On April 9, 2021, Prince Charles was at Highgrove readying himself to celebrate his 16th wedding anniversary with Camilla when he received news that his father Prince Philip had passed away.
The Prince of Wales, then 72, travelled the 85 miles to Windsor Castle just in time to see his father’s body being laid out by the doctor, according to royal biographer Ingrid Seward.
During the official mourning period, he spoke warmly of his ‘dear Papa’, telling reporters: ‘As you can imagine, my family and I miss my father enormously.’
But the truth is, Charles and Philip were ‘so totally opposite’ that they struggled to form a quality father-son bond.
Writing in her book ‘My Mother and I’, Seward revealed that Charles looked ‘unconcerned’ at Philip’s funeral on April 17, 2021. Only a single tear fell from his eyes.
‘Quality love – the presence of continuing availability – was never there for Charles from his father, so he learned to do without him,’ Seward explained.
Instead of focusing on his own grief, or lack thereof, Charles left Philip’s wake early ‘to try to be a father himself’ to Princes William and Harry – the latter of whom had upped and moved to America with his wife Meghan Markle and young son Archie.
As Harry had not visited the UK since ‘Megxit’, Charles ‘hoped to broker a deal between his warring sons,’ Seward added.
Prince Philip (left) and Prince Charles (right) were ‘so totally opposite’ that they struggled to form a quality father-son bond
Philip’s children sit with him on a picnic blanket at Balmoral in 1960 (left) and attend his funeral in 2021
Writing in her book ‘My Mother and I’, Seward revealed that Charles looked ‘unconcerned’ at Philip’s funeral on April 17, 2021. Only a single tear fell from his eyes
The trio left early from the wake and made small talk near the Gothic Ruin in Frogmore Gardens.
But despite Charles’s best efforts, the surface-level conversation turned into a heated row, as detailed by Harry in his bombshell memoir Spare.
‘Being British, being Windsors, we began chatting casually about the weather,’ Harry wrote.
‘Small talk. The smallest. We touched on all secondary subjects and I kept waiting for us to get to the primary one, wondering why it was taking so long and also how on earth my father and brother could appear so calm.’
The men finally addressed what they had been there to discuss all along – Harry’s shock exit from the UK as well as his revelatory interview with US chat show host Oprah Winfrey in which Meghan accused the Royal Family of wondering how dark Archie’s skin might be when he was born.
‘I tried to explain my side of things,’ Harry penned. ‘Every time I ventured a new explanation, started a new line of thought, one or both of them would cut me off.
‘Willy in particular didn’t want to hear anything. After he’d shut me down several times, he and I began sniping, saying some of the same things we’d said for months -years. It got so heated that Pa raised his hands. “Enough!”
‘He stood between us, looking up at our flushed faces: “Please, boys – don’t make my final years a misery.”‘
It has been reported that Queen Elizabeth and Prince William worked together to come up with a way to ensure the feuding brothers could walk behind the coffin together
Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips served as a ‘diplomatic buffer’ between the brothers
Prince William and Prince Harry enter St George’s Chapel for their grandfather Prince Philip’s funeral
Queen Elizabeth sits alone at the funeral of her husband in April 2021 due to coronavirus restrictions
At the socially distanced service, Prince William sat with his wife Catherine
Prince Harry, who attended the funeral without his wife Meghan Markle, sat alone in the pews
It seems the icy exchange between brothers started hours before they met in Frogmore Gardens.
It has been reported that Queen Elizabeth and Prince William worked together to come up with a way to ensure the feuding brothers could walk behind the coffin together.
Harry, who attended the funeral alone as his wife Meghan was heavily pregnant with Lili at the time, walked in line beside Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips who served as a ‘diplomatic buffer’ between the brothers, wrote historian Robert Lacey.
At the time, body language expert Judi James observed that the brothers ‘almost looked like strangers’, noting their lack of acknowledgment towards one another. She added that Harry appeared ‘desperate to avoid’ his brother.
After the socially-distanced funeral service, the details of which were chosen by Philip himself, members of the Royal Family left St George’s Chapel and removed their masks. This is when a horde of lip-readers came into their element.
‘Yes, it was great, wasn’t it?’ remarked William to Harry, as if they had not been ‘estranged’ for several months.
‘It was as he wanted,’ Harry apparently replied.
Royal fans noted what seemed to be a touching reunion between the brothers – with many noting how Catherine, then Duchess of Cambridge, expertly maneuvered herself to allow the pair to talk alone.
Philip’s coffin had on it his standard, navy cap and a sword given to him by the Queen’s father when they had married 73 years before
Prince Harry and Prince William talk to each other after Philip’s funeral service
Prince Harry and Prince William leave the funeral as the Duchess of Cambridge walks alongside them
The Duke of Sussex is seen speaking to the Duke of Cambridge following the service, as Catherine drops back
Speaking about the brothers’ conversation, body language expert Ms James told MailOnline: ‘The moment of connection between William and Harry came right at the end of the service as they left the chapel.
‘In a well-co-ordinated but also relatively natural-looking moment, Harry walked up behind William and Kate to then join them, walking between them and chatting to them both.
‘After a few seconds of what looked like natural and not self-conscious conversation, Kate fell back, leaving the two brothers walking off talking alone. It looked like a genuine moment of unity rather than something contrived for the cameras.’
Although their interaction looked perfectly friendly, historian Lacey reported that William could see no point in talking to Harry beyond pleasantries ‘since any discussion of substance would go straight back to Meghan to be leaked out via Oprah, Gayle King or some other tentacle of the Sussex network’.
