King Charles and Queen Camilla hosted Prince Harry, Meghan, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet at Highgrove House on Friday afternoon, bringing the King together with his grandchildren in person for the first time in more than four years. Buckingham Palace later described it as a private family occasion.
The meeting mattered because it was rare even by royal standards. Archie is seven and Lilibet is five, and the last time Prince Harry and Meghan were in the UK together was in 2022, when they attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. This visit, though, was shaped by the reality that Harry was back in the country on his own terms and on his own schedule, while the family gathering unfolded away from the public parts of the trip.
Harry spent earlier on Friday in Birmingham, where he was appearing at Invictus Games events and trying pickleball and wheelchair rugby. He was warmly applauded by participants and supporters there, but the day’s bigger story quickly became the private meeting in Gloucestershire, not the public engagement in the UK. Buckingham Palace confirmed the visit on Friday evening, after a day in which the palace home had already become the center of attention around the Sussex trip.
The friction point was plain even in a family occasion described as private. Harry saw his father this week, but there were no plans for him and the Prince of Wales to meet while Harry and Meghan were in the UK, and that left the reunion incomplete. The brothers did not come together, even as sources said father and son wanted to meet and the King was keen to make time for his two young grandchildren.
That gap matters because the visit comes after years of strain following Harry and Meghan’s departure from the UK and royal duty in 2020. Harry has traveled to the country alone since 2022, and he met his father on a trip last September, but this was the first in-person encounter for Archie and Lilibet with the King in more than four years. What happens next is less about ceremony than family: whether there will be another meeting before Harry and Meghan leave the UK, and whether the thaw reaches beyond the father, the grandchildren and the private gates of Highgrove House.
