He had a tricky relationship with his own father, so when it came to being a dad himself, the King wanted to do things differently.
From the moment his first child, Prince William, was born – and he joked, “He has the good fortune not to look like me!” – the then Prince Charles was determined not to be harsh on his children, as his father Prince Philip was on him.
Although his wife Princess Diana was seen to be the most hands-on parent, Charles played a very active role in raising William and his younger brother Prince Harry right from the start.
Harry holds the family bunny.
When they were small, he loved reading to them and taking them on walks, but he also enjoyed getting down on the floor with them and rolling about. One favourite game involved wrapping them in blankets, like hot dogs, until they screamed with laughter, and then yanking the blanket so they shot out the other end. “I don’t know if Willy or I have ever laughed harder,” recalled Harry, writing about his dad in his memoir Spare.
He remembers his father coming to say goodnight to him as he was tucked up in bed for the night. “He never forgot that I didn’t like the dark, so he’d gently tickle my face until I fell asleep. I have the fondest memories of his hands on my cheeks, my forehead, then waking to find him gone, magically, the door always left considerately open a crack.”
Keeping a watchful eye on toddler Harry.
In a TV show to mark 40 years of Charles’ charity The Prince’s Trust, William recounted how his father was often “the embarrassing dad” thanks to his habit of “rabbiting on” and laughing at the wrong moment. He recalled being a narrator in a Christmas play at school and panicking when pyrotechnics went off at the wrong time.
“I was like, ‘Er…’ and literally, he could not stop laughing the whole way through the production, so several times I’d stop, cast an eye across, give him a big death stare and then I’d try to get back to my lines. It was terrible. Honestly.”
Giddy up, boys! Charles puts William and Harry through their paces.
When things went wrong, William and Harry knew they could go to Charles for wise advice, and that he would not berate or belittle them, as his father had done to him. Harry recalls his dad being supportive when he told him he didn’t want to go to university, telling him to “see the world, darling boy! Have adventures”.
And when Harry was pilloried for wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party, his father saw his thoughtlessness as a way to learn an important lesson. After telling him, “How could you be so foolish?” Charles went on to say that it was “the foolishness of youth and he remembered being publicly vilified for youthful sins.”
Watching their father play polo, a passion the princes now share with the King.
Harry writes in Spare, “He promised that the fury about this would blow over, the shame would fade. I loved him for that promise even though – or maybe because – I knew it to be false. The shame would never fade. Nor should it.”
Charles then arranged a meeting with Britain’s chief rabbi so Harry could gain some insights into the pain caused by the Nazi regime.
For all his determination to be far more approachable than his parents were, and to be there for his boys as much as he could, there were many occasions when his heavy workload meant he wasn’t able to spend time with them.
William races his dad and brother at Sandringham.
“The man never stops,” William said in a documentary celebrating his father’s 70th birthday. “When we were kids, there were bags and bags and bags of work that his office sent him, and we could barely even get to his desk to say goodnight to him.”
When the boys were boarders at Eton, he would write them letters in his notoriously hard-to-read “spider-like” scrawl, and they could tell when they’d been written late at night. “When he’s falling asleep, you get these long sort of As that disappear off the page,” William revealed.
But while letter-writing may have been Charles’ favoured form of communication, even when they were at home, there were times William and Harry would have preferred to have had a conversation with their dad.
“On occasion, after a long dinner, I’d walk upstairs and find a letter on my pillow,” Harry recalls. “It would say how proud he was of me for something I’d done or accomplished. I’d smile but wonder why he hadn’t said this moments ago, while seating directly across from me.”
On a father-son skiing holiday in Klosters, Switzerland in 2002.
For all his resolve to have a closer bond with his boys than he had with his dad, Charles has never been great at communicating, according to Harry.
Royal biographer Penny Junor agrees that the King can come across as a somewhat “remote figure”.
“He has always been consumed by work. That’s not a product of a lack of love. It’s a product of the fact he is so focused on his work and the need to make a difference in the world that, like many people who are seeking to make a difference in the world, he has sometimes overlooked friends and loved ones beside him.”
For Charles, showing his emotions is also tricky, given his “stiff upper lip” upbringing. As devastated as Charles was at the tragic death of his ex-wife Princess Diana – and the mother of his children – he found it hard to display his feelings in front of the boys. When he broke the sad news about her death to Harry, then 12, he didn’t hug his son.
Holidaying with their father in Balmoral, just two weeks before the death of Princess Diana.
“He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?” Harry said. “But his hand did fall once more on my knee and he said, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ That was quite a lot for him. Fatherly, hopeful, kind. And so very untrue.”
He once told an interviewer that Charles was there for his grief-stricken sons but was struggling too. “He was the one out of two left and he tried to do his best to make sure that we were protected and looked after. But he was going through the same grieving process as well.”
After Diana’s death, Charles realised the boys needed time and space to deal with their feelings. For example, he held fire on introducing them to the woman who would become their stepmother, Camilla Parker Bowles, until they asked to meet her.
“Charles was always sensitive about William and Harry’s feelings regarding Camilla,” says Penny. “It was never going to be easy, but the boys dictated the pace and soon realised that Camilla made their father enormously happy.”
Charles felt the same way about his sons’ choices of brides – if the boys were happy, so was he. But the rift that developed with Harry after he and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex left their roles as senior working royals and moved to the US has left Charles heartbroken.
However, it has also brought him closer to his heir, William, and with the future of the monarchy a joint focus, their bond is stronger than ever.
In his first address as King, the day after his mother’s death, Charles said he was proud to make William Prince of Wales and that “with Catherine beside him, our new Prince and Princess of Wales will continue to lead and inspire our national conversations.”
William with dear old dad.
But he did not forget his younger son. “I also want to express my love for Harry and Meghan,” said the King, “as they continue to build their lives overseas.”
