Harry and William’s television snub that so wounded their father

Last year, the relationship between Charles and his sons became frosty.

the cause? In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death in a Paris tunnel, William and Harry had decided to take part in an ItV documentary — Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. and consciously or not, they did it without once mentioning Charles.

the Prince, of course, was fully aware he was never going to win the never-ending PR fight against his now iconic dead wife. But what did upset him was his sons’ decision to write him completely out of their history.

‘It was as if he had never existed,’ said one of his friends.

an insider remarked: ‘It would have been nice if they had acknowledged his contribution to their upbringing. He was, and tries to be, a jolly good father after all.’

Even when Harry and William appeared at a press launch for the documentary, they failed to give him so much as a mention.

and in the programme itself, when Prince William said that his mother gave him ‘the right tools’ for life, some heard a hint that his style of monarchy will perhaps be different from his father’s and grandmother’s.

touching as the documentary was in many other ways, it also had another important omission. In the months before it was shown, William and Harry had led calls for openness about mental health issues — yet the film signally failed to tackle their mother’s mental frailties, let alone her clandestine affairs.

It was, in short, a candy-coated portrayal of somebody who in reality was far more complex. Intriguingly, the princes had warned the film-makers at the start not to expect too much from them.

‘they prefaced their interviews by saying: “We don’t actually have that many memories of our mum”,’ producers ashley Getting and Nick Kent recalled. Perhaps the boys’ grief had suppressed many of their memories. Perhaps they were too raw and unprocessed. In any case, once filming began, they were able to recall more than they’d expected.

For Charles, the period leading up to the anniversary of Diana’s death felt like an excruciating version of Groundhog Day. He could do nothing but remain tight-lipped as the ghost of his late wife returned, along with the tainted narrative of himself as the calculating and sinful older husband.

Worst of all, from his viewpoint, was when Channel 4 showed videotaped confessions made by Princess Diana herself, with the help of her speech coach Peter settelen, in which she cast Charles as a villain.

the final Diana documentary last summer was a BBC film focusing on the days between her death and funeral. and here, Charles’s role was finally acknowledged — by Harry.

SPEaKING in the film, Harry said: ‘One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to tell your children that the other parent has died. But he was there for us, he was the one out of two left. and he tried to do his best to make sure we were protected and looked after.’

this felt like too little too late, said sources close to the Prince. But Charles, at least, was pacified.

Her sons also organised a rededication of their mother’s grave this year. Instead of using the 20th anniversary of her death on august 31, they chose her birthday, July 1. this date came during Charles and Camilla’s planned tour of Canada. the archbishop of Canterbury was there, as was the then three-year-old Prince George. But the Prince of Wales wasn’t, and it seems likely his sons had planned it that way.