Harry’s solo Invictus bash was clear signal to Charles & William – another family have ‘laid claim’ to duke, expert says
PRINCE Harry’s solo Invictus bash was a clear signal to Charles and William, an expert has said.
The Duke of Sussex, 39, was all smiles at St Paul’s Cathedral on Wednesday during another whistle-stop tour to the UK in which he didn’t visit his dad or brother.
Despite the King being just two miles away from his youngest son, Charles was too busy hosting Buckingham Palace‘s first Garden party of the year to meet him.
However, Harry was backed by Princess Diana’s siblings Earl Spencer and Lady Jane Fellowes at the service marking 10 years of his Invictus Games.
Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine and friend of Princess Diana, said the Spencers’ presence was significant.
She said: “They are very supportive of Harry and always have been.
“It sends a clear signal to the Royal Family and to Harry that Diana’s family are there for him.
“At his address at Diana’s funeral, Charles Spencer said he would look out for William and Harry in her place.
“He said, ‘We your blood family will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering theses two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you had planned’.
“Charles Spencer wanted the Spencer family to be prominent above all others, but the boys were sucked up by the Royal Family.
“Now that Harry has left the Royal Family, the Spencers have laid claim to him again.”
Harry hugged his late mum’s brother and sister Earl Spencer, 59, and Lady Jane Fellowes, 67, outside St Paul’s ahead of the service yesterday.
Three cousins — George McCorquodale, 39, Louis Spencer, 30, and Lara Spencer, 18 — sat in a row behind Harry.
Just down the road, the King, Queen Camilla and other royals mingled among 8,000 guests on the Palace lawns.
Harry had been keen to meet his dad on a three-day UK visit, but on Tuesday his office said it was not possible due to the King’s busy diary.
A decade ago Charles, Camilla and Prince William had joined Harry at the first Invictus Games in London.
Yesterday, Harry arrived at 5pm and greeted his aunt and uncle before taking his seat.
The King, back to public duties despite cancer treatment, led the royals at Buckingham Palace from 4pm.
Also on the lawns were Princess Anne, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Edward and Sophie, plus the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.
The only working royals missing were the Prince and Princess of Wales.
William had conducted an investiture in Windsor earlier in the day, and Kate is not carrying out public duties due to her own cancer fight.
Applause erupted from the crowds as the royal party arrived on the Palace terrace.
A timeline of Prince Harry and William's 'feud': Brothers 'at war'
In 2018, the Sun told how “simmering tension” began when William questioned the speed of Harry and Meghan’s engagement.
The first hints of friction reportedly came after William was introduced to Meghan when she was staying at Kensington Palace.
Once she’d returned home to Canada, William and Harry sat down for a brother-to-brother chat.
He knew Harry was already head-over-heels for her but it has been claimed he advised him to take it slowly.
The younger prince reportedly didn’t take too kindly to the advice, with one royal source saying he “went mental”.
Then in June 2019 Harry and Meghan officially split off from the charity they shared with William and Kate.
The Royal Foundation will be divided between the Sussexes and Cambridges as the couples focus on their own separate charitable endeavours.
Prince William and Prince Harry first established the Royal Foundation in 2009 before Kate joined two years later shortly after their engagement was announced.
The trio would often appear together at events and the Foundation had huge successes with projects like the Invictus Games for injured veterans and the mental health Heads Together campaign.
The Royal Foundation said the decision was made following the conclusion of a review into its structure – but added both couples will continue to work together in the future.
Harry and Meg were living in close proximity to Kate and Wills within the Kensington Palace estate, but they switched to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor before baby Archie was born.
The move further increased rumours of a fallout.
Harry, 39, also hinted in his ITV documentary “Harry and Meghan, An African Journey” that he and his brother had grown apart.
It came after Prince Philip called Meghan the “D.O.W” after the Duchess of Windsor — the American divorcee who led Edward VIII to abdicate.
And he warned the late Queen to be “cautious” of Harry’s then bride-to-be, a royal author claims.
Ingrid Seward revealed in new book My Mother And I that Prince Philip felt it was “uncanny…how much Meghan reminded him of the Duchess of Windsor“.
In 2021, Harry and Meghan give their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey where Harry accused his dad of cutting him off financially.
Harry then jetted back to UK to join William in unveiling a statue to their mother Princess Diana in the grounds of Kensington Palace. But sources claimed William didn’t want to attend the memorial amid their ongoing rift.
In 2022, just before their grandmother the Queen died, sources claimed Kate acts as a “peacemaker” between the brothers.
Last year Harry claimed his brother “knocked him to the floor” during an argument about Meghan.
In his book Spare, Harry said William branded Meghan “rude” and “difficult” during a row.
Harry alleged William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor”.
He said he was left with a visible injury to his back following the argument in 2019 at Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, where he was living at the time.
In January this year, Harry flew in to be with Charles after the monarch’s shock cancer diagnosis.
Harry flew back to the US the following day – without seeing Wills.
The King then began greeting charity heroes with warm handshakes and big smiles. He was heard saying: “I’m not doing badly”. Asked ‘How are you feeling?’, he replied: “Not too bad.”
He chatted with Royal Commonwealth Society members plus Team GB’s synchronised swimming team — promising to watch them at the Paris Olympics.
In all, he spent around an hour with guests despite doctors “calibrating” his engagements.
This morning he will meet the 3 Royal School of Military Engineering (3RSME) at Gibraltar Barracks in Surrey.
He and Harry have not seen each other since February when the US-based Duke flew 5,000 miles following his father’s diagnosis.
The pair then spoke for just 30 minutes. Today is Harry’s last in the UK before he and wife Meghan visit Nigeria for Invictus events.
He is currently appealing a decision to remove his automatic right to 24-hour armed police in the UK, stripped after Megxit.