It’s been a year full of trials and tribulations for the Royal family, what with King Charles and Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnoses and even Princess Anne’s equestrian head injury. Tragically, 2024 has been unkind to the Windsors yet again with the sudden and unexpected death of Prince William and Prince Harry‘s uncle.
Lord Robert Fellowes, brother-in-law to Princess Diana and therefore uncle to her two sons, passed away at the age of 82 on July 29, from unknown causes. Lord Fellows served as the former private secretary to the late Queen Elizabeth II, standing at her side throughout the 1990s, a tumultuous decade for his own side of the family — not least the death of his sister-in-law in 1997, alongside her boyfriend, Dodi Al Fayed.
In 2008, Fellowes was forced to deny at an official inquest that he had nothing to do with Diana’s death, after Al Fayed’s father, Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, accused him of being the brains behind a conspiracy to murder the two of them. Fellowes was able to prove his alibi, however, and the inquest ultimately found that Diana’s death in Paris was an accident.
With a death in the family like this, especially someone so connected to a previous death in the family, it’s times like this that leave you wondering if the remaining Royals could ever fully reconcile. Well, if that was to occur one day, it seems the solution rests in the hands of King Charles and King Charles alone.
There’s one thing that King Charles can do that could convince Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to return to the U.K.
The emotional reasons keeping Harry and Meghan apart from the Royal family have been discussed extensively, but maybe the most significant roadblock to a Royal reconciliation is a logistical one. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been barred from receiving police protection if and when they return to British soil.
Since leaving their Royal duties behind in 2020, the couple and their two children, Prince Archie (5) and Princess Lilibet (3), are no longer eligible to receive the state-funded security detail of their relatives. In April, Harry lost a legal bid to challenge the ban on his paying for police protection. As we know from the duke’s recent Tabloids on Trial interview, he seriously fears for his wife’s safety when she’s in the U.K., which is why Meghan returns to England so rarely.
If only there was someone with the power to overturn this legal decision and allow Harry the security protection he “so desperately” desires? Maybe a father who holds the highest office in the land and so can use his sway to help out his estranged son? According to what a Royal insider tells Page Six, it all rests on King Charles to help out Harry and Meghan, which could be just the olive branch this fractured family needs.
“King Charles can give Harry the security clearance he wants so desperately,” the source claims. “As the monarch, he is the ultimate decision-maker. That would be how father and son can reconcile.”
This summer, for instance, the Royals are holidaying in the Scottish highlands, but Harry and Meghan have naturally not been invited. If the king could find it in his heart to gift Harry his security clearance, though, then maybe future family vacations could tell a different story.