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King Charles is unlikely to invite Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to his coronation if Harry prejudicially attacks his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort, in his next book, a friend of the new Queen has told The Daily Beast.

“Almost everything Charles has done in the last twenty years has, in one way or another, been about getting Camilla accepted by the public,” the friend said, “He loves her. He’s incredibly protective of her and he couldn’t do it without her. Even the queen finally agreed to that. It’s one thing for Harry to attack Charles, he can take it on the chin, but if Harry forces him to choose, when asking about Camilla in his book, I have no doubt that he will choose Camilla.

The Palace declined to comment for The Daily Beast for this story. Palace sources simply say the guest list issue is on the ‘to be confirmed’ pile, ostensibly leaving the door open for Harry and Meghan to get the call – or be kicked out.

Given that Harry has promised his yet-to-be memoir will be a “completely honest” account of his life, it seems impossible to imagine that it won’t include a detailed account of the collapse of Charles and Diana’s marriage. caused in part, as Diana herself made clear, by Charles’ ongoing affair with Camilla.

Diana made this clear to Andrew Morton, for his book Diana, her true storythat she considered Camilla far from an innocent bystander and that she was just as responsible for pursuing the case as Charles.

In a memorable encounter recounted by Morton in Diana: in her own wordsHe said Camilla invited Diana to lunch before her wedding and asked Diana if she would go hunting with Charles after their wedding. Diana said she wouldn’t.

“Diana later realized that Camilla saw Charles’ love of hunting as a way to maintain her own relationship with him,” Morton wrote.

The Daily Beast understands there’s tremendous nervousness in Charles’ circle about what the book might reveal, not least because a full-throat attack on Camilla’s character would be devastating for Charles.

While Harry has yet to round up on Camilla in the same way he attacked his father – who he accused of cutting him off financially, not taking his phone calls and being indifferent to his suffering among many other alleged cruelties – he notably failed to hail his elevation to queenship.

Katie Nicholl, author of The New Royals and Vanity Fair’s The royal correspondent told The Daily Beast: “There is no doubt that Charles would love Harry and Meghan to be at his coronation. And to be fair to Charles, he was magnanimous in extending, very publicly, olive branches to the Sussexes, not only in his televised membership speech, but also putting them front and center at the funeral.

“But he expects respect in return, and a problem is going to arise if, by then, Harry repays him by attacking him, Camilla or the institution. He’s not going to put up with inaccurate and unfair attacks.

“The Queen has been ruthless when it comes to protecting the institution, and Charles will be too, and we can see that perhaps in the lack of urgency around the appointment of Archie and Lilibet as prince and princess . I understand Charles isn’t opposed to awarding them titles, but he expects to see respect from the Sussexes in return.

“The ball is in the Sussex court. The Royal Family, just like us, are waiting to see what they will do next.

The question of what the Sussexes plan to do – how deep they will dive, how painful and damaging the secrets they will reveal in their next salvos will be – is the big ‘known unknown’ preventing any real reconciliation. , or the feeling of arriving at a new stable, even unstable, accommodation between the two shores.

While the queen was alive, the ambiguity, while unnecessary, was something both sides could pretty much live with. In one version of events, Harry and Meghan intended to publish the book and release their films this year, then spend the next year rebuilding burnt bridges.

The death of Queen Elizabeth completely destroyed the feasibility of such a strategy.

But Windsor’s stubbornness is a powerful thing, and there is no indication Harry and Meghan even made any meaningful attempt to reconcile while in the UK for the Queen’s funeral rites.

Despite a handful of carefully choreographed joint events with William, Harry was reportedly infuriated by a series of perceived sleights of hand, including being seated in the second row at the funeral at Westminster Abbey, being allowed to wear uniform at a vigil for the Queen. but having the Queen’s EIIR cipher, signifying her role as aide-de-camp, removed, being banned from wearing uniform at other times and William’s camp advising reporters that their joint walk to Windsor Castle was all William’s idea.

Duncan Larcombe, the royal author and former royal editor at Suntold The Daily Beast that if the Montecito-based couple really wanted to make amends to the Royal Family for an invitation to Camila and Charles’ coronation, a good first step would be to wish William and Kate well on their visit to Boston in December to promote the Earthshot Prize.

He added: “What Harry and Meghan say and do in the next few months really matters. Their actions over the next few weeks could decide not just what relations with the royal family will look like for the coronation in May, but what they will look like for the rest of their lives. It all depends on what he says, in particular, in his book, which is by far the most anticipated royal book of all time and the first to be written by a family member.

Darren Fletcher/WPA Pool/Getty

“If the palace decides not to invite Harry, one way around it is simply to say that the coronation is an institutional event, not a family event, and therefore reserved for working royals. While it will be an extraordinary snub for Harry if he is not invited to support his father on the biggest day of his life, it is equally difficult to see how the King can invite him if the backdrop of the coronation is Harry in sticking machetes into Charles and Camilla’s backs while promoting in his book.

“Charles seems to be keeping his powder dry until he sees what they come out,” Larcombe added. “He has yet to make Harry and Meghan’s children prince and princess, although they are entitled to those titles under law and case law.

“It’s a carrot that could be left out for years. Charles certainly isn’t rushing to make a statement one way or the other, and he can take comfort in the reports that Harry is desperately trying to rewrite the parts of the book that are most critical about his father.

The reality for Harry and Meghan is that everything has changed.

Of course, they need money. But Harry must be wondering how durable it is to face a man who is now one of the most powerful in the world, a monarch who has all the levers of the vast machinery of the British state to pull as he pleases.

As the coronation will make abundantly clear, they are no longer arguing with an meddling prince. They’re arguing with a king – and that’s a very different proposition.