A Royal Biographer Says King Charles Was ‘Loving’ to Young Prince Willam and Prince Harry
These past few years, Prince Harry has spoken out about the alleged mistreatment he and his wife endured in the royal family. According to the Duke of Sussex, he and his family were never close. He said his father, King Charles III, was a distant parent.
However, a royal expert recently disputed these claims.
Prince Harry claims King Charles was not ‘loving’ toward him
In Harry’s memoir, Spare, the prince gave examples of moments throughout his childhood that purportedly showed Charles to be an emotionally distant father.
For example, Harry wrote about a story he had heard about his birth in 1984. Allegedly, Charles told Princess Diana, “Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an Heir and a Spare — my work is done.” Harry added, “A joke. Presumably. On the other hand, minutes after delivering this bit of high comedy, Pa was said to have gone off to meet with his girlfriend.”
Then, in 1997, when Charles broke the news of Diana’s death to Harry, the now-king was reportedly not great at consoling his son. Harry said, “Pa didn’t hug me. He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis? But his hand did fall once more on my knee and he said: ‘It’s going to be OK.'”
Harry also claimed that Charles was not good at being “intimate face-to-face.” His preferred way of communicating intimacy seemed to be leaving letters on Harry’s bed.
“On occasion, after a long multi-course dinner, I’d walk upstairs and find a letter on my pillow,” Harry wrote. “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.”
Royal expert disagrees with Prince Harry’s claims that King Charles was not ‘loving’
According to royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith, Harry’s depiction of Charles in Spare is not wholly accurate.
“I’ve always felt — what Harry said notwithstanding — that Charles was a loving father to his boys, particularly after Diana’s death,” she said on the podcast, The Royal Report. “But he was also an exceedingly busy person who was kind of determined to show the world that he deserved to be Prince of Wales, and he wanted to make a difference.”
Because of this, Smith acknowledged that Charles “probably didn’t spend as much time with his boys” while they were growing up.
Prince Harry tries to be affectionate with his children
In a live-streamed conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté, Harry shared that he tries to be extra affectionate with his two children, Archie and Lilibet.
“It leaves me in the position now, as a father of two kids of my own, to make sure that I smother them with love and affection,” he said (via The Independent). “Not smother them to the point where they’re trying to get away and I’m like, ‘No, come here I need to hug you.'”
Harry added, “I, as a father, feel a huge responsibility that I don’t pass on any traumas, or any I guess negative experiences, that I’ve had as a kid or as a man growing up, and that’s work. That’s putting in the work and that’s daily being cautious of my behavior and my reactions to both of my kids.”
