Harry and William: from sacred union to breaking up
How far away is the touching tandem, William the protective big brother-Harry the fragile younger! Between Diana's two sons, the coat of arms burns. If you missed the previous episodes, take a look at a royal soap opera.
But how did they get there? After the shock of the interview of the Sussex couple, wagons of experts spoke about the future of Harry and William: specialists of the monarchy, historians of royalty, employees of the Firm or anonymous friends, all seemed to say that 'between the two brothers, the bond was broken.
An analysis that behavioral therapist Jo Hemmings does not share in the "Telegraph": "When he talks about his big brother, Harry's face has nothing to do with the tension with which he evokes the media or even his father. : we feel love, in spite of everything, and when he uses the word “espacé” (“The relationship is spaced at the moment”), his bodily attitude changes, as if it opens a little. So, reconcilable, in spite of everything, the two brothers? And why not. William and Harry are not just the angry children of the future King of England. They are also - above all perhaps - the loving and much loved sons of Diana. What they experienced side by side, whether with each other or against each other, built them both. Return in five acts on trajectories so long parallel.
ACT I SEPTEMBER 6, 1997
No one has forgotten the two little figures which followed the coffin of the Princess of Wales. No one, even the bitter contemptors of the crown, could keep a dry eye in front of these straight boys, walking, face padlocked, behind their mother lying on a gun carriage. William is then 15, Harry is 12, but he hasn't had his growth spurt yet, and he looks tiny. What are the two brothers thinking then? For the moment, they do not have enough perspective to understand the cruelty of what is asked of them: to stand, impassive, under the gaze of 2.5 billion viewers, while we have only one envy, curl up and cry. Later, Harry will express his retrospective anger at an institution which, not content with failing to protect them, has exposed them both in this way. The only thing that perhaps relieves them a little is that there are two of them. “The heir and the spare”, as the cruel expression goes: the heir to the throne and the second “in case of misfortune”. A formula that has always horrified Diana. All her life, she tried to make sure that Harry did not feel in William's shadow, multiplying marks of care and tenderness for her younger brother. Did she really succeed? An anecdote says it all. In 1988 William was 7 and Harry 4. Diana drove them from London to Highgrove for the weekend. The boys are arguing. The mother, annoyed, asks them to calm down, under penalty of returning directly to Kensington. Harry, rebellious, retorts: "I don't care, I do what I want, anyway, it is not me who will be king. On the character of the two brothers when they were little, opinions differ on one point: the more agitated of the two was William, known for his sudden outbursts of anger, or Harry, who searched, like any good No. 2 , to attract attention? On the other hand, all those who knew the little princes speak of an agreement which, over the years and the growing tensions between their parents, has only grown and embellished.
"WHEN HARRY TALKS ABOUT HIS BIG BROTHER WILLIAM, YOU FEEL LOVE DESPITE EVERYTHING ..."
"None of the Windsor brothers have been as close as they are," said Robert Lacey, connoisseur of the Crown and author of "Battle of Brothers," which appeared last fall. Parents, it's chaos: screams, broken dishes, bitter speeches in the press, William and Harry have hardly known the time of innocence. But that of solidarity, that yes. Hunting, polo, antics, they are always together. And when they are separated, the bond is not broken: the eldest son, who feels his fragile younger son, calls him almost every day when he leaves their common boarding school to join the Ludgrove boarding school in 1992. And this 'is William who, in the company of Charles, wakes Harry up to tell him that the worst has happened, at the end of August 1997. The little boy, refusing to understand, would have replied that, anyway, his mother would come back for them, William and him. For weeks after the funeral Harry remained silent. His big brother then promises him that he will always be there for him.
"WHEN HARRY TALKS ABOUT HIS BIG BROTHER WILLIAM, YOU FEEL LOVE DESPITE EVERYTHING ..."
"None of the Windsor brothers have been as close as they are," said Robert Lacey, connoisseur of the Crown and author of "Battle of Brothers," which appeared last fall. Parents, it's chaos: screams, broken dishes, bitter speeches in the press, William and Harry have hardly known the time of innocence. But that of solidarity, that yes. Hunting, polo, antics, they are always together. And when they are separated, the bond is not broken: the eldest son, who feels his fragile younger son, calls him almost every day when he leaves their common boarding school to join the Ludgrove boarding school in 1992. And this 'is William who, in the company of Charles, wakes Harry up to tell him that the worst has happened, at the end of August 1997. The little boy, refusing to understand, would have replied that, anyway, his mother would come back for them, William and him. For weeks after the funeral Harry remained silent. His big brother then promises him that he will always be there for him.
