‘This was an important piece of journalism,’ concluded the BBC. ‘The image of the Duke of Sussex was included to show the abhorrent nature of their behaviour’ – though the corporation did apologise for ‘failing to warn Kensington Palace in advance that it was to be published’.
It took a personal conversation between Harry and the BBC’s director-general, Tony Hall, finally to secure a full apology nine months later, representing the reality that Harry, as the most prominent British ex-serviceman to have fought in Afghanistan, would be a Taliban target for the rest of his life – and that his father’s ‘Uncle Dickie’ Mountbatten had been assassinated by Irish terrorists. Every year the shadowy FTAC – the Home Office’s Fixated Threat Assessment Centre – and the Metropolitan Police, working with MI5, have to monitor a thousand or more threats against the Queen and the royal family from stalkers and obsessives.
Danny Baker’s chimpanzee tweet, ‘Here’s to ya Archie’, and the ‘SEE YA LATER RACE TRAITOR’ death threat – both deploying the racist-ly dismissive ‘ya’ in the same derogatory fashion – epitomised the way in which the great British public, for all their deference and respect and frequently expressed love towards their royal family, equally feel the right to kick it around for their amusement just whenever they wish – we love ’em when it suits, and we laugh at ’em when it doesn’t. The nation finances the Windsors to the tune of £67 million or so per year in taxes, after all, so that makes them the nation’s servants and playthings at the end of the day.
As two products of a loveless marriage arranged for the nation’s benefit, William and Harry were living examples of the ‘kick ’em around’ syndrome. We saw in our Highgrove chapters how the young Harry was taught his dirty rascal role through his ‘Drugs Shame’ and Nazi armband incidents, and how William emerged with quite the contrary reputation.
Now it seemed that Harry’s mixed-race wife and vulnerable newborn son with his quarter-slave ancestry had been selected for the same poisonous treatment from a prejudiced nation – and where was William the shining knight to come to their rescue, or even to put in a supportive word, when it mattered? At the time, the two earlier incidents were said to have provoked spells of unpleasant ‘no speaks’ between the brothers. This was more serious.
Nothing had been the same between them since the fateful moment of William’s intervention seeking to delay his younger brother’s courtship of Meghan some time in 2016 or 2017, followed by his enlisting the help of his uncle Charles Spencer. Harry was said to have taken deep offence at this double interference and to have ‘flown off the handle’.
‘Really damaging things were said and done,’ recalled their friend Tom Bradby. ‘The atmosphere soured hard and early … few meaningful attempts were made by anyone to heal the wounds.’
But no one knows the details of what those ‘really damaging things’ might have been. At the time of writing, no credible record exists of what William and Harry said to each other in these painful confrontations – and this must be stressed. All that the outside world knows about the moment of rupture between the royal brothers – and all that William has ever said when questioned about it by friends – is that speed and caution were the issues. He just felt that Harry was moving ‘too fast’.
This is rather to the credit of both siblings, since it shows that for all the disagreement that has driven them to opposite sides of the globe in 2020, Diana’s two sons have fundamentally stayed loyal to each other and to their brotherhood. The details of their clash have remained private to the two of them, with a minimum of recriminations getting shared with the outside world. And this also reflects, of course, the precautionary protocols of living life in any capacity inside the royal fish bowl – the less said about a problem and shared with others, the safer. Both brothers know the rules.
But let us not underestimate the anger. Harry has freely confessed to his own blazing temper from time to time – and as for his elder brother, well, he has proved no Sweet William when roused. In the years after her 2005 marriage to Prince Charles, Camilla has recounted to her own family and close friends her surprise at discovering this unexpected side to Prince Charming – ‘the boy’s got a temper!’ Charles’s wife has been horrified at the ranting and raving that on occasion William has unleashed against her husband in her presence.
The rows have been earth-shattering, by Camilla’s account, with William doing the shouting and Charles submitting meekly on the receiving end. As she has described it, William holds nothing back. The prince can summon up a wrath to match the importance he attaches to his own role as the future king, and if his father fails to live up to William’s view of the job, the young man releases his fury.
In 2017, when marking the twentieth anniversary of Diana’s death, William proved fiercely uncompromising in his unwillingness to make some conciliatory remark about Charles’s fathering of his motherless sons. Royal PR aides begged the young prince to give Charles some sort of nod when talking to journalists before the screening of the ITV documentary Diana, Our Mother, but he flatly refused. William was not prepared to pretend that the workaholic, ever-worrying Charles had made good on all the hands-on parenting that he had promised.
In the same way the elder brother saw no reason to mince his words in 2016 or 2017 over his perception that Harry was not being cautious and careful
