Will the royal brothers ever heal the rift?
A new twist in the siblings’ drama suggests the pair have never been further apart. Is there any way back, asks Angela Levin
The brotherhood of Princes William and Harry, once so powerful, appealing and close is steadily crumbling. It is said William now rarely talks to his younger brother and is apparently furious and shocked that Harry has snubbed the Queen, making a tell-all Oprah interview the focus when their 99-year-old grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, remains ill in hospital.
William has always been protective of Harry and, until he met Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge happily joined ranks with him. He stood with them on countless engagements, which, despite stating at the time that Catherine was the sister he had always wanted, he later revealed it had made him feel like a gooseberry to the young married couple.
When Meghan joined The Firm in November 2017, the young foursome were nicknamed the “Fab Four” – appearing on stage together at the first (and what would turn out to be the last) annual Royal Foundation forum, at which they launched their vision for a shared working future. Harry joked that they were “stuck together for the rest of our lives”. How poignant that seems now. Just 16 months later, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they were to go their separate ways. The couples wanted to change every detail of their once cooperative lives. Their staff would work from two different palaces; Harry and Meghan’s team would operate from Buckingham Palace while William and Kate would stay with Kensington Palace. Their charitable endeavours were divided, as well as their households – brought into the spotlight again this week, ahead of the Sussexes’ interview with Oprah on Sunday night, by allegations against Meghan of bullying and the mistreatment of palace staff during that period, and counter allegations by the Sussexes that this was a smear campaign. Yesterday, Buckingham Palace announced it was launching an investigation into the claims, saying it was “clearly very concerned” about the accusations.
This splitting of their working lives was a shame but was understood. The couples had different ways of going about things, and they had become incompatible. At the Royal Foundation forum, the brothers had said they wanted to “engage in public life in a way that was updated and relevant for our generation” – but that turned out to mean very different things for each.
For William, it means a pared-down Royal family – with the two brothers, their father and wives taking the lead. It was a model that worked for the Cambridges, Kate having understood and accepted what would be expected of her, as the wife of the future king, from the start. But the plan relied on Harry choosing a wife who would also agree to a life of public service, but one which, as the spouse of the “spare”, demanded less of the spotlight.
Perhaps it was asking the impossible. It was unfair to expect Meghan, an independent actress with a strong will, to accept living in the shadow of her brother and sister-inlaw. She patently didn’t understand the rigid hierarchy of the monarchy, with its odd and formulaic ways. In many ways, her training probably made her the obvious choice to take centre stage – Kate was always shy – but Palace protocol dictates otherwise.
William was born to be king and has had his life mapped out accordingly. Harry had more options. His was an unusual way of life, as the younger sibling to a future king. It was one that also shaped the Queen’s bond with the more charismatic Princess Margaret and, to a lesser degree, Charles’s relationship with Andrew.
Diana was well aware her two sons were on very different paths in life. It was her biggest fear that the gap between the heir and the spare would drive a wedge between them. She and Charles agreed that both boys would be brought up with a strong sense of duty and that Harry would never be made to feel second best. It was a particularly difficult aim to meet, particularly as the Queen Mother would sometimes invite young William for tea to gently prepare him for his future, excluding Harry.
The brothers’ closest time together was when they shared a small cottage near Clive, a few miles from Shawbury on the Welsh borders, for several months. Harry was learning to fly a helicopter and William was training to be a rescue pilot at RAF Shawbury. Harry told me, when we chatted at Kensington Palace, how proud he was to be able to talk about “anything” with his brother, and said he was “the only person he could really trust.”
Young William’s instincts were always to keep his brother close, after they had experienced the tragedy of losing their mother. After all, they were the only people in each other’s lives who could know exactly what the other had suffered.
Even once they were adults, he continued to keep a watchful eye on Harry. Perhaps that’s why, when he saw how besotted his young brother was with Meghan Markle, it has been reported that he sounded a note of caution, suggesting that he might be moving too quickly. Harry allegedly took it as blatant criticism and is believed to have told him: “You’re trying to wreck this relationship before it’s even started.”
