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Prince William and Prince Harry’s relationship is “utterly fucked,” a friend of William’s has told The Daily Beast, citing Harry’s decision to reveal in his book that William and Kate encouraged him to wear a Nazi uniform to a costume party almost 20 years ago as a sign of the extent of the rift.
The friend told The Daily Beast: “It just demonstrates how utterly fucked the relationship is that Harry resorted to dragging up this thing that literally happened almost 20 years ago. William was completely gobsmacked by it.”
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The friend did not suggest the story, as told in Harry’s memoir, Spare, was untrue. In his narration, Harry describes William and Kate laughing at the outfit before they went to the 2005 birthday party together with Harry.
However the friend said William was stunned by Harry deciding to tell the story, having apparently been “nurturing this grievance for almost two decades.”
William’s office at Kensington Palace have made no comment on Harry’s book and said they did not wish to comment to The Daily Beast for this story.
In the book, Harry writes that the “Colonial and Native” costume party took place soon after William and Kate had started dating and he wanted to “make Kate laugh with my costume.”
He says that he visited a fancy dress shop and narrowed his options down to a British pilot’s uniform and a Nazi uniform, before calling “Willy and Kate” to ask their opinion.
He writes: “Nazi uniform, they said.”
He writes that once he was back at Prince Charles’ house, he tried it on.
He writes of William and Kate’s reaction, “They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.”
He then describes snipping the ends of his fake mustache to make it look more like a “proper Hitler mouser” before saying, “Off we went to the party,” which suggests that he and William and Kate traveled together.
After a photo taken by another guest was published in the global media, he says, “I turned to Willy. He was sympathetic, but there wasn’t much to say.”
Harry describes how he subsequently went to visit the “Chief Rabbi of Britain” to better understand the holocaust and describes feeling “a bottomless self-loathing” at his actions.
Harry’s account is not the first time that William has been implicated in the Nazi outfit scandal. Royal author Robert Lacey wrote in his 2020 book, Battle Of Brothers, that Harry “chose his costume in conjunction with his elder brother” and that William “had laughed all the way back to Highgrove with the younger sibling he was supposed to be mentoring.”
Lacey says that after the incident, from which William emerged “smelling of roses,” Harry “began re-evaluating his elder brother’s involvement.”
“It made Harry feel resentful and even alienated,” Lacey wrote. One former aide told Lacey: “For the first time, their relationship really suffered and they barely spoke.”
Harry was 20 years old and William was 22 at the time of the costume party. Harry addressed the incident In his Netflix show, saying, “It was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life… I felt so ashamed afterwards.”
William and Harry at Queen Elizabeth's funeral.
Jenny Goodall via ReutersThe friend who spoke to The Daily Beast said: “Whatever Harry wore to a fancy dress party could never possibly be William’s fault.” They added that William was stunned by “the realization that Harry has been nurturing this grievance for almost two decades.”
The friend said their understanding was that William and Kate had not read the book but said they would “of course” have been apprised of its contents by their advisers and would likely have read many media reports on it.
“You can understand why William has his reservations about Harry attending King Charles’ coronation,” the friend said—referring to Harry’s older brother being the apparent sticking point in getting Harry and Meghan to the ceremony in early May.
Of course, attention will now turn as to why it is this particular story that has so got under William’s skin. There was no shortage of arguably much more damaging brickbats thrown at William in Spare, after all, including allegations that he physically assaulted Harry and that he and Kate acted dismissively towards him and Meghan on countless occasions.
Indeed, at times, Spare feels like nothing but a succession of complaints against William and Kate, from the petty charge of Kate refusing to share her lip gloss with Meghan or being affronted by mention of her “hormones” to the serious central allegation that William’s office poisoned their relationship by planting negative stories about Harry and Meghan in the media.
Asked if Harry recounting the incident had upset William more than any of the other accusations made in the book, including the aforementioned claim that William pushed him to the floor in a physical fight, the friend said, “There is plenty for William to not like in the book. But he found it particularly astonishing that Harry wanted to reopen this issue, and rather than to accept responsibility for it, to try and blame William and Catherine for it, when it was clearly no-one’s fault but his own.”
Some further context is provided by a report in People Thursday, which quoted a source as saying, in relation to the book: “William is the one who is most upset and needs time to calm down. He has been painted as hotheaded and unsympathetic. But I don’t think he will back down—it’s whether they can move beyond it and accept that they view things differently.”
The report adds that Charles’ focus now is trying to broker enough of a peace that Harry can attend the coronation, which takes place in less than three months. Further evidence of Charles’ wish to heal the rift came at a public engagement Thursday when a member of the crowd called out, “Bring back Harry please, can you please bring him back?”
Charles initially replied, “Who?” according to a report in the Daily Mail before adding, “It would be nice.”
William appears to have a very different take on matters, as his ire over the costume party story clearly shows.
Of course, it may be that the revival of the Nazi story (and William’s part in it) has irked William so much because he is particularly sensitive to being accused of cultural insensitivity given recent racism controversies that have engulfed the royals.
William and Kate were roundly criticized for a tone-deaf tour of the Caribbean in 2022 in which they were paraded in an open-top vehicle and subsequently told by the Jamaican prime minister that the country was “moving on” and intended to become a republic. In November last year, William’s team were quick to condemn remarks by his godmother, Lady Susan Hussey, who repeatedly asked Black British charity boss Ngozi Fulani where she was “really” from.
