Going Spare: can Prince Harry ever reconcile with the royals?

Prince Harry’s final round of TV interviews ahead of the release of his autobiography Spare tomorrow may have ended any hope of a future royal reconciliation as he “once again twisted the knife on his closest family members”, said the Daily Mail.

In pre-recorded interviews on ITV and CBS, which aired last night, along with another on Good Morning America (ABC) today, the Duke of Sussex tried to row back on claims his family is racist while still suggesting the institution needs to do more to address unconscious bias within palace walls. At the same time he doubled down on previous allegations, accusing his brother and sister-in-law of “stereotyping” his wife, Meghan, because of portrayals in the British media, and stating that “certain members” of his family had been cosying up to journalists, or as he put it “getting in bed with the devil”.

Since copies of his tell-all memoir were accidentally leaked early by a Spanish retailer last week, Harry has faced a huge backlash from the British press and public, with polling showing that he and his wife are now the least popular senior royals apart from Prince Andrew, according to the Financial Times.

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What did the papers say?

“Harry had time to decide his message, and again it was his family who took the direct hit,” wrote Sky News’s royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills.

Speaking to ITV’s Tom Bradby, Harry said his family had “shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile up until this point. And I’m not sure how honesty is burning bridges. You know, silence only allows the abuser to abuse.”

Mills said: “For all his efforts to say how much he still loves them, it felt like another huge betrayal as he compared them to abusers.”

Prince Harry insisted he is “100%” confident he can reconcile with his family and multiple news outlets have reported that King Charles is also keen to mend relations with his youngest son. The King reportedly wants to extend an invitation to the Sussexes to his coronation, which will take place in May.

“Charles wants to project an image of unity for the royal family and would like a genuine rapprochement with his youngest son,” reported Vanity Fair. However, the magazine cited “sources close to the King” who have also said that Charles “will not tolerate Harry attacking his wife and that Harry may have crossed a line by speaking about Camilla”, whom he accused of planting stories in the press and being a “villain” who “needed to rehabilitate her image”.

What next?

A source told The Daily Telegraph that King Charles “has never given up hope of reconciling with the Duke of Sussex”. The paper said that “despite all of the recent revelations and allegations fired from California, Charles believes he will one day be reunited with his son and they will move forward”.

Until then, however, “the two sides appear to have reached a stalemate, each keen to build bridges but convinced that the ball is in the other’s court”.

As it stands the divisions in the royal family are being mirrored in wider society. The Times reported that “Megxit”, the term used to describe the Sussexes’ decision to leave the royal family and move to the US, “has become the new Brexit, splitting families by pitting Gen Z against boomer, woke against traditionalist”.

King Charles’s biographer, Catherine Mayer, told The Guardian that prospects for reconciliation were remote even before the book, “but there is a strong incentive for King Charles to initiate some kind of truce”.

Mayer noted that the alleged racism, bullying and image manipulation inside the royal family are not being examined and that “left alone, they have the power to dissolve faith in the idea of a hereditary head of state”.

David Yelland, editor of The Sun between 1998 and 2003, agreed that “while the British press and public’s support for the royal family was solid, Spare still presented serious problems for Buckingham Palace, which has refused to comment on any of the allegations.”

Yelland told the FT: “The bigger issue is that Harry, in theatrical terms, has broken the ‘fourth wall’ and let light into an institution that has survived for centuries in the dark. The risk to the palace is that the monarchy becomes a soap opera. The more light you shine, the less likely it is to survive.”