It was why Prince Charles stepped in and asked William to make an effort. And it’s why the Cambridges invited the Sussexes to spend Christmas with them in 2017, after the couple announced their engagement.
Despite that warm gesture, however, the brother’s relationship never fully recovered.
Their last official engagement on March 9 2020 was attending the Westminster Abbey Commonwealth Day service. According to royal protocol, the Sussexes arrived a few minutes before the more senior Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Harry looked stony-faced throughout, and the two couples declined to talk to each other. The photographs taken that day speak a thousand words.
Now that Harry and Meghan have left the Royal Family for good there is a glitch in Prince Charles’s plan for a “slimmed down” monarchy that would optimise the amount of duties and enable costs to be controlled. At the moment it looks slimmer than perhaps he hoped. The Queen is 94. Princess Anne is 70, and both Charles and Camilla slightly older. Prince Andrew is out in the cold. Perhaps it was all inevitable. There never has been, and still isn’t a plan for the spare, as well as the heir – and the result looks to be the outcome Diana most dreaded.
Might the brothers heal? It looked positive when Harry spoke during the Sussex’s royal tour in South Africa in November 2019. He addressed the rift, saying: “We’re certainly on different paths at the moment. But I’ll always be there for him and, as I know, he’ll always be there for me.” The younger Harry was traditionally always the first of the brothers to make peace with other members of the family, if any disagreement had arisen.
The Duchess of Cambridge, who comes from a very stable, loving home, will have no doubt tried to bring the brothers together – but William has been known to hold grudges. He adores his grandparents and is likely to have been shocked by Harry’s disrespect towards them. He will no doubt also be bracing himself for what else may be revealed by his younger brother and his wife. Sadly, as things stand, the rift seems to be pushing the couples further apart, with little chance of healing. It is sad for us, too, as a nation watching the psychodrama unfold – the next very public chapter of, which will be revealed to us all come Sunday night.
Diana’s biggest fear was the gap between the heir and the spare would drive a wedge between them
The Duchess of Sussex is having quite a week of it. As the world awaits her Oprah interview, yesterday she came under criticism for wearing earrings reportedly given to her by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to a couple of royal events, while he was being condemned over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Why she wore it has been the subject of much controversy – but, as a rule, monarchs are exceedingly careful about how they adorn themselves. Royal sparkle falls into two camps: things those have bought themselves, such as Kate Middleton wearing Accessorize earrings, which are allowed, and things belonging to the Crown.
All jewellery gifted from one royal to another – such as the earrings from bin Salman – becomes official property of the Queen. It is believed that they were gifted to Meghan from the Saudi royal and chosen for her royal tour – but everyone knew where they came from, and it is understood she was warned against wearing them as the provenance might raise concerns.
For royals and celebrities alike, missteps of the sparkling kind can provoke huge backlash – all the more for the former, for whom jewellery can not only turn heads but make powerful statements. This is something Her Majesty knows instinctively, deploying her diamonds to semaphore her allegiances where protocol demands she remain silent. Think of the Three Thistle Brooch she sallied forth in for Glasgow’s 2014 Commonwealth Games, or the True Lover’s Knot she bore for both her sister and grandson William’s weddings. ’Twas ever thus. The Queen’s namesake, Elizabeth I, was painted sporting a euphemistic pearl in the spot where her father had brandished his codpiece; her virginal void competing with his Tudor tumescence. During her parting of ways with the Firm the Princess of Wales wore the still muchtalked about “revenge” dress, assumed for Prince Charles’s televised confession of adultery. However, she too used pearls to hammer home her point. Her little black number was accessorised by one of her favourite pieces, a sevenstrand pearl choker with a huge sapphire and diamond centrepiece; part of a necklace gifted by the Queen Mother for Diana’s nuptials. Glistening at her naked throat, this ornament
Jewel-speak: royalty and celebrities alike have courted controversy – at times deliberate and at others accidental – through their choices of jewellery
symbolised Diana’s marriage, rank and defiant blamelessness in the face of her husband’s infidelity.
