Emily Andrews asks, could the King’s cancer diagnosis heal the rift between Prince Harry and his family?
Following Prince Philip’s funeral at Windsor Castle in April 2021, King Charles stood between his warring sons in the gardens of Frogmore House and uttered a heartfelt plea. ‘Please boys. Don’t make my final years a misery.’
The fact that we only know about that painful and highly personal event through the pages of Prince Harry’s excruciating autobiography, Spare, perhaps explains why three years on nothing has changed.
It may have been the King’s recent cancer diagnosis that prompted his impulsive younger son to jump on a plane for an 11,000-mile round trip to see his father face-to-face for the first time in 17 months, since the late Queen’s funeral.
But Prince William made it clear that he had ‘no plans’ to see his brother during his whistle-stop, 24-hour visit to the UK.
Raw emotion, hurt, disappointment and betrayal have fanned the flames on both sides of the new War of the Windsors.
But with their father undergoing cancer treatment, the onus now perhaps falls upon the brothers to bury the fraternal hatchet.
Courtiers privately speculate that William will have to swallow his pride for the sake of both his family and the nation. Certainly his father would love to see his ‘darling boys’ make up.
Is brotherly reconciliation, much less forgiveness, even possible? After all, William is famously stubborn and short-tempered; Harry is prickly and defensive.
Heir v spare
Harry’s memoir was spiked with petty insults and self-pity as he sought to distance himself from his destiny as a ‘spare’ to his elder sibling, the heir. He publicly branded William his ‘arch-nemesis’, recalled how he was ‘terrified’ when his brother shouted at a family meeting and infamously revealed their fight, breaking a dog bowl in Harry’s Nottingham Cottage kitchen. Watching Harry seemingly intent on destroying his elder brother was nothing short of heartbreaking.
Harry left these shores with his wife and young son ostensibly to turn over a clean sheet. Instead he has ignobly aired his dirty linen over and over, with a cavalier disregard for anything but the cash.
Broken trust
Following Harry’s revelations – and previous attacks on his wife by both Harry and Meghan – can the Prince of Wales ever trust his brother again?
Kate used to act as peacemaker, but having been on the end of numerous Sussex salvos, an
