Prince Harry and Prince William: the phrase that started the feud

Towards the end of his account with Oprah and his wife Meghan, Prince Harry confirmed that his relationship with his brother, Prince William, is not what it used to be.

As recently as 2019, their bond was described as “incredibly intimate.”

“No one, apart from others, knows exactly, not even their father, what has passed through their heads and hearts for the past 20 years,” wrote Princess Diana biographer Andrew Morton in the November issue of Royals. Monthly.

“They both experienced the loss of their mother. The only people they could trust to speak honestly about it were each of them.”

But in the hour-long interview with Oprah, the younger of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s two children hinted, not for the first time, the distance between the couple.

In the 2019 documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, the 36-year-old addressed rumors of a breakup, telling Tom Bradby that “part of this role and part of this job and this family is under pressure to that is subjected, inevitably these things happen “.

“We are certainly on different paths right now, but I will always be there for him because I know he will always be there for me,” Harry said, before moving to play down the speculation.

“Most things are created out of thin air, but as brothers, it’s like I said: you have good days, you have bad days.”

However, among the other devastating revelations the Sussexes made in their chat with Oprah, was Harry hinting that the space between him and his brother had only grown.

“I love William to pieces. He’s my brother. We’ve been through hell together. I mean, we have a shared experience,” she said.

“But we – you know, we’re on – we’re on different paths.”

The word that currently defines their relationship, he told Oprah, is “space.”

As for what caused it, according to Sussex’s biography last year, Finding Freedom, it took a six-word warning from William to Harry about his relationship with Meghan that set their enmity in motion: “Don’t feel like you have to rush this. “.

“Take all the time you need to get to know this girl,” he told Harry William, who reportedly had “reservations about Meghan from the beginning,” according to royal reporters (and biographers) Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.

The phrase “this girl”, Scobie and Durand wrote, immediately infuriated Harry, who could not believe “that his brother asked such a thing”.

“In those last two words, ‘this girl’, Harry heard the snobbish tone that was anathema to his approach to the world,” the two wrote.

“During his 10-year career in the military, outside of the real bubble, he had learned not to make harsh judgments of people based on their accent, education, ethnic class or profession.”

What also “made it very painful for Harry,” a source “exceptionally close to William” told Vanity Fair in 2019, “is that he has always given Harry his full support, especially with Kate.”

“Not everyone adored Kate Middleton at first. Some of William’s friends were snobbish towards Kate, but Harry gave her the go-ahead from the start and expected the same loyalty from William,” they said.

And yet William, as evidenced by Meghan’s comments in her interview with Oprah, particularly about how ill-prepared she felt for life as royalty, and her warning was somewhat spot on, her words resonated with “a sad irony, “wrote royal expert Katie Nicholl on Wednesday for Vanity Fair.

“What he allegedly said was patronizing and understandably irritated a brother who was already falling in love, but it’s also hard not to imagine how things could have turned out better if everyone had taken a little more time,” Nicholl said.

While Meghan revealed that Harry had taught her things at record speed, saying that she “didn’t fully understand what the job was” and that she “did it very naively,” the family welcomed her and received her “much better than that.” what I expected “. Harry said.

On the couple’s tour of Australia and the South Pacific in 2018, when they announced they were expecting their first child, the family was shown, he added, “how amazing he was at work.”

However, the result of the visit was not entirely positive, marking a “turning point”, said Harry, in his relationship with his family, implying that the positive reception of Meghan “brought back memories” to certain members (probably his father).

In January, following Harry and Meghan’s explosive departure as royalty, William revealed his “sadness” over the siblings’ strained relationship and said he hoped one day they would all “play on the team again.”

“I’ve put my arm around my brother our whole life and I can’t do that anymore,” the 38-year-old said, according to The Sunday Times.

“We are separate entities. I am sad about that. All we can do, and all I can do, is try to support them and hope that the time comes when we are all singing from the same page.”

Following the Oprah interview, William is said to be “devastated” while other sources stated that he is “furious” at his brother’s allegations, including Harry’s comments that both William and Prince Charles are “trapped. “in the royal institution.

But the bond between the two, as Harry said in the interview, is eternal.

“Harry will be by his brother’s side for the unveiling of a Princess Diana statue in London this summer, and we can all hope that will happen,” Nicholl wrote.

“Perhaps hindsight will one day allow everyone to recognize that William’s words, poorly chosen as they were, predicted the trouble ahead.”