Prince Harry has staged the comeback tour of the year, reconciling with his estranged father King Charles III before heading to Ukraine to give his support to war veterans, donating vast sums to charity along the way.
It’s proved huge turnaround of public opinion for the King’s second son, who has been in mired in controversy since he decided to step back from Royal duties to protect his young family.
The prince has been living in California, USA, since 2020 with his wife Meghan and their two children Archie, six, and Lilibet, four. His 2023 memoir Spare was an unsparing account of his unhappiness being raised in the Royal Family that won him fans in some quarters but also enraged his pro-monarchist detractors.
Harry has since been stuck in various legal battles on UK soil, with varying degrees of success. He is part of a cadre of celebrities bringing cases against news organisations for libel and unlawful information gathering, and has had several wins. However he lost his case against the Home Office earlier this year over who should pay for his security detail while he is on British soil.
But in the short span of one week, the prodigal prince appears to have been the one to extend the olive branch to his family — and the United Kingdom. Here’s how it went down.
Return of the prince
Interest was mounting as news broke that Prince Harry would be visiting his former home country to pay his respects to his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who died three years ago. Royal insiders were briefing that Harry was “homesick” and began speculating that he would attempt to reconcile with King Charles III.
Harry hadn’t seen his dad for 19 months, and had expressed his misery at the estrangement. “He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff,” Harry told BBC California in May of this year, adding “I don’t know how much longer my father has.” King Charles III was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in 2024. He has only met his grandchildren a handful of times, and they haven’t seen each other for three years.
The Duke of Sussex landed at Heathrow Airport on Monday 8 September and went straight to St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, the final resting place of his grandmother. He laid wreaths and flowers in a private moment, marking three years since the Queen’s death. Harry has always spoken warmly of the woman he called Granny. “I’ll forever support my Queen, my Commander in Chief, my Granny. Even after she’s gone,” he wrote in Spare.
That evening he appeared at the 20th anniversary WellChild awards ceremony at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London. The prince has been a patron of the charity, which supports seriously ill children, for 17 years.
Harry took time to speak with children and their caregivers at the ceremony, and was filmed balloon jousting with one delighted youngster. He told Hello! that the charity had become even more meaningful to him since becoming a father, and expressed excitement at plans to expand support for parents of sick children by giving them “date nights” as part of their respite care.
He also made a veiled comment on sibling relationships while speaking to WellChild award winner Declan Bitmead, 17. “Does he drive you mad?” the prince asked Declan of his brother. “You're at the same school, that sometimes makes it more challenging.” Both Harry and William attended Eton at the same time, but Harry revealed in a 2023 interview with Anderson Cooper that he was hurt when his older brother instructed him to pretend they didn’t know each other at school. “At the time it hurt,” said the duke. “I couldn’t make sense of it.”
Brothers, the musical
A reconciliation that was not on the cards was one between Prince Harry and Prince William. The brothers both made public appearances on Tuesday 9 September, but at separate events.
The Duke of Sussex visited the Community Recording Studio in Nottingham, a BBC Children in Need project that supports children who have been affected by violence. He enjoyed a rap performance and gave out hugs — and made a personal donation of £1.1 million of his own money (not via his Archwell Foundation).
"You gave me goosebumps," he told a young rapper named Paige, after bopping along to his beats.
Prince William, meanwhile, was touring Symphony Studios in Lambeth, a music lesson provider based in the same venue as Spiral Skills, a youth homelessness charity the heir to the throne supports with his own charity Homeward.
“It’s brilliant, you guys have clearly done a lot of practising – well done, that’s not easy doing that in front of everyone – that’s brilliant,” said Prince William after watching a performance, having declined the offer of having a go on a drumkit.
While both brothers were supporting musical charity initiatives, there have been no sign in a thawing of relations. The pair were last seen together in public at their father’s coronation in 2022.
Prince Harry detailed the breakdown of their relationship in Spare, where he accused his brother of being unkind to his wife Meghan. It all came to a head, Harry alleges, when William physically attacked him. “It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor,” Harry wrote in Spare. “I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me.”
Tea with the King
On Wednesday 10 September Harry visited the Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College London, to learn about their work with child amputees in conflict and disaster zones. He made a $150,000 donation from the Archwell Foundation to the programme. He also announced a $200,000 donation to the World Health Organisation to support medical evacuations from Gaza, and gave $150,000 to assist Save the Children with its humanitarian support in Gaza.
With $500,000 donated, it was on to meet his father for the first time in a year and a half. Harry arrived at Clarence house for a 52-minute meeting with his father — over teatime, naturally.
The Duke of Sussex was spotted arriving via car at 5.20pm, and left at 6.14pm. The King had flown down from Balmoral without Camilla. The meeting may have been in the works for a while; senior aids for the King and the duke had been spotted together in London in July. The father and son hadn’t seen each other since 2024, when Harry made an emergency visit following the King’s cancer diagnosis.
Prince Harry did not give any details of what was discussed at the fleeting meeting, only saying “Yes he’s great, thank you” to gathered press. Their detent has fuelled hopeful speculation that the King will see his grandchildren again soon.
Prince William was not amused by this teatime accord, at least according to British-American gossip journalist Rob Shuter, who published a take from a “royal insider” on his Substack newsletter. “William thought his father was back in London strictly for cancer treatment and official audiences,” a courtier told Shuter. “If William had been consulted, he would have tried to block it. That’s why Charles went ahead quietly.”
On to Ukraine
Harry’s final stop on his four-day tour of the UK was to the Diana Award, where he attended a panel talk at Service Now in London. The prince shares the the Diana Award with William, but his brother was nowhere to be seen.
The Duke of Sussex heard about the mental health impacts of social media on young people. “If you're a young person it can sometimes feel as though you're lost and separated from a group and you feel isolated,” Harry said in his speech. “But I can assure you that there's nothing wrong with you."
Next, Prince Harry boarded a train to Kyiv with his team from Invictus Games. He had been personally invited by Superhumans, an organisation supporting people with lifechanging injuries from the war with Russia.
Ahead of his visit Harry told the Guardian that he hoped his presence would keep the war and its victims in the headlines. “We have to keep it in the forefront of people's minds,” he said. “I hope this trip will help to bring it home to people because it's easy to become desensitised to what has been going on.”
The duke met with veterans and joined a panel discussion at Kyiv's National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, where he drew on his personal experience as a military veteran.
“You will feel lost at times, like you lack purpose, but however dark those days are, there is light at the end of the tunnel,” said the prince. “You just need to look for it, because there will always be someone — a mother, father, sibling, friend, or comrade — there to pick you up.”
The prince has also paid his respects at the site of a Russian attack, according to Kyiv military chief Tymur Tkachenko’s posts on Telegram on 13 September.
“Buildings destroyed to rubble are a universal language. Our pain also needs no translation,” Tkachenko wrote. “And standing shoulder to shoulder with us, sharing our grief, are Ukraine’s partners and friends. We are grateful to Prince Harry for his attention to our suffering, for his sincere compassion.”
With Prince Harry’s comeback tour still ongoing, the good press is finally rolling in.
