Prince Harry Details ‘Challenging’ Conversation He’s Having With Kids Archie and Lilibet

Some of the British royal family’s youngest members are growing up, and their parents are now having to navigate some difficult conversations. As the 2025 Invictus Games in Whistler wrapped up this month, Prince Harry opened up about the “challenging” but meaningful conversations he’s begun having with his and Meghan Markle’s two children, Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3, about the realities faced by veterans participating at the Invictus Games, the sporting event he created for disabled military veterans.

“They are fascinated,” the Duke of Sussex, 40, told PEOPLE. “It’s a very interesting conversation to have with your kids — to explain why that person is missing a leg, why that person is missing an arm, why do they look the way they do. It’s challenging but important.”

Harry founded and launched the Invictus Games in 2014 after returning from deployment in Afghanistan. Meant to “celebrate the unconquered human spirit, and shine a spotlight on these men and women who served,” the annual Invictus Games are an international adaptive sports tournament for wounded, injured and sick veterans and service personnel.

Now in its 10th cycle, and with Harry’s children now growing old enough to become aware of the games, the royal said that “Archie, especially, is asking those questions.”

“As any parent knows, once you open that door and those questions are asked, or that conversation starts, more and more doors start opening. And then he starts asking, ‘How did they get injured? What’s a mine? What’s all this?’” he said. “It becomes opening Pandora’s box, to some extent, especially with kids this age, because they have no filter, and they’re just so curious and so inquisitive!”

Harry, who served in the British Army for 10 years, said he is “constantly trying to make sure that I get it right, in explaining what’s happened to [the competitors], and what we do at Invictus to try to make their lives better and give them a chance to redefine themselves. And the power of sport.”

In addition to hoping that his two children “will take on every sport that they want as well, because I think it’s really important for all of us,” Harry is also looking ahead to the future of the Invictus Games, which will return to the U.K. in 2027. The duke vowed that “we will continue Invictus for as long as it’s needed, and the need is increasing, rather than reducing. I wish that we could close this down because there wasn’t a need for it, but as long as there’s a need, we will keep it going.”