The world knows all too well about the family feud between Prince William and Prince Harry, one that’s raged ever since the Duke of Sussex parted ways with the Royal family alongside his wife Meghan Markle in 2020. The soured sibling relationship is often viewed as a tragedy given how close the two brothers once were growing up. But maybe things aren’t as simple as all that.
Meghan haters love to peddle the idea that William and Harry were as thick as thieves until the former actress entered the latter’s life, but a Royal expert is now claiming that the two princes always had a strained dynamic reaching back to their childhood. In fact, they have even gone so far as to say that the idea William and Harry were close as boys is a complete “myth.”
William and Harry only became close after Princess Diana died, as Royals spoiled the heir and ignored the spare
Majesty Magazine’s Ingrid Seward told The Sun that the now King’s sons were not particularly close as children, and it was only after they were bonded by the tragedy of Princess Diana’s death — which occurred when William was 15 and Harry was 12 — that they became more friendly. Seward even alleges that Harry noticed a big change in his older brother’s demeanor once he returned from a Raleigh Expedition to Chile in 2000.
“I remember after William went on his gap year, way back on operation Raleigh, Harry said ‘he’s much nicer now’, so this myth that Harry and Wiliam were very close, is a myth,” Seward stated. “They were only really close after their mother died. Of course, they unified and they were the only two people that knew what it felt like. But they weren’t very close as youngsters.”
Seward went on to recall conversations with Princess Diana in which they discussed her concerns for how the Royal family would treat younger son Harry “differently” from future heir to the throne William.
“We talked about it quite a lot. She said ‘I worry for Harry and I’m really, really careful that he’s not treated differently than William,” Seward recalled. “”When they used to go and see the Queen Mother, she would pat the chair and say ‘come and sit here William’ and completely ignore Harry, and that really upset Diana.”
Knowing how tough it would be for Harry to grow up as, to use his own terminology, the “spare,” Diana is said to have “worried” about her second son more than her eldest as she wasn’t sure what lay ahead in his future: “I think she [Diana] worried much more for Harry because she just wasn’t sure which way he was going to go.”
It seemed Diana understood her son well, as Harry did indeed go somewhere none could have predicted when he left the Royal life behind him to move to California with his wife and children. The more and more we learn about William and Harry’s fractured home life and childhood, it’s becoming clearer that their brotherly relationship had problems long before Meghan entered the picture.