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Did William’s office ‘plant’ stories about Harry’s mental health?
After their dutiful-and-that’s-it appearance at the unveiling of their mother’s statue this week, another story this weekend illustrates the depth of the rift and bad feeling between Prince Harry and Prince William. Harry’s biographer, Omid Scobie, has claimed that Prince William’s staff planted stories in the media questioning Harry’s mental health, after Harry and Meghan’s bombshell interview with ITN journalist Tom Bradby in 2019.
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However, as the Mail on Sunday notes, Scobie—co author of Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family—has so far provided no evidence of his claims.
In the Bradby interview, Harry noted that he and William were on “different paths,” and Meghan thanked Bradby for asking how she was, because “not many people” had. Since then, in Scobie and Carolyn Durand’s book and in their interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Harry and Meghan have made further claims about the royal family, including alleged racism, the supposed discontent of William and Prince Charles, the institution ignoring Meghan’s requests for help when she felt suicidal, and the failures of royal parenting.
“I would say that it was no coincidence that it was shortly after that aired, even the next day, there were source quotes that came from a senior aide at Kensington Palace saying that William was worried about his brother’s mental health,” Scobie tells a documentary airing on ITV tonight entitled Harry & William: What Went Wrong?, which the Mail has clearly seen an advance screening of.
“That fed off such an ugly thing for Harry and it did not go unnoticed. Now whether William directed that or not, no one will ever know, but it came from his household that he is the boss of.”
Scobie also says of Meghan: “Meghan came in driven and ready to work and that immediately ruffled feathers. She’s a woman well into her 30s: I think she’s proven to herself and the people she’s worked with up until that point that she knows what she’s doing. She was certainly not someone who was going to change herself just to please the people around her. I felt they also had to be reminded: ‘You’re not the stars of the show here. There is a hierarchy and you don’t come very high in it.’”
Harry told Bradby of his relationship with William: “We are certainly on different paths at the moment but I will always be there for him as I know he will always be there for me…We don’t see each other as much as we used to but I love him dearly and the majority of stuff is created out of nothing. As brothers, you have good days, you have bad days.”
But since then, the relationship has deteriorated. Harry’s claims and follow-up stories involving Winfrey and her best friend, broadcaster Gayle King, have reportedly led William and other members of the royal family to be wary of discussing too much with Harry lest it end up on the next news bulletin.
Redux
The Sun has an intriguing but frustratingly detail-free report today claiming that Harry and maybe Meghan (and, we therefore assume, also possibly their kids) are planning to come back to the U.K. for a bigger Diana memorial event connected to the statue in September.
If the report is accurate, it will be a huge event in the royal calendar. The Sun says the event will see Harry, perhaps supported by Meghan, join 100 friends, family and charity leaders for the memorial event. The Sun quotes an insider as saying: “September is a date penciled in for a more extensive celebration of the statue, and Harry will want to return.”
William celebrates England win
Prince William, who is president of the English Football Association, was among many England fans celebrating the country’s emphatic 4-0 win over Ukraine Saturday night, although as far as we know he didn’t rip off his shirt and drunkenly climb the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus like some other fans did. Instead, he tweeted.
England have to now beat Denmark on Wednesday to reach the final of the delayed 2020 Euros—a match which the prince made clear he is, like many of his countrymen, eagerly anticipating.
Funny girl
Barbra Streisand once told a crowd of fans at Hyde Park: “If I had played my cards right, I could have been the first Jewish princess.”
Now, The Sunday Times has details of Charles and Barbra’s unlikely friendship, thanks to his nomination of Don’t Rain on My Parade as one of his favorite tunes in a radio program he has recorded for the Hospital Broadcasting Association, to be transmitted Sunday.
The Sunday Times quotes Charles as saying: “I have always been a great admirer of the incredibly versatile American actress and singer Barbra Streisand. Back in 1974, when I was serving in the Royal Navy ... as a young lieutenant in the frigate HMS Jupiter, we called into the United States navy’s base in San Diego, California ... when I heard that she was making [a] film in the Warner Brothers Studios ... I was lucky enough to visit the set and to meet her there.
“I shall never forget her dazzling, effervescent talent and the unique vitality and attraction of her voice and her acting ability.”
Charles and Streisand became friends and she in 1994 at a fundraiser for his charity, the Prince’s Trust.
Doing it one’s own way
As Harry and William conducted their fraught meeting at Kensington Palace to unveil a statue of their mother, their grandmother was showing an insouciant and rather bling face to the world, wearing a mean pair of shades at day two of the Royal Windsor Horse Show, as these marvelous pictures shared online by photographer Mark Cuthbert make clear.
Later in the day, HM, no slouch, had a meeting with German premier Angela Merkel. The small talk about helicopters in the clip below is classic, although Elizabeth wasn’t tempted to try her mother’s famous joke: “The chopper has changed my life, much as it did that of Anne Boleyn.”
Happy families
Attentive observers of the travails of European monarchy will recall the shocking rumors that surrounded the wedding of South African swimmer Charlene Wittstock and Prince Albert of Monaco a decade ago. The bride allegedly attempted to flee her future husband and the principality three times but ultimately went through with the lavish wedding, although she appeared tearful on the big day.
Now, on their tenth anniversary, a joyous rewrite of history is underway as Charlene shares a happy video of the happy day, although even the slickest of edits can’t hide the unease of the wedding day balcony kiss. The Mail reports they are spending their anniversary apart, with Charlene in South Africa undergoing medical procedures.
This week in royal history
On July 9, 1982—as a whole episode of The Crown recalled—Michael Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace (for a second time), and sat on her bed. However, their conversation wasn’t as extensive or profound as The Crown dramatized. After a brief exchange, the queen left the room to get help, and Fagan was ejected from the palace.
Unanswered questions
Harry and William: what happened at the statue unveiling, and what to read into Harry leaving as quickly as possible to fly back to California?
