Why Granny Middleton will always prevail over Charles...

WE DON’T often feel sorry for Prince Charles. Yet most of us would have felt a pang of pity for him yesterday when we learned that he still had not seen his new grandson four days after the baby’s birth.

Kate’s mum Carole was already at Kensington Palace when proud parents William and Kate and their new addition arrived home. Her sister Pippa was next to visit, then brother James. Dad Michael slipped in quietly to welcome the bairn and even Princess Eugenie popped in.

Meanwhile, Prince Charles was miles away on holiday in Scotland and on Wednesday had to go to France for a World War I memorial service. How it must have pained him to have seen William’s in-laws stealing the limelight.

In truth, Charles’s absence only underlines the sense of exclusion he feels from William’s family — as the Mail’s Richard Kay pointed out yesterday, he has complained that he ‘almost never’ sees Prince George.

Yet isn’t Charles now reaping the fruits of his bitterly unhappy marriage to William’s mother — and how he betrayed her?

Only two people know how soon after the Royal Wedding Charles was back in his mistress Camilla’s arms. But even supporters of Charles

NEVER shy about her racy sex life, Prue Leith, 78, says that while filming the Christmas Bake Off in midsummer heat she wanted to be naked underneath her wool coat. Enough about saggy bottoms, Prue!

concede that by the time Harry was born in 1984 — when William was two — the marriage was over.

Wills was only ten when his father and mother separated. He was 14 when they divorced so acrimoniously. Just one year later Diana was dead. Would she still be alive had it not been for Charles’s refusal to leave the woman who caused Diana so much misery?

True, this may all be water long under the bridge, and Charles and William certainly appear cordial and warm together in public. And yes, Charles will take consolation from the fact that the new child has been named Louis Arthur Charles — Louis after his beloved uncle and mentor Lord Mountbatten.

Yet the fact is that Granny and Grandpa Middleton will always come first in Prince William’s eyes. For to him and his burgeoning brood, they offer the happiness and family stability he never knew as a child.

And Charles can never provide that, however hard he tries.

That is the tragic legacy of his ill-fated marriage to Diana.