Prince William is “in mourning” for his relationship with his brother Prince Harry, alternating between sadness and anger “about what his brother has done,” according to a new report published Friday.
According to an excerpt of an in-depth series of articles on Prince William to be published ahead of his 40th birthday next week, the Daily Mail’s Mail + cites a friend of William as saying, “He alternates between grieving for what he has lost and feeling really, really angry about what his brother has done.”
The revelation of the depths of Prince William’s anger comes after it was revealed that he and Kate did not meet Harry and Meghan face-to-face when the Sussexes were in the U.K. for the queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations two weeks ago.
ADVERTISEMENT
Meghan and Harry were almost entirely airbrushed out of the celebrations. They were banned from standing on the Buckingham Palace balcony with the queen after the Trooping of the Color ceremony, which celebrates her birthday, and left the country in a private jet before the queen made a final balcony appearance on the last day of the jubilee.
However, the depth of Harry’s rift with the brother, whom he was once so close to that they finished each other’s sentences, was made startlingly apparent when William and Kate chose to make a public appearance in Cardiff with their children instead of attending a first birthday party for Harry’s daughter Lilibet.
The new report puts the events of two weeks ago in a fascinating new light, confirming reports that the feud between the two brothers is as bad as it has ever been, with William finding it impossible to forgive Harry for spilling family secrets in a series of interviews and media appearances after he and Meghan moved to California.
One source, described as a friend of William, tells the Mail’s respected royal correspondent Rebecca English, “He truly loves Harry and feels he has lost the only person, aside from his wife, who understood this strange life of theirs.
“But he believes there are things you just don’t do. And Harry has 100 percent crossed that line.”
One friend is quoted as saying, “William is very principled and believes Harry has crossed a line. He’s thrown accusation after accusation, knowing that silence is the family’s only option because they don’t want to get dragged into a public slanging match. He sees how upset his father has been by it all, and it hurts. William is absolutely allergic to drama, but Harry has ensured that their family laundry is being aired on a global scale.”
Another friend is quoted as saying, “Harry always had concerns about life within the Royal Family and in hindsight, the pressure that was put on him and William by living and working together as some sort of dynamic duo put massive strain on their relationship. They had no room to breathe. But Meghan complicated it. He [Harry] got drawn into a space where he was encouraged to think he was a victim and had to flee.”
The report published Friday also delves into William’s marriage, with a friend saying, “When you speak to William, he’s actually quite puritanical in his attitude when he talks about his parents’ marriage and what went wrong. It hugely affected the way he approached his own relationship with Catherine and why it took so long for him to settle down. He wanted it to be with the right person and [for it to last] forever.”
The report claims that William is still angry about the allegations Meghan made about Kate in her interview with Oprah Winfrey, saying he thinks Kate was “massively disrespected” by Meghan, who alleged that Kate made her cry in the run-up to her wedding, but that their respective roles in the pre-wedding drama were falsely reversed in media reports, and that the palace refused to correct the reports.
