The rift isn’t closed yet. Prince WilliamPrince Harry are still clashing despite the united front they put on as they greeted mourners in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II‘s death, royal expert Christopher Andersen exclusively tells Us Weekly.
The new Prince of Wales, aged 40, and the Duke Of Sussex, 37, were seen together at Windsor with their respective wives. Princess Kate Meghan MarkleSaturday, September 10, 2010. It was the return of the Fab Four, but it doesn’t mean the brothers’ feud is over. Andersen stated that both men are trying to put aside their differences while grieving their grandmother (who died on Thursday, September 8th, at the age of 96) and supporting their father. King Charles IIIAs he ascends the throne.
Prince William and Prince Harry Shutterstock
“I think [Charles is] very careful and I think he’s trying to be subdued and trying to be a unifying figure. He needs to sell the British people on a variety of things, for example. One of them is Camilla as queen,” Andersen explained exclusively to UsMonday, September 12.
“He’s gotta have all hands on deck, and that means having both William and Harry as partners as well,” the author, who wrote the New York Times bestseller The Day Diana Died, continued. “And I think the relationship with Harry and William is still dicey.”
The brothers have seemingly been at odds since at least 2019, when the Invictus Games founder openly acknowledged that they weren’t seeing eye-to-eye in the documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey. “We’re certainly on different paths at the moment but I’ll always be there for him and as I know he’ll always be there for me,” the BetterUp CIO said at the time.
William was the one to reach out and invite Harry and Meghan — who were in the U.K. ahead of the queen’s death for some public speaking engagements — to make an appearance with him and Kate.
“William invited Harry and Meghan to join them,” a source exclusively told UseAbout their public reunion on September 10. “They were delayed in arriving while they arranged the plans.”
The invitation wasn’t an all-encompassing olive branch, Andersen told Use. “Even though they got together to greet people outside of the palaces and look at the flowers and such, [but] even then, you could see a kind of stiffness and formality between the two couples,” the Brothers and Wives writer noted.
While William extended the invite, Andersen believes it’s Charles who truly wants Harry back on good terms with the family.
“Charles would like everybody to be there and doing their job, and it’s in his interest to get Harry back into the fold. I’m not so sure William is that interested,” the journalist said. “I think he’s got much more of a grudge against Harry at this time.”
Prince William and Prince Harry greet the mourners at Windsor Castle on September 10, 2022. Martin Meissner/AP/Shutterstock
The Sussexes don’t seem too anxious to build bridges either. “I just think that Harry and Meghan still are uneasy,” Andersen continued. “We’ve seen that in a recent interview that Meghan gave [last month with The Cut]. So it’ll take an awful lot, I think, for them to mend those fences [and] get things back to where they were.”
Grolls can be set aside temporarily so that they can grieve the queen.
“Let’s not forget, this is to pay their respects to their grandmother. They were so close to Elizabeth,” Andersen said. “They admired her as anyone else would their grandmother, but she was also their queen, and William, in particular, was the recipient of all sorts of attention from the queen. She knew he would be the future of the monarchy. He and Kate and the Cambridge children are there all the future of the monarchy.”
Christina Garibaldi reports
