London — Buckingham Palace revealed just hours before King Charles III’s coronation on Saturday that neither the monarch’s son Prince Harry nor his brother Prince Andrew would have formal roles in the ceremony, according to Britain’s Press Association news agency. The two princes will not join the procession behind the newly-crowned king and queen as they return from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace after the ceremony.
Harry and Andrew are no longer “working” members of the royal family. Harry very publicly gave up his role, while Andrew had his duties taken away.
Prince Harry, the “Spare”
Prince Harry will be with his father, brother Prince William and other members of his family for the first time on Saturday since the publication of his tell-all memoir, “Spare.” He will not be there with his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, however — she has opted to sit the event out.
In 2020, Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, announced they were stepping back from their duties as senior royals, eventually moving to California. Both have been critical of the way they were treated by the royal family.
“I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves,” Meghan said in a Netflix special produced with the couple.
Speaking with Harry for an interview on “60 Minutes,” Anderson Cooper asked the prince about a line in his book in which he refers to a “full-scale rupture” with his family. He asked Harry if he thought it could be healed.
“Yes,” replied Harry, adding: “The ball is very much in their court. … There needs to be a constructive conversation, one that can happen in private that doesn’t get leaked.”
Meghan and the couple’s two children, Archie and Lilibet, have not traveled to the U.K. for the coronation, and it’s believed that Harry will return promptly to the U.S. after the ceremony.
The Prince Andrew scandal
Prince Andrew stepped back from public life in 2019 after he became embroiled in the controversy over his friendships with the now-deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and convicted sex trafficker Ghislane Maxwell.
The prince was accused of sexually assaulting a then-underage Virginia Giuffre and eventually paid her a sum estimated to be in the millions of dollars to settle the case out of court. The late Queen Elizabeth II stripped him of all his honorary military roles, and most of the foundations and organizations he represented cut ties with the prince.
Andrew has held onto his royal title, however. He remains the Duke of York, despite mounting calls for him to be stripped of the formal title.
