Royal Biographer Reveals the Only Time Prince William and Prince Harry Were Really Close (And it Wasn’t Before Their Mother Died)
For years, royal fans were under the assumption that King Charles and Princess Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, were very close most of their lives. Even after the Duke of Sussex detailed a fractured relationship in his book Spare, many still believed that the boys had been really close growing up.
But now, a royal author who was one of the late Princess Diana‘s confidants has revealed that the princes did not have any sort of super-tight sibling relationship. However, there was a time when they did become close for a period long before their royal feud.
Royal expert says that talk about William and Harry always being close is a ‘myth’
Royal biographer Ingrid Seward knew Princess Diana for several years and recently spoke about the “myth” so many have always believed about the Duke of Sussex and Prince of Wales being thick as thieves when they were younger.
Seward told The Sun: “I remember after William went on his gap year, way back on operation Raleigh, Harry said ‘he’s much nicer now.’ So this myth that Harry and Wiliam were very close, is a myth.”
The author added that Diana had also expressed “concerns” about Harry over the years sharing: “We talked about it quite a lot. She said ‘I worry for Harry and I’m really, really careful that he’s not treated differently than William.’ When they used to go and see the Queen Mother, she would pat the chair and say ‘Come and sit here William’ and completely ignore Harry, and that really upset Diana.
“I think she [Diana] worried much more for Harry because she just wasn’t sure which way he was going to go.”
Princess Diana’s confidant shares when the princes did become close for a while
According to Seward, it took an absolutely tragic event for the brothers to become closer and that was the loss of the mother. Diana died on Aug. 31, 1997, following a car crash in Paris. At the time William and Harry were just 15 and 12 years old.
Seward revealed: “They were only really close after their mother died. Of course, they unified and they were the only two people that knew what it felt like. But they weren’t very close as youngsters.”
Royal fans who were around at the time remember the siblings unified following their mother’s death as they walked behind her coffin. That was in stark contrast to when their grandfather and grandmother died.
On the day of Prince Philip’s funeral, the princes didn’t want to be near each other and were actually separated by their cousin, Peter Philips, who walked in between them as they filed into St. George’s Chapel. And during Queen Elizabeth II’s procession, the tension was so thick that the brothers wouldn’t even look at one another and had absolutely no contact as they walked behind the late monarch’s coffin.
