Time for a round of Happy Families in the Royal household - Susan Dalgety

Prince William, Prince of Wales, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, with their wives Catherine, Princess of Wales and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (photo: Getty Images)

​Strip away their riches, the pomp and ceremony that surrounds them, and our Royal Family are just like any other family – dysfunctional.

​There is no such thing as the perfect happy family and anyone who says theirs is, is frankly lying.

We all have skeletons in our family tree, feuds that have lasted three generations, dads who drink too much, grannies who say too much, broken hearts and sometimes, broken limbs.

The rift between Prince William and his brother Harry is a classic example of what happens to a pair of seemingly inseparable siblings when love and marriage intrude.

Royal gossip suggests that the brothers fell out because their respective wives, Catherine and Meghan, dislike each other intensely.

Whatever the root cause of their quarrel, it seems it is now permanent, with no hope of a reconciliation between the two men who grew up so close to each other, united in grief by the tragic death of their mother, Diana.

But surely King Charles, himself no stranger to difficult family relationships – after all, he had a long standing love affair with Queen Camilla while married to Diana – should understand that family bonds matter more than silly tiffs.

It seems not. When Harry made a visit to London last week to mark the tenth anniversary of the Invictus Games, he let it be known he wanted to meet his dad. And which son wouldn’t? After all, his father is 75 and battling cancer.

Harry and his family live in California, an 11-hour flight away. He can’t just pop round to Buckingham Palace to watch football with his dad on a wet Wednesday night.

It’s perfectly natural Harry would want to see his father whenever he is in the UK, if only for a few minutes.

But King Charles wasn’t having it. Harry’s request was rebuffed, forcing his spokesman to issue a statement confirming that a meeting between the two was not possible, “due to his Majesty’s full programme.”

The statement continued, “The duke, of course, is understanding of his father’s diary of commitments and various other priorities and hopes to see him soon.”

Is there anything more plaintive than an estranged son pleading publicly to see his father sometime “soon”?

Surely the King, who has complained in the past of his own difficult relationship with his late father, Prince Philip, has it in his heart to heal the rift between him and his youngest son?

Harry may have said some challenging things about Queen Camilla in his much-slated memoir Spare, but that is nothing to the sense of betrayal Harry must have felt as a young boy when his father deserted his mother.

I hope, for King Charles’ sake, that he has the courage to reconcile with Harry and to spend time with his grandchildren, Archie and Lilibet. I can’t believe he wants to cut them out of his life forever.

In the final analysis, all any of us have are the family bonds that bind us to each other. Castles and crowns are no substitute for the warmth of a son’s embrace, or a kiss from a granddaughter.

Pick up the phone Charles, and give your son a call, before it’s too late.