Prince Harry forbidding his kids from setting foot in the U.K. until it’s ‘safe’ — but King Charles still won’t intervene

While Prince Harry waits for his next court date in his legal battle against the Home Office to be granted special security when visiting the U.K., he still has to attend to a different ongoing judicial case — the one against News Group Newspapers. His trips to his home country for that, however, will remain solo for the time being, and his father is choosing to stay out of it.

Harry will get a chance to appeal the High Court’s decision in April

Although Harry’s lawsuit against NGN is advancing to trial at the end of January, he’ll have to wait a while still to resolve the case against the Home Office. Per The Daily Mail, the duke was granted a two-day hearing by the Court of Appeal after challenging the High Court’s decision to deny him tax­payer-funded round-the-clock security while visiting the U.K.. That hearing will happen in April, but until then, he’ll have to fend for himself.

As a result, the 40-year-old remains adamant that his family will not be safe if they make the trip to their homeland. Harry and his wife, Suits actress Meghan Markle, moved to the U.S. in 2020, a little over a year after their oldest child, Archie, was born. They settled in Montecito, California, well away from the fierce media scrutiny and threats of all kinds from the British public.

A year after that, they welcomed their youngest child, a daughter named Lilibet after the late Queen Elizabeth II’s childhood nickname, who is believed to have visited her dad’s country only once, in 2022. That is also reportedly the only time she has been with her grandfather, King Charles III.

Nevertheless, according to Hello!, the king will not intervene in the security court case despite pleas from his son. Friends of Harry’s who spoke to the magazine say his calls “go unanswered” as Charles is determined that influencing a legal decision in any way would be “wholly inappropriate.”

Lack of a relationship with grandchildren is a source of “great sadness” for the king

Last week, a royal insider told The Mirror that the distance from his two America-based grandchildren “must remain a great sadness” for the monarch, who “hardly knows them.” King Charles is apparently invested in developing a close relationship with all of his grandchildren, regardless of how things are going with Harry.

The separation has also weighed on the duke for the last five years. In a 2020 statement, he said the U.K. was “central to the heritage of [his] children and a place [he wants] them to feel at home as much as where they live at the moment in the U.S..” Still, moving back to the other side of the Atlantic permanently is reportedly not in his plans, whether or not the hearing in April goes his way, said a BBC royal correspondent.

For now, it seems Prince Harry is giving the Crown the cold shoulder for not helping him get the security he so desperately wants. For a second time, he has opted to stay at a hotel when he visits the U.K. for his NGN hearing later this month, despite an invitation to stay at the Buckingham Palace.

Although father and son want the same thing — for visits to be facilitated so Archie and Lilibet can be more present in their paternal family’s lives — neither is willing to budge. For now, and until April, that is likely to continue to be the case.