Charles is ‘massively sad’

It’s the emotional drama at the heart of Megxit — the thorny relationship, so coloured by Diana, between the three princes. And as RICHARD KAY reveals, it’s having unforeseen consequences

There was perhaps just one consolation for the Prince of Wales yesterday — he was at Birkhall in Scotland, just about as far away from the centre of the royal drama over Prince harry’s departure as he could be.

Time and again at moments of crisis and great sadness Charles has sought solace in the familiar hills above the royal estate at Balmoral. he retreated there after the death of his beloved grandmother in 2002, and it was where he received the devastating news that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash in Paris five years earlier.

On both occasions harry was there, too. In the grief the prince suffered over the Queen Mother, harry was a good- humoured companion, while in 1997 Charles was a hugely comforting presence amid the great shock of his ex-wife’s death.

In loss and sorrow, father and son forged deep bonds, a closeness that has endured in the face of frequent outbreaks of domestic adversity: harry’s teenage drug- taking years, the stumbling out of nightclubs, the embarrassment of that naked romp in Las Vegas and the rift with William.

And it is why he has been so wounded — ‘floored’ was the word being used yesterday by aides to describe the prince’s mood — over the harry and Meghan affair.

No one, he believes, could have been more welcoming to his daughter-in-law or more willing to stick his neck out for his son.

When the couple went to him with their plan for a wedding at St George’s Chapel — in the face of critics unhappy that Meghan had been married before — it was Charles who persuaded the Queen to allow it to happen.

‘he pushed his mother to give his son what he didn’t manage to achieve for himself when he wed Camilla — marrying a divorcee in church,’ says a friend.

Not only that, but when Meghan’s father was unable to attend the ceremony, the prince agreed to harry’s request to walk his wife-to-be down the aisle.

he supported their move to Frogmore, paying out tens of thousands of pounds on fixtures and fittings for their new home, and allowed them to split away from William and Kate at Kensington Palace and establish their own court at Buckingham Palace.

YeT all this was not enough. harry’s bid for freedom has left the Prince of Wales ‘massively sad’, according to one friend. ‘he feels it will be seen as another mess on his doorstep: first the disaster over the mother, now the disaster over the mother’s son.’

For harry, the relationship with his father, while warmer than that between Charles and William, has always been complex.

harry’s public testimony three years ago about his own mental issues confirmed the long shadow cast over the prince by the catastrophe of losing his mother so young. he disclosed how, as an adult, he came close to a mental breakdown while still struggling to come to terms with her death, and sought psychiatric help.

here was a man, then 32, blessed with every possible privilege, admitting his suffering was still so great that he’d had to seek psychiatric counselling.

how well he had hidden it from the public.

Who could have imagined that the clown prince joshing with sprinter Usain Bolt in Jamaica, laughingly drinking rum and dancing with the locals in Belize, was privately carrying such deep emotional scars? Known for having a fiery temper — he has lashed out at paparazzi photographers at least once — he revealed that he took up boxing to help control his aggression, just as his mother tried kick- boxing as an emotional outlet after the break-up of her marriage.

Diana always saw herself as a strong woman, ever vigilant about both her sons, but especially harry, whom she knew was vulnerable.

The princess would have been aghast at the thought of harry as a 17-year- old drinking after hours at the rattlebone pub in Sherston, a few miles from the highgrove estate, and smoking cannabis in the shed round the back. Few doubt that had she still been alive, he wouldn’t have done it.

his problem at that time was that he felt very alone. Prince Charles was largely absorbed in his own problems, trying to win public acceptance for Camilla, and William was away at university in Scotland.

Back in those teenage years, harry was certainly a worry to his father, as well as palace courtiers. It was not so much his pursuit of women but the way the absence of a mother’s guiding hand and moderating presence had unleashed his wilder side. During his geography and art A-levels revision, he partied away in Kensington until 2am, puffing his way through a packet of cigarettes in an evening (he quit smoking after meeting Meghan).

But it was when both boys came to record tributes to their mother to mark the 20th anniversary of her death in 2017 that the rawness of their relationship with their father became starkly clear for all to see.

Only harry could bring himself to

It will be seen as a mess on his doorstep