It's a myth that William and Harry were always close – Princess Diana told me the truth
09/16/2024 09:57 AM
IT'S a “myth” that Princes William and Harry were always close, a royal expert has claimed.
According to Ingrid Seward, Editor-in-Chief of Majesty Magazine and royal biographer, Prince Harry, 40, wanted his late mother, Princess Diana, “to himself” and only grew closer to his brother, 42, after her death.
Ingrid told The Sun's Royal Exclusive that Harry was a very tactile young boy, who wasn't close with his sibling.
Speaking to The Sun's Royal Editor Matt Wilkinson, Ingrid shared Diana's “concerns” for Harry, as she confessed: "[Diana] opened up and she said at one time she really worried about William, but then she started to be concerned about Harry as she said he had no interest in learning, he never picked up a book.
"She obviously really tried to help him, but all Harry really wanted to do was have his mother to himself.
"He would sometimes pretend that he was ill at school so she could pick him up and take him home so he could sit and watch television with her all afternoon. He was a very tactile young boy. Very close to his mother."
Ingrid claimed that the pair became “unified” after Diana's death, but sibling rivalry was rife between them.
She continued: "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.
"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."
The royal expert claimed that she and Diana discussed the rift between the boys regularly, as she added: "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.
"And that's one of the reasons she said to me she wanted him to go to Eton rather than some other school which might've suited him better.
"She didn't want people to say 'he's stupid' or that 'he can't get in there'. She was very concerned about his feeling of inadequacy with William."
Diana was very conscious of Harry being a very sensitive child
Ingrid Seward
Ingrid claimed that Diana was “worried” for Harry and “conscious” of his sensitivity.
She added: "I think she worried much more for Harry because she just wasn't sure which way he was going to go.
A timeline of Prince Harry's family feud
The first hints of friction reportedly came after William was introduced to Meghan when she was staying at Kensington Palace.
Once she’d returned home to Canada, William and Harry sat down for a brother-to-brother chat.
He knew Harry was already head-over-heels for her but it has been claimed he advised him to take it slowly.
The younger prince reportedly didn’t take too kindly to the advice, with one royal source saying he “went mental”.
Then in June 2019 Harry and Meghan officially split off from the charity they shared with William and Kate.
The Royal Foundation will be divided between the Sussexes and Cambridges as the couples focus on their own separate charitable endeavours.
Prince William and Prince Harry first established the Royal Foundation in 2009 before Kate joined two years later shortly after their engagement was announced.
The trio would often appear together at events and the Foundation had huge successes with projects like the Invictus Games for injured veterans and the mental health Heads Together campaign.
The Royal Foundation said the decision was made following the conclusion of a review into its structure – but added both couples will continue to work together in the future.
Harry and Meg were living in close proximity to Kate and Wills within the Kensington Palace estate, but they switched to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor before baby Archie was born.
The move further increased rumours of a fallout.
Harry also hinted in his ITV documentary “Harry and Meghan, An African Journey” that he and his brother had grown apart.
In 2021, Harry and Meghan give their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey where Harry accused his dad of cutting him off financially.
Harry then jetted back to UK to join William in unveiling a statue to their mother Princess Diana in the grounds of Kensington Palace. But sources claimed William didn't want to attend the memorial amid their ongoing rift.
In 2022, just before their grandmother the Queen died, sources claimed Kate acts as a “peacemaker” between the brothers.
Harry claimed his brother “knocked him to the floor” during an argument about Meghan, in his memoir.
In Spare, Harry said William branded Meghan “rude” and “difficult” during a row.
Harry alleged William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor”.
He said he was left with a visible injury to his back following the argument in 2019 at Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, where he was living at the time.
In January this year, Harry flew in to be with Charles after the monarch’s shock cancer diagnosis.
Harry flew back to the US the following day – without seeing Wills.
In May he visited the UK for a three-day visit without seeing King Charles or Prince William.
"When William was a little boy, he would bully him quite a lot, which was perfectly normal, and Harry would always take the blame for the scrapes they'd get into. Again, perfectly normal for young boys.
"But Diana was very conscious of Harry being a very sensitive child and she wondered what he was going to do, was he going to follow his love, which was the army, even as a little boy.
"It was planted very, very young, that seed of William having the privilege. And Harry of course didn't really understand. In a way it's better to be the spare than the heir."
They were only really close after their mother died…they weren't very close as youngsters
Ingrid Seward
After stepping down as working royals and leaving the UK in 2020, Harry, who is based in California with wife Meghan Markle, 43, and their two children, Archie, five, and Lilibet, three, now live in their sprawling mansion in Montecito, with A-listers including Oprah Winfrey and Gwyneth Paltrow as their neighbours.
Relations between William and Harry have been strained for years, but their rift became even more apparent when Harry and Meghan spoke out against the Royal Family during their interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 – where they claimed Kate had made Meghan cry ahead of her 2018 wedding in an argument over bridesmaid dresses.
Harry then made a string of bombshell claims about William in his controversial memoir, Spare, last year, claiming that William had once ‘knocked him to the floor’ in a physical fight and that he had also pointed his finger in Meghan’s face and branded her ‘rude’.
William and Harry are no longer on speaking terms, and it’s thought that they kept their distance when they recently attended the funeral of their uncle, Lord Robert Fellowes, in Norfolk.
When it comes to Harry's fall-out with his brother, Ingrid suggested: "What [Diana] wouldn't like is this fall out from the family. She would really hate that.
"She wouldn't be at all happy that Harry had fallen out with William. She always said to them 'please, please remember, don't ever forget that you're brothers and I want you to be friends'. That would worry her about Harry."