Real reason Prince Harry ‘turned down a meeting with King Charles’ during whistle-stop London visit revealed

By Matt Wilkinson, Royal Editor

Prince Harry is in London but he won’t meet his father The King.

The Duke of Sussex arrived from LA alone without Meghan or their children for a busy diary of events marking 10 years of his Invictus Games.

Before setting off from California it is understood Harry was said to have been “keen’ to see the King for only the second time since his cancer diagnosis.

It is rather telling that confirmation there will be no meeting has come from the Office of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex rather than Buckingham Palace.

His team say “it unfortunately will not be possible due to His Majesty’s full program”.

They add: “The Duke of course is understanding of his father’s diary of commitments and various other priorities and hopes to see him soon.”

Now, the word that jumps out is “priorities”.

The King, we understand, is busy as he returns to public duty.

For instance, on Tuesday while Harry was in London the King was carrying out his constitutional duty and meeting the Prime Minister of Fiji at the palace.

He is also set to host a palace garden party and weekly audience with the Prime Minister on Wednesday.

And Harry’s diary is packed full for three days with Invictus. However, they will be at times just two miles apart and risk even driving past each other on London’s roads.

Some observers may see this as “sad” that father and son cannot find time.

Others may say that it’s understandable as both have work commitments and “priorities”.

But maybe there has just been too much water under the bridge for father and son to play happy families amid such huge public attention

In 2018, The Sun told how “simmering tension” began when William questioned the speed of Harry and Meghan’s engagement.

The first hints of friction reportedly came after William was introduced to Meghan when she was staying at Kensington Palace.

Once she’d returned home to Canada, William and Harry sat down for a brother-to-brother chat.

He knew Harry was already head-over-heels for her but it has been claimed he advised him to take it slowly.

The younger prince reportedly didn’t take too kindly to the advice, with one royal source saying he “went mental”.

Then in June 2019 Harry and Meghan officially split off from the charity they shared with William and Kate.

The Royal Foundation will be divided between the Sussexes and Cambridges as the couples focus on their own separate charitable endeavours.

Prince William and Prince Harry first established the Royal Foundation in 2009 before Kate joined two years later shortly after their engagement was announced.

The trio would often appear together at events and the Foundation had huge successes with projects like the Invictus Games for injured veterans and the mental health Heads Together campaign.

The Royal Foundation said the decision was made following the conclusion of a review into its structure – but added both couples will continue to work together in the future.

Harry and Meg were living in close proximity to Kate and Wills within the Kensington Palace estate, but they switched to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor before baby Archie was born.

The move further increased rumours of a fallout.

Harry, 39, also hinted in his ITV documentary “Harry and Meghan, An African Journey” that he and his brother had grown apart.

It came after Prince Philip called Meghan the “D.O.W” after the Duchess of Windsor — the American divorcee who led Edward VIII to abdicate.

And he warned the late Queen to be “cautious” of Harry’s then bride-to-be, a royal author claims.

Ingrid Seward revealed in new book My Mother And I that Prince Philip felt it was “uncanny…how much Meghan reminded him of the Duchess of Windsor“.

In 2021, Harry and Meghan give their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey where Harry accused his dad of cutting him off financially.

Harry then jetted back to UK to join William in unveiling a statue to their mother Princess Diana in the grounds of Kensington Palace. But sources claimed William didn’t want to attend the memorial amid their ongoing rift.

In 2022, just before their grandmother the Queen died, sources claimed Kate acts as a “peacemaker” between the brothers.

Last year Harry claimed his brother “knocked him to the floor” during an argument about Meghan.

In his book Spare, Harry said William branded Meghan “rude” and “difficult” during a row.

Harry alleged William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor”.

He said he was left with a visible injury to his back following the argument in 2019 at Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, where he was living at the time.

In January this year, Harry flew in to be with Charles after the monarch’s shock cancer diagnosis.

Harry flew back to the US the following day – without seeing Wills.