It’s not just royalty that avails itself of the language of the lozenge. In 2019, the meaning behind Lady Hale’s spider brooch was much debated, as she delivered the Supreme Court ruling that Boris Johnson’s advice to the Queen that parliament be prorogued had been unlawful.
However, at times such coruscating communications have been deemed to misfire; statement rocks making that bit too much of a statement…
The Duchess of Windsor
The lavish cornucopia acquired by the former King Edward VIII to compensate the woman who would never be his queen became known as “the alternative Crown Jewels”. Auctioned by Sotheby’s in 1987, they ultimately brought in £30 million. In their heyday, there were mutterings that the Duke wasn’t as good at coughing up for his trinkets as he was at commissioning them.
Moreover, both parties were condemned for gaudy displays of wealth during the post-war era. The Duchess famously made a visit to New York’s Salvation Army headquarters festooned in sables, pearls, a diamond clip, and gigantic sapphire and aquamarine earrings.
Princess Michael of Kent
Princess Michael came under fire when she wore a “blackamoor” brooch to the Queen’s Christmas lunch in 2017. This giant bauble would have proved controversial at the best of times. However, the occasion was the first family event attended by biracial newcomer Meghan Markle.
According to the biography, Finding Freedom, “in the back of Meghan’s mind, she wondered if there wasn’t a message being sent in the pin of the torso of an African man wearing a gold turban and ornate clothing.”
Naomi Campbell
The model famously succumbed to gemstone drama in the summer of 2010 when, giving testimony at The Hague, Campbell admitted accepting “blood diamonds” from the former Liberian dictator, Charles Taylor, who was on trial for using diamonds to fund a civil war in Sierra Leone, among other charges.
The model claimed not to have realised that the “dirty-looking pebbles” she had been presented with 13 years’ earlier had any value. She opined: “I’d never heard of him [Charles Taylor] before, never heard of Liberia before, never heard the term ‘blood diamonds’ before.” When asked why she had not inquired as to why two strange men were bringing her presents in the night, she said: “I get gifts all the time. Sometimes in the middle of the night and without knowing who they are from. It is quite normal for me to receive gifts.” In 1967, Princess Margaret had the opportunity to examine Elizabeth Taylor’s staggering Krupp Diamond ring, an Asscher cut stone of 33.19 carats. According to Taylor biographers, the Princess remarked: “Is that the famous diamond? It’s so large! How very vulgar!”
“Ain’t it great?” Taylor reportedly responded. The actress then asked whether the royal would like to try the piece on. Margaret did, preening rather. “Doesn’t look so vulgar now, does it?” observed the film legend.
The Duchess of Cornwall
In 2019, Camilla caused controversy by donning an emerald-and-diamond brooch refashioned from a necklace previously worn by Diana, Princess of Wales. For the 50th anniversary of her husband’s investiture, the Duchess sported the Prince of Wales Feathers Brooch, featuring her husband’s heraldic badge picked out in diamonds, from which hangs a substantial cabochon emerald.
Madonna
Sometimes it’s not so much the jewellery a woman wears as the context in which she wears it.
Witness Madonna, who posted online a film clip of herself recorded at the beginning of lockdown, in a rose-petal strewn bath, naked but for a necklace and sundry other trinkets. In this footage, she mused that Covid-19 was “the great equaliser”, while looking as removed from worldly concerns as if she were Cleopatra bathing in asses’ milk, or Marie Antoinette playing nymphs and shepherds in her faux rustic play village, the Hameau de la Reine.
The pandemic-stricken world took one look at this reddish choker/ “neck mess” rig-out and cried: “Off with her head!”