The Duke of Sussex has said he “would love a reconciliation” with the Royal Family, in an emotional interview in which he said he was “devastated” at losing a legal challenge over his security in the UK.
Prince Harry said the King “won’t speak to me because of this security stuff”, but that he did not want to fight any more and did “not know how much longer my father has”.
The prince spoke to BBC News in California after losing an appeal over the levels of security he and his family are entitled to while in the UK.
Buckingham Palace said: “All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”
After Friday’s court ruling, the prince said: “I can’t see a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the UK at this point.”
“There have been so many disagreements between myself and some of my family,” he added, but had now “forgiven” them.
“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point continuing to fight any more, life is precious,” said Prince Harry, who said the dispute over his security had “always been the sticking point”.
The prince had wanted to overturn changes to his security that were introduced in 2020 as he stepped down as a working royal and moved to the United States.
Saying that he felt “let down”, he described his court defeat as a “good old fashioned establishment stitch up” and blamed the Royal Household for influencing the decision to reduce his security.
Asked whether he had asked the King to intervene in the dispute over security, Prince Harry said: “I never asked him to intervene – I asked him to step out of the way and let the experts do their jobs.”
The prince said his treatment during the process of deciding his security had “uncovered my worst fears”.
He said of the decision: “I’m devastated – not so much as devastated with the loss that I am about the people behind the decision, feeling as though this is okay. Is it a win for them?”
He continued: “I’m sure there are some people out there, probably most likely the people that wish me harm, [who] consider this a huge win.”
Prince Harry said the decision to remove his automatic security entitlement impacts him “every single day”, and has left him in a position where he can only safely return to the UK if invited by the Royal Family – as he would get sufficient security in those circumstances.
The prince said changes to his security status in 2020 had impacted not just him, but his wife and, later, his children too.
He went on to say: “Everybody knew that they were putting us at risk in 2020 and they hoped that me knowing that risk would force us to come back.
“But then when you realise that didn’t work, do you not want to keep us safe?
“Whether you’re the government, the Royal Household, whether you’re my dad, my family – despite all of our differences, do you not want to just ensure our safety?”
Asked whether he missed the UK, he added: “I love my country, I always have done, despite what some people in that country have done… and I think that it’s really quite sad that I won’t be able to show my children my homeland.”
Prince Harry said he would not be seeking a further legal challenge, saying Friday’s ruling had “proven that there was no way to win this through the courts”.
“I wish someone had told me that beforehand,” he said, adding that the ruling had been a “surprise”.
He continued: “This, at the heart of it, is a family dispute, and it makes me really, really sad that we’re sitting here today, five years later, where a decision that was made most likely, in fact I know, to keep us under the roof.”
Prince Harry spoke to the BBC shortly after losing his latest legal challenge against the UK government over the level of security he and his family are entitled to when visiting.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the prince’s case, which hinged on how an official committee made the decision to remove his eligibility for automatic, full-scale protection in line with what other senior royals receive.
On Friday, the court ruled that Prince Harry had made “powerful” arguments about the level of threat he and his family face, but said his “sense of grievance” did not “translate into a legal argument”.
His legal complaint centred around a committee called the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (Ravec), which authorises security for senior royals on behalf of the Home Office, and was chaired at the time by Sir Richard Mottram.
Under the committee’s regulations, Prince Harry argued, his case should have been put before Ravec’s Risk Management Board (RMB), which would have assessed the threats to his and family’s security – but that did not happen.
On Friday, senior judges said the committee had diverged from policy when making its 2020 decision over the prince’s security, but concluded it had been “sensible” to do so because of the complexity of his circumstances.
Prince Harry said his “jaw hit the floor” when he found out a representative of the Royal Household sat on the Ravec committee, and claimed Friday’s ruling had proved its decision-making process was more influenced by the Royal Household than by legal constraints.
He claimed there had been “interference” by the Royal Household in the 2020 decision, which he said resulted in his status as the most at-risk royal being downgraded to the least at risk “overnight”.
“So one does question how that is even possible and also the motive behind that at the time,” he added.
Prince Harry called on UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to intervene in his security case, and to overhaul how the Ravec committee operates.
In a statement released later on Friday, the prince said he would write to Cooper to “ask her to urgently examine the matter and review the Ravec process”.
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