Many have accused the Duchess of Sussex of driving a wedge between her husband and his older brother, although Harry has always argued blaming her for the breakdown of their relationship is unfair.
Prince Harry has consistently rubbished claims that Meghan Markle was responsible for the breakdown of his relationship with Prince William, and now a recently emerged TikTok video appears to back up his claims. In the footage, taken from a documentary filmed in 2016 – the year Harry and Meghan first met – the two brothers are seen watching footage from Harry’s christening in 1984, when he was three months old.
In the documentary Elizabeth at 90: A Family Tribute, the princes are interviewed about their childhood and their relationship with their late mother, Princess Diana. In the TikTok clip taken from the show, William jokes: “It’s hard to tell whether you’re a boy or a girl in that dress,” while Harry replies: “Thank you. I think that normally happens at that stage of your life, you don’t really have much of a decision over what you’re wearing.”
The Duke of Sussex then continues: “Look how excited you are, you’ve got a younger brother”, before adding as a humourous aside: “Didn’t last long did it?” While this may at the time have been interpreted as a joke, as William replied: “I don’t think it’s that”, revelations in Harry’s book Spare indicate they may never have been as close as many believed. William also adds in the clip that he was too young to remember his brother being born as he was only two years old at the time, but in the Duke’s memoir he writes that his older brother wanted to pretend they did not know each other at school.
He wrote that while they both attended Eton: “Willy told me to pretend I didn’t know him. ‘What?’ ‘You don’t know me, Harold. And I don’t know you.'” He also admits to feeling sad at the change in their relationship when William married Kate Middleton in 2011, saying: “The brother I’d escorted into Westminster Abbey that morning was gone—forever. Who could deny it? He’d never again be first and foremost Willy. “We’d never again ride together across the Lesotho countryside with capes blowing behind us.
“We’d never again share a horsey-smelling cottage while learning to fly. Who shall separate us? Life, that’s who.” In his interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes in January, Harry stated that he loved his brother deeply and his words had never been intended to hurt anyone in his family, although there had been “a lot of pain” between them.
The bond between the two princes was unearthed in a video from 2005, as Harry was interviewed to mark his 21st birthday and said that every year he and his brother get “closer”, in spite of later claims to the contrary.
He told Associated Press in the video: “We’ve even resorted to hugging each other now after not seeing each other for long periods of time. And yes, he does ring me when I’m away, and vice versa. “Both privately and publicly we talk to each other about everything. If he has problems that he wants to talk about, then he comes to me. And apparently I give him quite good advice.”
