William stepped into the room and saw not a monarch, but a father unraveling. Charles’s eyes were red-rimmed, his usually steady hands shaking as he clutched the blurred report from America. The words on the page were clinical, detached, but the meaning was merciless. Every missed call, every stubborn silence between father and son now felt like a wound that could never be stitched shut.

In the quiet that followed, William understood that no crown could command time to turn back. The arguments, the interviews, the oceans of pride between Harry and the family were suddenly stripped of importance. What remained was raw, human regret. A voicemail unheard. A plea unanswered. And a father whispering into a void, knowing that love, spoken too late, cannot cross an ocean or a heartbeat already gone.