SARAH VINE: Harry is not offering any kind of olive branch, he’s doubling down

Far from signalling some form of rapprochement with his estranged family, Prince Harry’s visit to the UK last week (to attend a memorial service for his aunt Jane’s late husband, Lord Fellowes) seems to have only widened the abyss.

Not only did he and his brother Prince William fail to exchange a single word in church, perhaps more tellingly it has now emerged that he stayed with his uncle, Charles Spencer, at the family’s stately home, Althorp, in Northamptonshire.

You may well ask, why shouldn’t Prince Harry stay with his uncle? After all, his mother is buried at Althorp, which means a part of him will always call it home.

That’s true. But the way the information has come to light – via an American publication with established links to the Sussexes – is certainly intriguing.

Prince Harry could easily have been put up at one of the royal residences for this visit. The King has made it clear that his door is always open to his youngest son.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex 

But not only did Harry choose not to (in fact, he didn’t see his father at all on this trip, despite the fact that the King is still receiving treatment for cancer), he made a point of staying with Earl Spencer.

It’s fair to say there is no love lost between the monarch and the Earl. Anyone who remembers Earl Spencer’s coruscating speech at Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997 knows that.

He has always held the King – and by extension the Royal Family – responsible for his sister’s agonies, and he’s not entirely wrong. Princess Diana was poorly treated by Charles in some respects; in others, though, she very much gave as good as she got.

Nonetheless, Harry clearly takes a more one-sided view, and has said as much in his various attacks on screen and in print against his father. In fact, many of the Duke’s difficulties, especially over the past few years, arguably stem from what he sees as the ultimate betrayal of his mother by his father.

Not only does he need someone to blame for his loss – he also needs someone to punish.

To begin with, it was just his father and, in private, Queen Camilla. But now Prince William is being punished, too (along with Kate) for their decision to put duty ahead of anything else.

Althorp in Northamptonshire, where Princess Diana is buried and Prince Harry stayed during his trip to the UK last week

Like so many people who carry a great pain inside them, Prince Harry knows how to wound. The last few years have been one long, drawn-out exercise in lashing out against those he believes have wronged him.

Not even his late grandmother, Elizabeth herself, was exempt from his bitterness. He made her last few years on this earth very difficult indeed.

The more William pivots towards duty, the more Prince Harry faces the other way, allying himself with his mother’s bloodline, the House of Spencer.

He’s always had the look of that side of the family, with that red hair so reminiscent of his uncle’s; now he’s confirming where his loyalties lie.

This snub to his father and brother sends a clear, unequivocal message. Prince Harry is not offering any kind of olive branch; he’s doubling down.

Quite how the Earl feels about this is anyone’s guess. He has been through a lot of emotional turmoil himself recently, with the publication of his recent memoir, A Very Private School, in which he wrote about the relentless abuse, sexual and physical, that he suffered as a boy at Maidwell Hall school.

He’s said that the process of revisiting those horrors triggered in him a ‘breakdown’; he also recently split from his third wife. Does he really need to get dragged in to all this?

Charles Spencer with Prince Harry in 2021

Probably not. But it may be too hard to resist, given the history between the two families. There’s no doubt that the Spencers have always considered the upstart Windsors somewhat inferior in aristocratic terms.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Prince Harry, somewhat at a loss in California and with increasingly limited employment options, doesn’t gradually start to foster a stronger connection with his mother’s family, with whom his relationship is much more straightforward.

The exacting Duchess of Sussex too, might be persuaded of the virtues of the Althorp Estate, which boasts all the grandeur and opulence of a Royal residence but with none of the obligations, public exposure or restrictions.

No doubt there are some excellent jam-making facilities in the servants’ kitchens, and one imagines no end of whimsical photo opportunities on Princess Diana’s island to delight the folks back home.

If the Sussexes wanted Archie and Lilibet, now aged five and three, to go to school in the UK, Althorp would not be a bad base for them. The children would certainly be very happy there, frolicking in the same grounds as a young Diana, running through the same marbled corridors.

We shall see. But if Harry really does want to spend more time in the UK without having to compromise or eat humble pie, Uncle Charles might just have the answer.

Now there’s a thought.