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Many royal watchers seem to believe that the feud between Prince William and Prince Harry started in 2020 when the Duke of Sussex exited his senior palace role with Meghan Markle. However, a look at Harry’s memoir, Spare, reveals it started during preparations for the royal wedding in 2018. That means the brothers are a full six years into the rift without an end in sight.
Harry has extended the olive branch to his family multiple times, most recently for the 10th-anniversary celebration of the Invictus Games in May, but William won’t budge. “I have been saying this for months now – William pulled up the drawbridge and is not about to let it down for Harry anytime soon,” author Christopher Andersen told Fox News Digital. The royal expert pulls no punches in describing the Prince of Wales as rather ruthless.
“William not only expects loyalty from his brother on a very personal level, but he commands respect as the heir to the throne,” Andersen continued. “That’s just the kind of person the Prince of Wales is. He has always been brought up to believe, as his father did before him, that if the system is to work at all, he comes first after the king – simple as that.”
Majesty magazine’s editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward doesn’t necessarily agree with Andersen’s assessment because she thinks he’s more “sensitive” than the public believes — let’s just say, the feud bugs him. Instead of dealing with his emotions, she claims William made a more drastic move to end it all. “He found it easier to cut ties rather than allow himself to be continually annoyed,” Seward told the Mirror.
The boundary that William set up may also have to do with the family health crises with King Charles III and Kate Middleton both battling cancer in the same year. “If anything, it looks as if the cancer diagnoses have made it easier for William to shut his brother out,” Andersen noted. “It’s an awful lot to handle. You really can’t blame him… But the truth is that illness has not brought the brothers together. Oddly, it has driven them further apart.”
Prince Harry will continually be looking from the outside in when it comes to the royal family because William is essentially the gatekeeper as the future king. The sibling rivalry would have crushed Princess Diana, but the seeds of their adult dispute were probably planted right around the time of her passing. Diana fought the royal system just like Harry did, and they were both cast aside by the palace.
Click here to see a complete timeline of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s feud with the royal family.
