There are family trips and there are the outcomes of four years of litigation, two court defeats, a paused government review, a denied security application, and a 40-page private threat assessment, and Harry’s July trip to the United Kingdom is the second kind, which is why he arrived at Buckingham Palace in London today and Meghan, Archie, and Lilibet did not.
Harry has accepted an offer to stay at Buckingham Palace during his July 6-10 visit, per GB News, in a building sources describe as “the safest building in Britain” because it is continuously guarded by the Metropolitan Police, which is the police protection Harry spent four years in court arguing his family needed to visit Britain, and which RAVEC, the five-agency security committee, then declined to extend beyond the palace grounds, which is why the safest building in Britain is where Harry is and his children are not. The distinction between inside and outside the gates is doing all the work.
Meghan, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, remain in Europe, where the family has been holidaying, and may fly into Britain for a single day, per GB News, specifically to Birmingham, where Harry is due for the Invictus Games Foundation One Year To Go ceremony for the 2027 Games, which the West Midlands city will host. Harry is also very keen, per GB News, to take the children to Althorp Park in Northamptonshire to visit Princess Diana’s grave, which is among the private engagements of a man who has not been able to bring his children to Britain since 2022 and is now exploring whether a one-day flight from mainland Europe constitutes the reunion the government’s security architecture has declined to facilitate through any other means.
King Charles last saw Archie and Lilibet in person during the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022, when Lilibet was fourteen months old, which was also the last time Harry’s private security team had not yet submitted a 40-page threat assessment warning that five of the six known terrorist plots targeting the Duke originated on British soil. The assessment has since been submitted. The security has since been denied. Harry’s programme today commences with an Invictus Games Foundation event at Chatham House in central London before a public appearance at Royal Hospital Chelsea.
The King has cancer. He has met Lilibet once. His son is in the palace. The grandchildren are in Europe.
When the government security committee that manages royal visits has produced a situation where a grandfather with cancer hosts his son in his palace without the grandchildren, what did four years of litigation actually change?
Sources
GB News: Meghan, Archie and Lilibet will not join Harry in London after police protection denied
GB News: Prince Harry accepts offer to stay at Buckingham Palace
GB News: Harry could fly family to UK for one day
