Prince Harry said that he wants to reconcile with his family after losing a court battle Friday over his publicly funded security that he said led his father, King Charles III, to stop talking to him.
“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point in continuing to fight anymore,” Harry told the BBC. “I don’t know how much longer my father has.”
But Harry took aim at Buckingham Palace officials after the court of appeal rejected a bid to restore his police protection detail that was stripped by a government committee when he stepped away from his royal duties and moved to the U.S.
The Duke of Sussex said that he was devastated to lose the case that was a source of friction with his 76-year-old father, who is being treated for an undisclosed cancer. Harry has met with him once briefly since his diagnosis early last year.
“He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff,” Harry said in the interview that aired three hours after the ruling.
Harry, who is estranged from his family since departing the U.K. and writing a tell-all memoir with embarrassing details about the House of Windsor, said Friday's court verdict meant it would be impossible to safely bring his family back to the U.K.
Harry blames Buckingham Palace officials
Despite those comments, there was little indication of reconciliation in the near future as the palace signaled its support for the court’s ruling.
Harry said repeatedly that the decision to withdraw his security had been made at the direction of palace officials in an effort to control him and his wife, even though it put their safety at risk.
“What I’m struggling to forgive, and what I will probably always struggle to forgive, is the decision that was made in 2020 that affects my every single day, and that is knowingly putting me and my family in harm’s way,” Harry said.
A government committee decided in 2020 that Harry’s security arrangements should be decided on a case-by-case basis whenever he visits the U.K.
Harry said that committee includes two representatives of Buckingham Palace who have blocked his security in the U.K. The king could resolve the security issue by stepping out of the way and letting experts make the decision, Harry added.
The prince called on U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to order a review of the process.
“Whether you’re the government, whether you’re the royal household, whether you’re my dad, my family, despite all of our differences, do you not want to just ensure our safety?”
In response to the court ruling, Buckingham Palace issued a statement saying that issue had been meticulously examined by the courts "with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”
Loss of security an ‘unintended consequence’ of move
Harry said that he loves his country and would love to show his young children his homeland, but now he only returns for funerals and court cases.
He made a rare appearance for the two-day Court of Appeal hearing last month, where his lawyer argued that his life was in danger and the Royal and VIP Executive Committee had singled him out for inferior treatment.
Three judges on the appellate court ruled unanimously Friday that the committee's decision to strip him of his publicly funded security wasn't unreasonable.
Justice Geoffrey Vos acknowledged in a 21-page judgment that the Duke of Sussex felt badly treated and his lawyer had made powerful and moving arguments on his behalf. But he said that Harry's grievance wasn't legal grounds to challenge the decision to deny him regular security.
“From the Duke of Sussex’s point of view, something may indeed have gone wrong, in that an unintended consequence of his decision to step back from royal duties and spend the majority of his time abroad has been that he has been provided with a more bespoke, and generally lesser, level of protection than when he was in the U.K.,” Vos said. “But that does not, of itself, give rise to a legal complaint.”
The ruling is likely to leave the Duke of Sussex with a large bill to pay the U.K. government’s legal fees — in addition to his own lawyers’ costs.
The judgment upheld a High Court judge’s decision last year that found that a “bespoke” plan for the Duke of Sussex’s security wasn’t unlawful, irrational or unjustified.
A lawyer for the government said that Harry’s argument repeated his misconceived approach that failed in the lower court.
“It involves a continued failure to see the wood for the trees, advancing propositions available only by reading small parts of the evidence, and now the judgment, out of context and ignoring the totality of the picture,” attorney James Eadie said.
Harry says family is endangered
Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, had stepped back from their official roles in the family in 2020, because they didn’t feel they were “being protected by the institution,” his lawyer said.
After doing so, a Home Office committee ruled that there was “no basis for publicly funded security support for the duke and duchess within Great Britain.”
Harry claimed that he and his family are endangered when visiting his homeland because of hostility aimed at him and Meghan on social media and through relentless hounding by news media.
Since he lost his government-sponsored protection, Harry faced at least two serious security threats, his lawyer said in court papers. Al-Qaida had published a document that said Harry’s assassination would please Muslims. And nearly two years ago, he and his wife were involved in a dangerous pursuit by paparazzi in New York.
Harry, 40, the younger son of Charles and the late Princess Diana, has bucked royal family convention by taking the government and tabloid press to court, where he has a mixed record.
He lost a related court case in which he sought permission to privately pay for a police detail when in the U.K. A judge denied that offer after a government lawyer argued officers shouldn’t be used as “private bodyguards for the wealthy.”
But he won a significant victory at trial in 2023 against the publisher of the Daily Mirror when a judge found that phone hacking at the tabloid was “widespread and habitual.” He claimed a “monumental” victory in January when Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. tabloids made an unprecedented apology for intruding in his life for years, and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.