Prince Harry said he is not “pointing the finger” at his father as he made rare comments about the King during a speech in Australia.
The Duke of Sussex, 41, took part in a discussion on stage during a visit to a men’s mental health charity in Melbourne, as part of his four-day trip Down Under with wife Meghan Markle.
Harry met with members of the organisation on Wednesday morning at the Whitten Oval, which is the training and administrative headquarters of Australian rules football club Western Bulldogs.
In a discussion on stage with Movember’s global director of men’s health research, Dr Zac Seidler, Harry said that kids should be “upgrades” of their mothers and fathers and made rare comments about his own parents, King Charles and the late Princess Diana.
He said: “There’s no judgment, there’s no blame, there’s no pointing the finger. The reality is that – however you are parenting – that is a personal experience to you, you are going to want to improve on that.”
Harry has had strained relationships with the rest of his family since stepping down as a working royal in 2020 with Meghan. Since then, the couple has controversially discussed the difficult side of life as royals in their 2022 Netflix documentary and in Harry’s 2023 memoir, Spare.
Harry and Charles last saw each other six months ago, when Harry visited the UK for the WellChild awards. The meeting in Clarence House over tea lasted just 54 minutes, despite not seeing each other in the 19 months prior.
Meanwhile, a report last month claimed that Harry hopes to bring his family to Sandringham to reunite with the King in the summer.
An important topic
Harry also opened up about “conversations” he never had with his parents, with one example being social media – simply because it didn’t exist 40 years ago.
“That’s just one example of conversations that are now happening in households between kids and parents that never existed between me and my parents,” he explained.
The Movember movement, founded in Melbourne in 2003, is a global charity focused on improving men’s health – particularly in relation to mental health, suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer.
© Samir Hussein/WireImageThe campaign, which involves men growing moustaches during the month of November to raise awareness, has raised hundreds of millions of pounds across more than 20 countries – with “Mo” commonly used in Australia as slang for moustache.
Comments on fatherhood
During the conversation, Harry also spoke about needing to “cleanse” himself of the past before having children, before admitting the “struggles” of being a dad and the sense of “disconnection” he initially felt with his son, Prince Archie, six.
© NetflixThe Duke of Sussex offered a deeply personal insight into his experience as a new father to son Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, whom he shares with wife Meghan Markle. The couple also shares a daughter, Princess Lilibet, four. The family lives in Montecito, California, and the children have not accompanied them on the trip.
“Certainly, I felt a disconnection because my wife was the one creating life, and I was there to witness it,” Harry told the audience during a stage discussion.
Harry opened up about the often unspoken challenges men face in those early weeks but went on to explain how that initial feeling of uncertainty can shift, particularly with the right emotional awareness.
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