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Prince Harry will not stay at Buckingham Palace during his stay in Britain this week, the palace said, despite a spokesperson for the King’s youngest son telling media on Monday that he had accepted an invitation to do so.
CBC News has learned that Harry had not formally responded to the offer of royal accommodation by a specified deadline, and was told over the weekend that he could no longer stay at Buckingham Palace in central London.
The prince’s visit to London and Birmingham for a series of charity engagements has sparked speculation as to whether the estranged royal would spend time with his father, King Charles, or stay in a royal palace.
But the buildup to the trip has been overshadowed by a dispute with the government over security, and a spokesperson for the prince said on Sunday that Harry’s wife, Meghan, and children Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, would not join him on the trip to London, but could join later when he visits Birmingham.
“For a trip that was meant to be about the Invictus Games and about his children coming to the U.K. for the first time in four years, it’s really become about a big row about security,” British journalist Victoria Murphy, who has covered the Royal Family for 15 years, told CBC News.
Harry, a British army veteran who served in Afghanistan, planned the visit to mark a year before the Invictus Games, the Paralympic-style competition he founded to motivate and inspire military veterans around the world as they work to overcome battlefield injuries. The event was held in British Columbia last year, and is scheduled to take place in Birmingham next year.
Harry has lived in the United States since 2020 with his American wife Meghan, after they stepped down as working members of the Royal Family, citing a desire to be financially independent and to escape what they characterized as media intrusion into their private lives.
Blanket security privileges ended
Over the six years since, the depth of the bad blood between Harry and his father and brother has become clear, made public in interviews given by Harry and in his autobiography, Spare, which included unflattering depictions of the family and damning allegations of a toxic relationship between the monarchy and the press.
Charles, who is still undergoing treatment for cancer, has barely seen his two grandchildren since they were born but Harry said in May last year he wanted the fighting to end.
In emotional testimony against the publisher of British tabloid The Daily Mail, Prince Harry accused the company of making his wife Meghan Markle’s life ‘an absolute misery.’ The lawsuit also involves celebrities including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley.
Harry’s spokesperson had originally said that he would be staying in a mix of royal and private accommodation.
Murphy said the optics aren’t great for the Royals as “we have a situation here where a lot of stuff is into the public domain and they’re having to put stuff out there in order to get their side across.”
British authorities say Harry isn’t entitled to blanket protection because he is no longer a working member of the Royal Family and they will assess his security on a case-by-case basis, just like any other celebrity. Harry says it is unsafe for his children to travel to Britain without protection because his family remains a target simply by virtue of their royal status.
The decision rests with the government’s Royal and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC), that rules on who should get state-funded protection.
“The public events that he’s doing are public events for his personal charitable projects not on behalf of the country, so it is causing quite a lot of intense debate,” said Murphy. “He wants this guaranteed police protection [but] he knew when he announced that he was going to come here and bring his children here that he didn’t have that.”
Another complicating factor is that the head of the monarchy is a symbolic figure in the British judicial system. On Tuesday at the High Court in London, a judge will reveal his verdict in Harry’s invasion of privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail.
The verdict, said Murphy, “is going undoubtedly be the focus for the day and possibly beyond depending on what it is.”