Royal family: Prince Harry is in distant exile as he turns 40

Prince Harry was once one of the British royal family’s most popular members, but as he celebrates his 40th birthday this weekend he is increasingly distanced from the UK public and his own family.

The younger son of King Charles III, now living in California with his American television actress wife Meghan and their two young children, reaches the landmark on Sunday.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Archie, aged five, and three-year-old Princess Lilibet live in the celebrity enclave of Montecito, near Santa Barbara, on the US West Coast.

But Harry is not only separated by geography.

“He is completely isolated. I don’t see him coming back even with a minor role . . . there’s no sign of an official role for him,” Pauline Maclaran, from Royal Holloway University of London, said.

“They (the public) don’t trust him,” added royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams.

Harry’s ties with the royal family have been increasingly fraught since the couple quit royal life and moved to North America in early 2020.

First came an explosive television interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which the couple claimed that senior royals speculated about the colour of their unborn son’s skin. Meghan is of mixed heritage.

Suggestions of racism prompted Harry’s brother William, heir to the throne, to declare when asked that the royals were “very much not a racist family”.

The brothers’ grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, also politely questioned Harry and Meghan’s version of events.

“Recollections may vary,” she said in a statement, promising to look into the matter.

A potentially decisive rupture came early last year with the publication of Harry’s uncompromising and unfiltered autobiography, Spare.

The book, which is set to be released in paperback in October, was seen as an all-out attack against the centuries-old institution of the royal family, which still plays a central role in British life.

It includes lengthy passages on Harry’s strained relationship with his “beloved brother” William, 42, whom he also describes as his “arch-nemesis”, and their father.

Experts said they did not see any reconciliation on the horizon.

“His differences from other members of the royal family probably would have been settled by now if any agreement had ever been possible,” said Mark Garnett, from the University of Lancaster in northwest England.

“The idea of a divided royal family only increases unwelcome media attention.”

Harry told American TV network ABC in February that he was “sure” his father’s cancer diagnosis could reunite the family, days after a brief visit to the king.

However, on another visit by the prince to London in May, father and son were at separate events nearby but did not meet.

Harry, who has railed against media intrusion, even reportedly declined an invitation to stay at Buckingham Palace during his visit and instead stayed at a London hotel.

“He is naive about the damage he has caused”, Professor Maclaran said.

Relations between William and Harry, whose once-close bond was forged with the death of their mother Princess Diana in 1997, remain publicly frosty.

They were seen together at the late queen’s funeral in September 2022 but have pointedly kept their distance at subsequent events, including at their father’s coronation in May last year.

Royal author Robert Jobson likened the pair, who are reportedly not on speaking terms, to stags “who have locked horns”.

“I can’t really see a reconciliation in the near future,” he told reporters in London this week.

While Harry and Meghan have more supporters in the United States, the British public has also apparently taken sides in the family feud.

Harry and Meghan languish at the bottom of royal popularity surveys, alongside his disgraced uncle Prince Andrew, whose links to the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have made him persona non grata.

In contrast, William and his wife Catherine, who is recovering from cancer, are hugely popular.

Former British Army captain Harry, meanwhile, is keeping busy with several projects, chief among them preparation and promotion of the Invictus Games he founded for military veterans with disabilities.

He and Meghan also recently completed a mini-tour in Colombia and Nigeria promoting mental health, equality and inclusion.

If royal tours are a “vehicle for (British) diplomacy”, the Sussexes’ visits are a way of refining their “branding”, Professor Maclaran said. She has written about the royals and consumer culture.

The tours are a way to “stay relevant”, she added. It is only “the (royal) titles that make them different from other celebrities”, she added.