It’s been claimed that the bitter war of words between William and Harry was sparked by the Duke of Cambridge’s office planting stories about Prince Harry’s state of mind.
In a new documentary about the brothers’ feud, Prince Harry’s biographer Omid Scobie claims it was no fluke that William’s aides at Kensington Palace began a briefing campaign against him the day after he appeared to sensationally confirm longstanding rumours of a disagreement.
It was in 2019, at the end of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s tour of South Africa, that Harry told ITV’s Tom Bradby that he and his brother were on divergent pathways.
In the same programme, Meghan revealed to Tom Bradby that she was surviving, not thriving and suggested the Royal Family had been remiss, adding that not many people had asked her if she was okay.
But in the aftermath of the interview, which made headlines throughout the world, Mr Scobie claims that rumours saying William was concerned about Harry’s mental health were intentionally planted by his staff, and sowed the seeds for further division between the pair.
Mr Scobie didn’t present proof to substantiate his allegations that palace aides or anyone connected to William was accountable for the alleged briefings.
Mr Scobie, the co-author of Finding Freedom, told the documentary that he would say that it was no fluke that it was soon after it aired, even the next day, there were source quotes that came from a senior aide at Kensington Palace saying that William was concerned about his brother’s mental health.
He said that they fed off such an ugly thing for Harry and it didn’t go unnoticed, but whether William directed that or not, no one will ever know, but it came from his household that he’s the boss of.
In the ITV documentary, Harry & William: What Went Wrong?, Scobie, who’s been an outspoken supporter of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, added that Meghan came in motivated and set to work and that quickly dishevelled feathers, and that she was a woman well into her 30s, and that he believed she’d proven to herself and the people she worked with up until that point that she knew what she was doing.
She was unquestionably not someone who was going to transform herself just to satisfy the people around her but he felt that they also had to be reminded that they weren’t the stars of the show and that there was a hierarchy and they didn’t come very high on it.
But all of this doesn’t surprise me. Prince Charles’ staff did the same thing with Princess Diana, calling her a loose cannon, amongst other things, and it should never be forgotten how they turned on her, but then this is the establishment at work, but Royal family courtiers have for a long time briefed against other members of the family in support of their own member, and Prince Charle’s team is the best at undercutting other members of the family, particularly if they appear more popular than he is.
And let’s face it, we probably will never know the full story because everyone appears to have their own truth and their own spin on the truth, and so it begins, just like it did with Diana.
People might not believe that William would do such a thing to his brother Harry, but who would have believed that the Queen would have denied her sister Margaret to marry the man that she loved when the Queen herself was allowed to marry the man that she loved.
