It was 45 minutes.
Or maybe, depending on what newspaper you read, only 30 minutes.
Either way, it’s a fact that Prince Harry spent a whole day traveling 6,000 miles from California to see his cancer-stricken father and got less face time with him than I had with my barber over the weekend.
And he’s had precisely zero face time with his brother Prince William, despite Harry’s “friends” briefing the media that he’d be willing to meet him.
What does all this mean?
Well, writing as someone who’s covered the Royals assiduously as a journalist for more than 30 years, I’d say it means that King Charles has more important things to worry about — like his health — than the bruised feelings of his errant runaway son, and that William would rather shoot himself than be in the same room as someone he now views as a despicable traitor.
It’s impossible to overstate just how tumultuous this moment is for the royal family and the British monarchy.
I never thought we’d see a more difficult challenge for the royals than the weeks following the tragic sudden death of Princess Diana, but what’s happening now feels altogether more existential.
In less than three years, we’ve seen the deaths of Prince Philip and then Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; the Epstein scandal engulfing Prince Andrew; his ex-wife Sarah being struck down with two cancers; the Duke and Duchess of Sussex launching endless devastatingly damaging salvos from America; Catherine, the Princess of Wales recently being hospitalized for surgery on an abdominal issue so serious she needs months away from the limelight; and now the new King announcing he has cancer just 17 months into his reign, forcing him to cancel all public engagements.
It’s left the whole family reeling on both a personal and professional level, and the future of the Monarchy looking increasingly fragile.
And right at the heart of this fragility lies the raging intractable feud between William and Harry.
What Charles’s illness has sadly, shockingly illustrated is that William may be much nearer to being King himself than he would choose to be.
I know from my own palace sources that the situation with the King is “serious” — as most cancers would be for a 75-year-old man — and there are real fears about what may happen next.
Should his father’s health deteriorate, or the treatment prove too debilitating, then William may be deputized to step in for the King and perform the monarch’s vital constitutional duties as head of state.
But if, God forbid, the cancer ends up taking Charles’s life, William would automatically be propelled straight onto the throne while still in his early 40s.
At which point, Britain would have a new young Monarch whose only sibling spends all his time trying to destroy the monarchy, a scenario that would make “Succession” look like a tea party.
That’s why what’s happened in the past few days is so much more important than a mere familial squabble.
It’s also why I completely understand why William has refused to see his brother on this trip.
I would do the same if one of my own siblings had spent years publicly trashing our family for financial gain.
How do you ever forgive a brother who, along with his wife, brands you all a bunch of callous racists on national TV, or who trashes your wife in a Netflix documentary by suggesting you only married her because she “fits the mold” of a royal bride over someone you’re “destined” to be with?
Or who attacks your father’s wife as a “dangerous villain” in a tell-all book?
The cold hard reality is that Harry hasn’t just burned his bridges with the Royals, he’s torched them into smoldering ashes — and I’m told many of them want nothing more to do with either him or Meghan.
That’s certainly William’s view — and who can blame him?
For the King’s eldest son and heir, the real royal show must go on despite all the deep worries he must have over his wife and father’s health.
Today, William returned to work for the first time since Kate was hospitalized, leading an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle in which he handed out 50 honors. And later, he will attend a charity dinner.
Meanwhile, Harry, a “non-working Royal,” performs no such duty for his country.
Instead, he lives a life of luxurious comparative laziness in California, banking gazillions of dollars from his never-ending attacks on his family, cynically and hypocritically exploiting his royal status for massive personal enrichment whilst simultaneously trying to bury the institution that afforded it to him.
Only last week, he and Meghan popped up in Jamaica to be photographed with the country’s prime minister, who wants to ditch the monarchy.
They may as well have just flipped the bird while they were at it.
The Sussexes want to be a rival royal family, with all the huge benefits that brings, but with none of the hard, dutiful graft — and they don’t care how much damage they cause in the process.
It’s a shameful state of affairs that William is right to be utterly incensed by, and to feel he can’t trust gossip-monger Harry as far as he can throw him.
I’m reliably informed there are two hopes of him reconciling with his brother any time soon: No hope and Bob Hope.
For the sake of his family, and the monarchy, he should keep it that way.
