Royal drama: Mali meets King Charles just after Harry reunion
The Duke of Sussex has reunited with the King for the first time in 19 months – just before SA Premier Peter Malinauskas stepped in for his own brush with royalty.
Source: Channel 5 News
The Duke of Sussex reunited with King Charles for the first time in 19 months, in a private tea in London lasting less than an hour.
Harry needed to leave for an Invictus Games event, while the King had an audience with the Premier of South Australia Peter Malinauskas at Clarence House on Wednesday evening.
“Literally immediately before I got there, there was another significant visitor, because there’s a fair bit of media at the front of Clarence House,” Mr Maliauskas told FIVEAA on Thursday morning.
“He was receiving a visit from Harry, which is quite newsworthy … I was quite privileged to be able to go there and obviously, it was pretty busy.”
The Premier, who is currently on a seven-day trip to the United Kingdom, was unable to provide detail around his discussion with the King due to royal protocols but he did reveal that the King was aware of SA’s bid to to host the COP31 climate conference next year.
He also revealed the King was presented with a wind turbine made out of copper to represent SA.
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The Premier also signed a memorandum of understanding with Rolls Royce during his trip commiting to collaborate on workforce development and skills training under the new nuclear submarine build.
Rolls Royce has powered the British Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines for more than 65 years and signed the agreement with SA in London at the Defence and Security Equipment International.
In March 2023 it was confirmed that Rolls-Royce Submarines would provide all the nuclear reactor plants that will power new Australia’s new attack submarines as part of the tri-lateral AUKUS agreement.
“AUKUS presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our state. This MoU will help us build the workforce and industry capability needed to deliver on that opportunity,” Malinauskas said.
In terms of Harry, the long-awaited meeting with his father lasted just 54 minutes, but Harry appeared relaxed.
At an Invictus reception at The Gherkin building in the City of London on Wednesday evening, Harry was smiling and upbeat as he mingled with corporate sponsors and government ministers.
His public appearance came just over an hour after he left Charles’s London residence where the father and son spent time together face to face, after nearly two years apart.
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Asked how his father was by a reporter shortly after arriving at the Invictus reception, Harry replied: “Yes he’s great, thank you.”
The duke had been driven through the gates of the royal residence on Wednesday afternoon following an earlier engagement at the Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College London.
He ducked down inside the car as he was driven out of the premises, with the vehicle illuminated by camera flashes as it drove past a crowd of journalists while leaving the royal residence.
After stepping down as a senior working royal in 2020, the duke no longer benefits from blue-light police escorts which would have whisked him through any travel chaos.
Harry last saw the King in February last year when he made a transatlantic dash from his Californian home to the UK to see Charles following his cancer diagnosis.
The face-to-face encounter in February 2024 appeared to last for just over 30 minutes – with the latest meeting also lasting less than an hour ahead of the duke’s evening engagement.
The duke, who stepped down from the working monarchy in 2020, has levelled a barrage of accusations at the King, stepmother the Queen, brother Prince of Wales and sister-in-law the Princess of Wales in his Oprah interview, Netflix documentary, interviews and his autobiography Spare since moving to the US.
He previously claimed Charles was jealous of Meghan and Kate, did not hug him when he told him his mother Diana, Princess of Wales had died, and said he believed the King was “never made” for single parenthood, but “to be fair, he tried”.
Charles, according to the duke, pleaded with his sons during a tense meeting after the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral: “Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery.”
Harry remains estranged from his brother William, who has been busying himself with a flurry of engagements this week and was away in Cardiff on Wednesday visiting a new mental health hub on World Suicide Prevention Day.
Royal watchers will be waiting to see if Harry keeps quiet and refrains from publicly discussing his reunion with the King, and, on the other side, whether any briefings emerge from Palace.
-with AAP
