Victoria Ward
The Duchess of Sussex, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet will not travel to London next week after a request for police protection was denied.
After 10 days of uncertainty since the refusal, the Duke of Sussex has decided it would not be safe to bring his family to the capital.
It remains unknown whether the duke – who will fly solo to London on Monday – will accept the invitation to stay at a royal residence, as had been anticipated.
He is understood to be liaising directly with the King, with any plans to see each other made privately between them.
The eleventh-hour decision throws his longed-for reunion between his children and their grandfather into doubt.
While the duchess and the children will not come to London, the family has not ruled out the prospect of them travelling to Britain.
The duchess had been due in Birmingham on Friday to join her husband at an Invictus Games engagement – an appearance that could go ahead.
Royal engagements are meticulously planned, with every minute scheduled weeks, if not months, in advance.
The five-day visit had been carefully programmed, but was thrown into disarray some 10 days ago with the late revelation that the duke and duchess would receive no taxpayer-funded police protection.
Only a day before Prince Harry returns to London for highly publicised charitable engagements, no one knows what is going on, himself included.
The duke and duchess, no longer working members of the royal family, are not beholden to the wider palace machinery and call their own shots.
The duke’s schedule is not in doubt, but his family’s private plans are uncertain.
This was intended to be no normal return visit of the kind he had been making solo for several years.
Instead, the duke was bringing Prince Archie, seven, and five-year-old Princess Lilibet in the fervent hope that he might orchestrate a long-awaited reunion with the King, and the duchess was expected to make her first return to the UK since 2022.
She was scheduled to accompany her husband on two public engagements to help promote the one-year countdown to the Invictus Games in Birmingham 2027 – one at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London and the event in Birmingham.
The family had hoped to travel together for around two weeks, the public engagements book-ended with private time with friends and family.
Plans included a visit to Althorp, the Spencer family estate and resting place of the duke’s late mother Diana, Princess of Wales.
But the security provision on which they had pinned their hopes was denied, leaving the Duke in a quandary, repeatedly changing his mind about the best course of action, who to bring with him and where to stay.
He had planned to accept the invitation to stay at a royal residence, but the lack of security provisions prompted last-minute jitters about that too.
One source said he had been promised safe passage in and out of the residence, which never materialised. The palace denied this was ever on the table. Regardless, alternative private accommodation was frantically being researched at the eleventh hour.
The duke received multiple briefings last week from his private security team, outlining his various travel options and the cost implications of each.
One was to stick to the original plan to fly to London with his wife and children from Europe, where they are on holiday.
They could have accepted the offer to stay at a royal residence, and Meghan and Harry could have proceeded with their engagements as planned. Alternatively, the Duke could have flown in alone, followed by his wife and children a few days later.
A third option was for the duke to plough on with his work while the rest of his family remained in Europe. Given his ardent wish for his children to meet their grandfather, whom they have not seen for four years, this remains the least-favoured option.
While the duke is likely to return to the UK in September to attend the annual WellChild Award ceremony, his children will be back at school, and there is no saying whether the King will be available.
Next week, therefore, was his best chance – which prompted a tug of war between heart and head.
On top of this, it had been announced that the long-awaited High Court ruling on the Duke’s privacy claim against the publisher of the Daily Mail would be handed down on Tuesday, just as he took to the stage for his first public engagement in the UK in 10 months.
If he wins on just one of the 14 articles comprising his claim against Associated Newspapers Limited, he will deliver a victory speech from an as-yet-undisclosed location.
The timing is less than ideal. Despite all the noise surrounding security and his relationship with his father, the duke and his team had remained hopeful that, in the moment, the attention would be on his charities – Invictus, WellChild and Scotty’s Little Soldiers.
Now his arrival will be overshadowed by a significant court judgment that may or may not go his way.
In the event, the family decided to avoid London altogether, believing it to be unsafe. Any hopes of orchestrating a reunion now appear to rest with the King.
As the duke weighed up his options, both his own team and Buckingham Palace were in the dark. He remained undecided on Saturday.
Braced for drama
Meanwhile, palace aides, already exasperated by Team Sussex’s decision to jump the gun and announce travel plans before anything was confirmed, were braced for a further week of drama.
Some believed the duke had tried to use his children as a form of “emotional blackmail” to bounce the Home Office into giving him police protection. It was even alleged that he had never intended to bring the children.
The soap opera prompted plenty of frustration that the real work was being overshadowed. It was even claimed that the King was not desperate to build bridges with his son, although he would do so if that was what Harry wanted.
Other sources painted a different picture, insisting that the pair – who have met only twice in two years – would love to see each other and that the King would love to see his grandchildren.
While the monarch recognises the complex issues at play, family remains of the greatest importance. One source said he had “softened his stance” when it came to keeping a distance from his younger son, although it was not a decision he took lightly.
The deep anger and hurt felt by the Prince and Princess of Wales have certainly played a part, as have their fears about the further damage the duke could do to the family.
But the King and the Duke of Sussex are on good terms, speaking frequently. Their private secretaries are also in more regular contact than some might imagine.
Come what may, the duke will return to London alone next week.
Can he swallow his pride and bring his wife and children back to his homeland – at least to Birmingham if not to London – without police protection, despite claiming it was too dangerous?
He is running out of time to decide. For all the deep distrust on both sides, the security rows, the briefings and the counter-briefings, only time will tell whether the benefits ultimately outweigh the risk.
The Telegraph, London
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