Prince William Likely to Ban Prince Harry from Attending Coronation, Expert Claims

(Image credit: Getty)

published 17 December 2022

Is the notion of brothers Prince William and Prince Harry ever reconciling a bridge too far? Perhaps—and Harry & Meghan, the six-part docuseries released this month on Netflix, isn’t helping the cause at all. (Likely the same will be said, come January 10, about Harry’s forthcoming memoir, Spare.) The question beginning to be widely asked: what about Harry and Meghan’s invites (or potential lack thereof) to King Charles’ coronation in May? Will they be asked to come? Some sources say yes (he is, after all, the son of the monarch), but with William tasked with planning the event, it could be up in the air.

“You can’t have people like this going to the King’s coronation,” royal expert Angela Levin says, per OK. “It’s an important occasion and it can’t just be all about them [Harry and Meghan]—and if they do come, it will be all about them. I think William will say, ‘Absolutely not. You cannot come.’”

Of all of the members of the royal family—at least in this writer’s opinion—it was William who was most negatively portrayed in the docuseries, and “he is the most annoyed about all of this, and today, once again, they dragged him through the mud,” Levin says.

The bits in particular about the so-called “Sandringham summit”—revealed in Volume Two of the docuseries, released this past Thursday—are particularly damaging to the relationship between William and Harry, which likely is irrecoverable at this point, experts say. In Harry & Meghan, Harry says of the summit “it was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that just simply weren’t true. And my grandmother, you know, quietly sit there and take it all in.”

“There’s no question that this is a very damaging docuseries,” royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams says. “It’s skillfully made and destructive—particularly to William—extremely cruel. There’s no doubt that the rift between the brothers will [be] irretrievable after the claims in regard to the Sandringham summit.”

As Harry and Meghan’s coronation invites hang in the balance, one has to continually wonder—would any of this be happening, any of it, if Princess Diana were still here?

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.