Why leaving his own charity will matter so much to Prince Harry

It was Sunday, 19 January 2020.

All attempts to negotiate a new role for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex within the royal family had failed, and Harry and Meghan were about to head off to a new life in the United States.

Prince Harry made one final speech about how he was feeling.

He delivered it at a dinner for his beloved Sentebale charity.

This was a safe space for him. Amongst charity workers, donors and friends, he spoke of the love and happiness he had found with Meghan, of honouring his mother's legacy, and described his "sadness" at leaving the UK.

"Together, you have given me an education about living, and this role has taught me more about what is right and just than I could ever have imagined," he told dinner guests.

"We are taking a leap of faith, so thank you for giving me the courage to take this next step."

Sentebale had been part of Prince Harry's world for his entire adult life. It had ridden the storm of family fallout and leaving royal life behind.

He first visited Lesotho, the landlocked mountain kingdom in southern Africa, when he was 19, in 2004. He'd just left Eton and was on a gap year before his military training at Sandhurst.

It was a formative time for Harry.

What he saw during his gap year prompted him to set up the charity two years later.

It would support children who had lost parents to HIV and Aids.

And then there is the Diana factor. Sentebale means "forget-me-not" in Sesotho, the language of Lesotho.

Back at that Sentebale dinner in 2020, he told guests: "When I lost my mum… you took me under your wing. You looked out for me for so long."

The connection to Diana, Princess of Wales, is an important personal part of the Sentebale story.

His joint founder, Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, had also lost his mother. They were both motivated by a sense of loss. Remembering their mothers drove much of what they did over the past two decades.

Prince Seeiso became a personal friend of Harry. Seeiso was a guest at his wedding in Windsor in 2018. He'd also been at the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey seven years earlier.

This makes their joint decision to walk away from Sentebale all the more powerful.

Prince Harry's move to the US has impacted his ability to be hands-on with some of his charity work. But his team in California say he remains a strong supporter of them all and plays an active part in what they do.

He last visited Lesotho in 2024 and, with Prince Seeiso, saw the latest work the charity was doing. His commitment to the charity would "never falter", he said.

But, for now, Prince Harry has walked away in what has clearly been a catastrophic breakdown in the trustees' relationship with the chair of the board.

There has been a personal fallout, a wrangle over the charity's future direction, and broken relationships with damaging accusations being made.

Prince Harry has been here before.