Prince Harry has taken a number of brutal swipes at his father King Charles over the years, which has only highlighted their ongoing estrangement.
The Duke of Sussex’s rift with the Royal Family will be highlighted over the weekend the annual Trooping the Colour takes place on Saturday.
The huge event marks the official birthday of the monarch, despite Charles’ actual birthday being in November,
and senior members of the Royal Family will be in attendance, including Harry’s older brother Prince William.
However, the 39-year-old will be noticeably absent from the celebrations, and he’ll also be away from his beloved ‘Pa’ on Father’s Day on Sunday.
Harry has been estranged from his family since he and wife Meghan Markle stepped down as senior working royals in 2020,
and his absence from both events focused on his father have only highlighted the deep rift between him and Charles.
Their relationship has become strained since Harry began making comments about his family life growing up in the Royal Family. While he drifted apart from his father once they relocated to the US in 2020, Harry and Meghan managed to irreparably damage the bond with the Duke’s family when they sat down for an explosive tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021.
As the couple accused one senior royal of making racist comments about their son Archie while Meghan was pregnant, Harry was also quizzed about his relationship with Charles after they exited the monarchy.
He told the TV icon that his father “stopped taking my calls” and confessed he was heartbroken over how he had been treated. “I feel really let down because he’s been through something similar, he knows what pain feels like and Archie’s his grandson,” he sadly shared.
Harry continued to share deeply personal stories about his life as a royal in his memoir Spare, which was released last year, and in the book he painted his father in a less-than-flattering light. He claimed Charles “wasn’t great at showing emotions”, and failed to console him when Harry and William were told about their mother Princess Diana’s tragic death in 1997.
“But his hand did fall once more on my knee and he said: It’s going to be OK. That was quite a lot for him. Fatherly, hopeful, kind. And so very untrue,” he recalled. Harry said Charles “wasn’t ready for parenthood”, and struggled to deal with raising his two boys after Diana died. “He’d always given an air of being not quite ready for parenthood – the responsibilities, the patience, the time. Even he, though a proud man, would’ve admitted as much. But single parenthood? Pa was never made for that,” Harry shared.
He wrote extensively about his father’s inability to deal with his emotions, and admitted he was heartbroken when Charles failed to praise him openly in front of other people.
“He had trouble communicating, trouble listening, trouble being intimate face-to-face. On occasion, after a long multi-course dinner, I’d walk upstairs and find a letter on my pillow. The letter would say how proud he was of me for something I’d done or accomplished. I’d smile, place it under my pillow, but also wonder why he hadn’t said this moments ago, while seated directly across from me,” he sadly recalled.
He also documented the brutal period of his life in which he and Meghan faced stressful press intrusion while his wife was pregnant with their first child. Harry claimed Charles didn’t understand how badly Meghan was being treated, and after one discussion, he said: “The conversation went in circles and when we hung up I felt – abandoned.”
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Source: Tampa Bay Times
