King Charles' Sussex 'Anxiety': Monarch Limits Prince Harry Meetings Due to 'Explosive' Phone Call Two Once Shared About Meghan Markle

Shortly before King Charles III acceded to the throne on September 8, 2022, his "volatile" phone call with Prince Harry about Meghan Markle left the sovereign with "floating anxiety."

"I would say, in the King's corner, Harry can be hot-tempered sometimes," royal expert Jack Royston shared. "I mean all the Windsors can, Charles is no exception... He's a man who gets frustrated sometimes."

While many can easily remember the King's "leaky pen" and issues with ink wells surrounding his accession to the Crown, the monarch-to-be's call with Harry "was worse" that week.

"But there is one moment that sticks in my mind, which is that Harry blew up at his father as Queen Elizabeth II was dying because he felt Charles had spoken in a dismissive way about Meghan," he added. "And I just wonder, really, whether Charles might have taken away from that experience a level of background stress about seeing Harry, a kind of generalized floating anxiety that something might go wrong, and it will be another negative encounter with lots of hostile emotions and him getting the blame."

The phone call in question first gained notoriety in January 2023 when the Duke's memoir, Spare, was released.

"Then came another call from Pa. He said I was welcome at Balmoral, but he didn't want...her," Harry wrote. "He started to lay out his reason, which was nonsensical, and disrespectful, and I wasn't having it. 'Don't ever speak about my wife that way.' He stammered, apologetic, saying he simply didn't want a lot of people around. No other wives were coming, Kate wasn't coming; he said, therefore Meg shouldn't. 'Then that's all you needed to say.'"

In defense of His Majesty, Royston observed: "This is one of the tragic things, that grief has an administrative side to it; it has a kind of business end to it, which confounds your emotional responses, and Harry will not be the only call that would have had to have been made. So he probably at this time just wanted to be with the Queen."

The expert further stated: "You know, he probably just wanted to spend this time with his mother in her final moments, and in that pain, I can definitely see why that might have been a very, very difficult moment for him."

King Charles met with his estranged youngest son on February 6, which was one day after announced to the world he had cancer. Some reports claim the meeting lasted only 12 minutes after an international flight on Harry's part. After much speculation for weeks, neither met during the Duke of Sussex's 48-hour stop in Britain from May 7 to 8.

Newsweek reported on Royston's comments.