on remaining at Royal Lodge, he was told, then the King would feel no obligation to continue paying even his day-to-day living allowance.

That would leave the Duke in an even more precarious financial situation. At various times, according to one senior source, Prince Andrew had assured the Palace that he would be able to meet all these bills through a combination of money left to him by the Queen and his own commercial activities.

‘It would obviously need to be an acceptable source of funding,’ added the insider, a thinly veiled reference to some of the opaque business dealings of the Duke, such as the 2022 sale of his ski chalet in the Swiss resort of Verbier. The sale became mired in legal disputes over unpaid debts, while the previous vendor publicly branded him ‘an absolute fool’.

As for any legacy from the Queen, insiders say that this had already been received during her lifetime. ‘If he can find the money, then that is up to him,’ added the insider, ‘but if not, he will find that the King does not have unlimited patience.’

In the late summer of this year, that patience ran out. The Duke informed the monarch that, regardless of any ultimatum, he was going to stay put at Royal Lodge anyway. At which point, the Keeper of the Privy Purse (the monarchy’s finance director) was instructed to sever his living allowance.

‘The Duke is no longer a financial burden on the King,’ confirms one familiar with the situation. ‘He claims to have found other sources of income related to his contacts in international trade, sufficient to cover all his costs – which would be a welcome outcome for all parties if that turns out to be the case. But as to whether this funding can be relied upon in the long term is another matter.’

Sources within the Palace and the Crown Estate fear that, while the Duke may find the money to cover the bills for one or two years, the position may not be sustainable once he passes retirement age. And what if the money then runs out?

‘Let’s just say that if that moment comes, and the Duke needs to call on the King’s resources once more, the range of options available to him may be more limited and rather less appealing,’ says one insider drily.

‘This was never about ‘punishing’ the Duke for past misdeeds, or freeing up the property for another member of the family,’ insists the source. ‘It was about his long-term welfare and security – and that of the house. Alas, that advice has gone unheeded, which is frustrating for all those nearest and dearest to him.’

The Duke’s lack of common sense comes as no surprise to veterans of life in the Royal Household. They point to an incident in 2016 when, upon his return to Royal Lodge after an outing, the electric sensors on one of the gates failed to work.

Rather than make a five-minute detour to another entrance, he simply rammed the gate with his Range Rover, causing considerable damage to both the gate and the £80,000 car. ‘It could have been easier to understand if he’d been drunk,’ said one Palace staffer at the time. ‘But he is teetotal.’

For the King, says a family friend, the outcome of all this has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the matter is resolved and his brother is no longer a drain on resources.

On the other, his sibling’s obstinacy has soured family relationships yet further. ‘He doesn’t dwell much on it,’ says the friend. ‘There is more of an air of weary understanding that there can be no helping those who don’t realise they need help – and the Duke is not yet at that stage of his journey.

‘The important thing is to have offered support. Whether it is taken up or not is down to the individual.’

Since the Prince and Princess of Wales have shown no interest, for the time being, in moving into what would certainly be a suitable home the question has continued to be asked: who would live at Royal Lodge if the Duke was indeed prevailed upon to leave?

An intriguing suggestion began to emerge during the course of this year: what about the King and Queen themselves?

‘The King loves his brother, of course,’ says one senior source. ‘But the Duke is living in an enormous house on his own and it used to be the Sovereign’s house. George VI and Queen Elizabeth never moved out of there.’

Aides are adamant that the King has no wish to take up residence there himself, Queen Camilla even less so. However, he is also determined to ensure that a house with a distinguished regal past is not left mired in uncertainty.

• Adapted from Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story by Robert Hardman (Macmillan, £22), to be published on November 7. © Robert Hardman 2024. To order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid until November 15, 2024; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.