Charles and Camilla wish Kate happy birthday in show of unity as Harry accused of ‘hanging family out to dry’

9 January 2023, 12:12

King Charles and Camilla have ignored a series of explosive claims made by Prince Harry in a series of interviews plugging his book, to publicly wish Princess Kate a happy birthday as she turns 41.

The Princess of Wales celebrates her birthday today, just a day before Harry’s memoir Spare hits shelves.

Charles and Camilla wished Kate a happy birthday today, posting on the official Royal Family Twitter a photo of Kate receiving flowers from a child, with the caption: "Wishing The Princess of Wales a very Happy Birthday today!"

It’s the first comment of any sort from the Royals after the Duke of Sussex launched a series of extraordinary attacks on ‘The Firm’ in a round of interviews.

He has since been accused of 'hanging his family out to dry'.

Former Royal Correspondent Jennie Bond told ITV's Lorraine today: "So much of what he said seemed conflicted and contradictory... he allowed his family to be hung out to dry on an accusation of racism which Harry says now he never said and wasn't true. That in my view is almost unforgivable."

Some of the key claims to have emerged in the interviews include:

• Palace ‘spoon-fed’ the press with disparaging stories about him and Meghan for years
• Harry rowed back in racism storm over Archie’s skin colour now claiming it was ‘unconscious bias’
• Harry saw secret government files with photos from the scene of his mother’s death
• Harry and William rowed over order to shave off beard for his wedding to Meghan
• Harry accused Charles and other Royals of ‘getting in bed with the devil’ over links to tabloids
• Harry and William begged Charles not to marry Camilla
• Harry wasn’t invited on plane to rush to the QUeen’s side in Balmoral when she was gravely ill

Harry launched into a scathing attack of his stepmother Camilla during an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes.

The duke wrote in his tell-all memoir Spare that she "sacrificed me on her personal PR altar".

He told interviewer Anderson Cooper: "She was the villain, she was a third person in the marriage, she needed to rehabilitate her image."

He added: "The need for her to rehabilitate her image...that made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press.

"And there was open willingness on both sides to trade information and with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being Queen Consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that."

Read more: William 'is burning but won't retaliate' as King Charles pictured smiling in midst of Harry's bombshells

Read more: Harry accuses royals of 'getting into bed with the devil' and have 'shown no willingness to reconcile'

Callers clash over whether Prince Harry was right to show emotion in his new book

However, in his UK interview with ITV on Sunday night, the duke denied that he had been "scathing" about the Queen Consort.

"I want to sort of just briefly talk about your stepmother and the press 'cause you, you are pretty consistently scathing and suggest that you are..." presenter Tom Bradby said.

"Scathing?" Harry said. "What, scathing towards?"

He went on to explain: "Well, I think in the book it is very clear what happened."

An excerpt revealed Harry and William begged their father Charles not to marry Camilla, fearing she would become their "wicked stepmother".

"'We support you' we said, 'We endorse Camilla' we said," Harry's book reads.

"'Just please don't marry her, just be together, Pa.' He didn't answer.

"But she answered. Straight away. Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to play the long game.

"A campaign aimed at marriage, and eventually the Crown, with Pa's blessing we presumed."

In his book, which was released five days ahead of the official release date in Spain, Harry also claims Camilla changed his bedroom into her own dressing room as soon as he moved out - a move which deeply upset him.

He said his stepmother made the change at Clarence House in London.

"I tried not to care. But especially the first time I saw it, I cared," he said.

Harry also alleges in Spare that Camilla leaked details of a meeting she held with William.

The Duke of Sussex described the anticipation of meeting her for the first time like "waiting for an injection" and claimed she appeared "bored" as they spoke about horses.

Camilla's public image has changed dramatically over the years since she was cast as the third person in the marriage of the then-Prince and Princess of Wales due to her affair with Charles.

In 1994, Charles confessed to adultery in a TV interview, but only after his marriage had "irretrievably broken down".

After Charles and Camilla both divorced - and Diana died in 1997 - the duchess' emergence as the prince's long-term partner was part of a carefully planned PR campaign.

Their first public appearance together was outside the Ritz hotel in London in 1999, dubbed Operation Ritz, where the mass of waiting photographers had been tipped off.