One of King Charles’ closest friends admitted that Prince Harry’s trashing of his family has been “a terrible blow” for the new monarch — deeming it “the cruelest” betrayal by a son as the pair are set to see each other for the first time since Harry released his protocol-shattering memoir.
Lord Nicholas Soames — who has known Charles since they were both 12 — spoke out about his ongoing conversations with the king in an interview with Times Radio Thursday, two days before Saturday’s coronation.
He was asked if a possible showdown with Harry — the first since the exiled prince’s derogatory memoir and Netflix docuseries — would “take the sheen off” Charles’ historic day.
“Well, in respect of Prince Harry, I just think it’s the most tragic” situation, said Soames, the grandson of British wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill.
“I mean, I can’t put myself in the position where my own son, if he did something like that to me — it would just be the cruelest,” he said, saying that “one would mind” such a betrayal.
“And of course the King … it was very, very sad. Tragic,” he said.
“It was a terrible blow,” he said of his pal, the 74-year-old king.
Despite this, Soames said that “it would have been a great pity if Harry hadn’t come to his father’s coronation.”
“I just hope that we can keep all this in proportion,” he said of the obvious focus there will be on the 38-year-old estranged son’s interactions with the family he has so brutally put down.
“This is the day about the king and the queen [Camilla], not about Prince Harry,” Soames stressed.
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Soames was hesitant at first to discuss the king’s other scandal-scarred relative, younger brother Prince Andrew, 63, and the sex scandal tied to late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his madam Ghislaine Maxwell.
“On Prince Andrew … I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said, raising his hands as if to deflect the question.
However, he then said: “Obviously, the king is a very loyal brother, and I’m sure will try and help him in whatever way he can.
“But it’s a very sad state of affairs,” he said of Andrew, who was stripped of his royal titles and duties by his mom, the now-late Queen Elizabeth II.
Asked if there is any chance Andrew could again have a public role, Soames conceded: “I can’t see one.”
Harry largely blamed his father for his rift with the family, claiming in his explosive memoir that his dad called him the family “spare” the second he was born.
He also targeted his mother-in-law, Camilla, now 75, accusing her of allowing negative press stories about him to help paint her in a positive light.
The exiled prince is making the rare trip home to the UK while leaving wife Meghan Markle at home in California to celebrate their son Prince Archie’s fourth birthday, which is also Saturday.
Insiders say that is just an excuse for Markle, whom even the now-late Queen Elizabeth II reportedly called “evil.”
Harry is not expected to play a key role in the coronation, and reportedly will not spend any time with his father, Charles, or brother, heir to the throne Prince William.