Prince Harry’s UK Comeback Upstaged by Princess Diana Dispute - Newsweek
Prince Harry will attend an awards ceremony for one of his charities in London as his U.K. comeback continues to compete for attention in the British media with his uncle Charles Spencer's bombshell book about King Charles' response to Princess Diana's death.
The WellChild Awards, in London on Monday night, will be a fresh opportunity to try to turn the focus onto one of his longest standing projects, a charity which exists to help seriously ill children and their families.
The Duke of Sussex moved back to the U.K. with Meghan Markle and their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, at the end of August and experienced a chaotic first few weeks. First there was a dispute with Buckingham Palace over a letter describing them as "private citizens," followed by a crisis over Uganda temporarily withdrawing from his Invictus Games tournament for veterans and then security concerns over traffic jams prompted the Sussexes to switch schools.
And last week, Prince Harry looked like he might begin a run of straight-forward, positive news stories on Thursday and Friday, with visits to support Invictus in London and Birmingham. That all changed when the serialization of his uncle Earl Spencer's new book Swan Song began.
Prince Harry's charity visits last week were an opportunity to get the narrative of his return to Britain back on track after a turbulent period. His two events appeared to go to plan but royal commentators and news programs were preoccupied with Spencer's book and its claim that the king had seemed "giddily elated" during a phone call after Diana's death.
WellChild gives him another opportunity to remind the British public of the contribution he made while he was a working royal family member.
Harry became WellChild patron in 2007, meaning he has been with the charity for 19 years, and the organization is also celebrating 20 years of its WellChild nurses program.
The event is annual and in the past has given him an opportunity to show his emotional side, connect with young children and their parents.
Harry described the awards in his book, Spare: "I’d attended many times through the years, having been a royal patron of the organization since 2007, and it was always gutting. The children were so brave, their parents so proud—and tortured."
One year, in 2019, it triggered a major argument with Prince William after Harry broke down in tears in front of the cameras. Harry described the fallout in his book.
"We’d been filled with hope, and worry, like all expectant parents, and now we had a healthy little boy at home," he wrote. "But these parents and children hadn’t been so lucky. Gratitude and sympathy converged in my heart, and I choked up."
Harry said he later received a call from William, expressing concern. "He said I wasn’t well," he wrote. "He said again that I needed help. I reminded him that I was doing therapy. In fact, he’d recently told me he wanted to accompany me to a session because he suspected I was being 'brainwashed.'”
Prince Harry's first public charity visit in Britain since his return was on Thursday night for the inaugural Invictus Spirit Awards, at the Old Royal Naval College, in Greenwich, South London.
The Invictus Games is a Paralympics-style tournament for the military community and brings together armed forces personnel representing countries around the world, including America.
In a speech, Harry said: "Invictus has never been about what happened to you. It is about what you choose to do next. And none of us does that alone.
"The need is not historical. Conflict is not historical. Neither are the injuries, visible and invisible, that people carry home from it. They are happening now, which means our responsibility is now."
At the event, he met the Irish Guards, in full uniform, a regiment that counts the Princess of Wales as its honorary colonel.
On Friday, Harry visited Ninestiles Academy, in Birmingham, where he spoke to children as he launched Inspire, a program designed to use the inspiring stories of competitors in the games to teach children mental resilience. He also played pickleball with the children.
Swan Song caused headlines last week with dramatic claims, including that Charles had said in the days after Diana's death that: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”
Another passage read: "The phone rang constantly. Prince Charles caught me as I crossed the landing upstairs. Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated—like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time."
"I suspect the prince’s first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not," Spencer wrote.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson last week told Newsweek: "While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss."
