Harry and the royal family: Reconciliation near impossible

Prince Harry claims he had no intention of damaging the British royal family with his autobiography, but reconciliation now seems impossible after he painted a critical picture of his relatives and settled decades-old scores.

"I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back," he said in an interview with U.K. channel ITV prior to publication of his memoir "Spare," adding he was "100 percent" convinced a reconciliation could happen.

Charles is due to be crowned on May 6, but "I can't really see how" a family reconciliation is possible, Pauline Maclaran, a professor at London's Royal Holloway University and author of a book on the monarchy, told AFP."

He's come out with so many things that are obviously offensive to members of his family, personal details that many people are arguing he didn't need to put across," she said.

"If he had any empathy, or indeed compassion, which is supposed to be at the root of the Archewell foundation [created by Harry and his wife Meghan Markle], it's kind of gotten lost in all this," she added.

Harry recounts how his father did not embrace him as he broke the news of the death of his mother Diana, when the prince was just 12 years old, instead leaving him alone in his room.

The king was "not cut out" to be a single parent, Harry claims.