King Charles’s ‘Cruel Rejection’ Left Prince Harry ‘Furious and in Tears’ About Frogmore Cottage — Author
As Frogmore Cottage returns to headlines (more on that ahead), an author says King Charles III’s “vindictive” decision about the property left Prince Harry “furious.” Ahead, why getting evicted from the U.K. home served as a “painful reminder” to the Duke of Sussex about his parents’ split.
The 2023 Frogmore Cottage eviction moved Harry to ‘tears’
In the wake of Spare’s January 2023 release, Harry and Meghan Markle had to vacate their U.K. home, Frogmore Cottage. Located in Windsor, England, near Windsor Castle, it remained the couple’s U.K. home base even after relocating to Montecito, California, in 2020.
The last of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s belongings were cleared out in the weeks following the coronation, which Harry attended solo in May 2023. According to Tom Quinn, a royal biographer and commentator, being told to leave left Harry “furious.”
“Harry was absolutely furious and in tears about being evicted from Frogmore,” Quinn said (via Mirror). “He felt his father had no right to do it and that it was purely vindictive.”
(Previously, another royal author claimed Harry called King Charles and asked if he wanted to see his grandchildren upon being “shocked” by the news of the Frogmore eviction.)
In the years since Harry’s former U.K. home has come up in headlines from time to time. Most recently, in connection to Travalyst documents filed in the U.K.
They showed Harry listed his primary residence as California, dated June 29, 2023, the day Buckingham Palace confirmed the couple had officially moved out of Frogmore Cottage (via ABC News).
The housing situation was a ‘painful reminder’ to Harry about King Charles and Princess Diana’s divorce
Quinn continued, sharing Harry failed to grasp how leaving life as a working royal would mean no more royal homes. Instead, the now-father-of-two viewed it as a “painful reminder” of the past.
“Harry took it as a cruel rejection, a painful reminder of all that he felt when his father fought with his mother during their long, drawn-out, painful divorce.”
The breakdown of King Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage played on very publicly in the ‘90s, referred to by the press as the “War of the Waleses.” Married for 15 years, the pair separated in 1992 before officially divorcing in 1996, almost a year exactly before Diana’s death.
“Whenever Charles puts his foot down,” the author added, “it seems unfair to Harry.” The 39-year-old “feels that after everything that has happened to him, he should always get whatever he wants, whether that be security paid for by the British taxpayer or a luxurious UK home.”
“For many, Harry is just a poor little rich kid behaving like a spoiled brat,” he concluded,” but Harry sees himself as the eternal victim.”
Harry talked about being ‘financially cut off’ by Charles in ‘Spare’
Losing Frogmore Cottage wasn’t the only thing to go when Harry and Meghan relocated stateside. As Harry recalled in Spare, his father halted access to funds he’d received as a working royal.
As the former Prince of Wales, King Charles distributed money to his sons from the Duchy of Cornwall, which is now overseen by Prince William, the current Prince of Wales.
At the time, Harry and Meghan were staying at Tyler Perry’s California home in the months before buying their own place.
“Exactly then, while we were revising our budget, word came down: Pa was cutting me off,” Harry wrote in his 2023 memoir. “I recognized the absurdity, a man in his mid-thirties being financially cut off by his father.”
“But Pa wasn’t merely my father,” he continued. “He was my boss, my baker, by comptroller, keeper of the purse strings throughout my adult life.”
“Cutting me off therefore meant firing me, without redundancy pay, and casting me into the void after a lifetime of service. More, after a lifetime of rendering me otherwise unemployable.”
“I felt fatted for the slaughter. Suckled like a veal calf,” he added, noting he’d “never asked to be financially dependent on Pa.”
Hary went on to say that “the question of how to pay for a home and security” kept him and Meghan “awake at nights” with money from Diana as a last resort.
