Details about what transpired during Prince Harry's visit to see King Charles III remain under wraps. But according to a journalist, he had refused to talk to his father with his stepmother, Queen Camilla, nearby.
The Duke of Sussex dashed home to see his father a day after Buckingham Palace informed the public about the monarch's cancer diagnosis on Monday, Feb. 5. He was seen being driven to Clarence House, His Majesty's London home.
According to reports, the reunion between father and son only took 30 minutes while others claimed it was 45 minutes long. King Charles III was later seen with Queen Camilla on the backseat of a black car being driven to Buckingham Palace, where they took a chopper bound for Sandringham.
It is unknown what happened during the 39-year-old's brief visit to see his father. But according to British journalist Petronella Wyatt, who is a friend of Her Majesty, "hostilities flared up last week between Prince Harry and Queen Camilla".
"The Duke of Sussex apparently launched an unprovoked volley in the direction of a 75-year-old woman," she wrote on her piece for The Telegraph.
She added: "In an irony that will no doubt escape this self-proclaimed feminist and Lochinvar of the New World, Harry, I hear, preferred not to be in the same room with his stepmother when he spoke to the King about his cancer diagnosis."
Wyatt referred to Prince Harry's memoir "Spare," in which he accused his stepmother of leaking stories to the British tabloids to rehabilitate her image. He called her "dangerous" and a "villain" who "sacrificed him" in a bid to improve her reputation.
He wrote: "I have complex feelings about gaining a step-parent who I thought had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar." He also revealed in his book that he had begged his father not to marry Camilla.
Later in a promotional interview about his memoir with Anderson Cooper, Prince Harry explained why he called Queen Camilla "dangerous". He said: "Because of the need for her to rehabilitate her image...That made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press. And there was open willingness on both sides to trade of information."
He added: "With a family built on hierarchy, and with her, on the way to being Queen Consort, there was gonna be people or bodies left in the street because of that." The duke claimed he was "one of those bodies".
Wyatt suspected that the Duke of Sussex was being cautious about his stepmother hearing his conversation with King Charles III, which could explain why he did not want her in the same room with them.
She wrote: "I do not understand his continuing choler where the Queen is concerned...I have known Camilla since I was 18, and she is palpably incapable of the scheming Harry has often accused her of."
"To what has sometimes been her detriment, she is incapable of machinations of any kind. With her clean tradition as the daughter of country gentry, her complexion that rejects make-up and the elements, and her forthright, genuine approach, the closest she has come to 'scheme' is on a Scrabble board."
Despite the duke's criticism of his stepmother, Wyatt vouched for Queen Camilla's integrity. She noted that "there are some people who are devoid of ambition and snobbery" and said Her Majesty is one of them.
Prince Harry only stayed in the U.K. for 24 hours and stayed in a hotel instead of one of the royal residences. He flew back to California on Wednesday, Feb. 7. It is understood that King Charles III phoned him to tell him about his cancer diagnosis before Buckingham Palace announced it to the public.
