When the Father Leaves Feast: Harry, William, King Charles and Unresolved Question of Prodigal Son

What happens when reconciliation between two people changes the lives of those around them? When the Father Leaves the Feast returns to the parable of the Prodigal Son through the changing relationships between King Charles, Prince Harry and Prince William. The comparison is tempting: Harry as the son who leaves and returns, King Charles as the father who welcomes him, William as the brother who remains outside. But the analogy becomes less reliable when it begins to determine how each person is morally understood. Drawing carefully on the public record without claiming access to private motives, the essay examines return, forgiveness, trust, loyalty, distance and what happens when family memory becomes public. Harry's departure from royal life, his account of that experience in Spare and elsewhere, his publicly expressed desire for reconciliation with his father, and William's continuing distance from his brother raise questions that cannot be resolved by simply assigning the roles of Luke's parable to living people. Particular attention is given to a later moment in the story. The younger son has returned and the feast has begun, but the elder brother refuses to enter. The father leaves the celebration and goes out to him. The welcome already extended to one son is not withdrawn, but neither is the other son's response treated as irrelevant. The same difficulty gives the contemporary story much of its force. King Charles may rebuild his relationship with Harry without being able to determine what relationship Harry and William should have with one another. A brother's distance need not prove an absence of forgiveness, while a declared willingness to reconcile does not determine when another person will be ready or what degree of closeness he may be willing to accept. The volume also includes, as an appendix, part of an earlier work by the same author, reproduced in its original form. Beginning with the Prodigal Son before moving to other parables, these pages explore freedom, failure, forgiveness, return and acceptance from a more personal and spiritual perspective, allowing readers to encounter some of the reflections in which questions revisited in the new essay first took shape.