When it comes to the British royal family these days, a good rule of thumb is to expect the unexpected. Few know this better than Prince William and Princess Catherine. But, in mid-August, news broke that even they didn’t likely see coming—news that, after six years away living in Montecito, California, Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan were moving back to the United Kingdom for an unknown period of time.
That news came amidst what was already a season of change for the couple, namely with their eldest child, Prince George, heading off to Eton College in September—a boarding school that is also William’s alma mater.
Brothers William and Harry aren’t thought to have spoken in four years, since the funeral of their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 2022. And for the past six year, the Sussexes have been a world away in the United States, an ocean separating them from the life William and Kate have built for themselves and their three children. Now, the longstanding rift between the brothers is one that is poised to continue up close.
Dickie Arbiter, who served as Queen Elizabeth’s press spokesman from 1988 to 2000, isn’t convinced that reconciliation is on the cards for the brothers. Arbiter, author of On Duty with the Royals, believes, as many do, that “there’s too much water that’s passed under the bridge.” But royal biographer Catherine Mayer has a different take. While she doesn’t expect “any kind of grand, emotional reunion” to occur, she adds that it would behoove William, the future king, to help diffuse the tension. After all, she says, “the key role of the monarch is to unite.”
“There is nothing to be gained by keeping [Harry and Meghan] at arm’s length in the way that has been,” says Mayer, author of Divide and Rule. “I know the half-in, half out model was rejected, but there’s a lot to be gained by lessening the tension there.”
On the heels of Harry and Meghan’s return was the release of Princess Diana’s brother Charles Spencer’s memoir, Swan Song, which included a claim that King Charles III (then Prince Charles) sounded “giddily elated” after Diana’s 1997 death in a Paris car crash. So incendiary were the allegations that Buckingham Palace released a rare statement saying, “His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment, and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss.”
Unlike Charles, William and Kate haven’t released a statement about Spencer’s book, or Harry and Meghan’s U.K. move, for that matter—and that likely won’t change. “They just quietly get on with the job, undertaking their engagements with quiet resolve and no fuss,” says royal historian Hugo Vickers, author of Queen Elizabeth II: A Personal History.