ACT II APRIL 29, 2011
How beautiful they are, Diana's sons, on William and Kate's wedding day! In his shiny uniform, Harry who naturally witnesses is beaming with joy. In fact, he adores his sister-in-law, whom he has known for eight years already. The two brothers are closer than ever. The year before, they even shared an apartment, when Harry was a student helicopter pilot, on an RAF base. While William made the meals and helped him to study, Kate, his fiancée, was the confidante: during his separation from Chelsy Davy, it was she who held his hand. The eldest kept his promise of protection, and it was together that they came through this adolescence with so often troubled waters. When did they both decide to accept the presence, with their father, of this Camilla that their mother hated more than anything? It's not nothing, but they had the heart - the intelligence? - to prefer to see their father happy.
A year after Diana's death, Harry joined Eton's college in turn, where he was knighted by his older brother's gang. Boys two or three years older ... and only good ideas, as you might imagine. In Highgrove, in a cellar, they have set up the “Club H”, where the friends meet until late in the day. Soon the press began to nickname the younger "Harry Potter" (Harry Firecracker), while the older one retains an immaculate reputation, though nothing says he never shot a joint, too. While William, now a graduate, sets off on a glorious world tour, his brother is sent to a drug therapy center. The "spare" begins to understand that it will always be the lightning rod of the "heir". He remembers his mother often telling him, "You can be a rascal ... as long as you don't get caught." "In 2005, it is the famous ball of the" Nazi costume ": it would have been a disguise of the Afrika Korps, and William, who was present at this evening, would have helped his brother to choose it. During the following media outcry, the elder adopted a deafening silence. For Robert Lacey, this is the first real schism between the sons of Diana. But on this royal wedding day, all is forgiven. And the harmony lasts, for at least six years.
Having become a soldier, Harry has finally found his way, and each time he returns from a mission, Afghanistan or elsewhere, on the tarmac, his eldest is the first to come and wait for him, with open arms. In April 2017, in a moving video, intended to promote the Heads Together association, Harry, in the company of Kate and William, explains that three years earlier, his brother saved his life, advising him to undergo therapy. Too much anger inside him, not enough words, he was going straight into the ditch. The future Prince of Wales, too, splits the armor, speaking of his orphan pain, and evokes this indissoluble bond between Harry and him. Hope it lasts ? It will only last a few weeks.
ACT III SEPTEMBER 2017
We do not know the precise date of this discussion. Perhaps it took place earlier, before the very summer. But the day William advises Harry to "take his time" before deciding to get engaged with Meghan Markle, a tsunami takes its course. Some newspapers claim that Wills, short of arguments, even sent Count Spencer, Diana's brother, to the front to warn him. Either way, Harry feels betrayed. Hurt beyond words. Why doesn't his big brother trust him? And how would the Markles be inferior to the Middletons, Kate's family, not really out of Queen Victoria's thigh, either?
“IT HAS BEEN THIRTY YEARS THAT I HAVE MY ARM AROUND HIS SHOULDER, BUT NOW IT'S OVER! "
At 36, Meghan became a millionaire on her own, with no family fortune, no one in this clan can say the same. On the surface, the American actress, mixed race and divorced, is wonderfully received by the Windsors. The queen herself grants him privileges never seen before. But deep down, Harry convinces himself, rightly or wrongly, that she will never be accepted. Like… Diana, in her day. Robert Lacey believes Harry sensed in Meghan "the quirks and quirks that make her a character similar to her mother ... She is a nonconformist who has fought her battles with the same non-royal - almost anti-royal - qualities as Diana ". The fairytale wedding takes place, the Sussexes get down to business within the Royal Foundation, which the brothers created together in 2009. But very quickly, the evidence of a separation between the two couples is there: end 2018, Harry and Meghan give up settling in London next to the Cambridges and choose Frogmore Cottage, in Windsor, on the queen's land. Six months later, they split their foundation in two. One year after this joint press conference where the journalists had renamed them the “Fab four”. Who, at the time, had really paid attention to this response from Harry, when asked about the difficulties of working as a family: "There are disagreements… healthy!" Working as a family is of course a challenge… ”?
ACT IV 13 JANUARY 2020
The challenge will therefore not have been met. Five days earlier, Harry and Meghan took everyone by surprise by announcing on Instagram their desire to put their royal obligations on hiatus. The Queen summons Charles and his sons to what will later be called the “Sandringham Summit”. The time has come for appeasement. But William, furious, even refuses to have lunch with his brother. The afternoon looks more like a negotiation of lawyers, step by step, than an attempt at family reconciliation. Harry is convinced that the success of Meghan, during their official trip to Australia and New Zealand, in which he sees the echo of that of Diana in 1983, has triggered the jealousy of the Cambridges. William, on the other hand, could not bear Meghan's confidences to journalists about his ill-being ("No one asks me how I am") and was hurt by a documentary broadcast two months earlier, in which Harry admitted tensions fraternal: “With our role, our family and the pressure to which we are subjected, things necessarily happen… We don't see each other as much…” For William the silent, his younger brother talks too much. Was the Duke of Cambridge even touched by the end of the interview in which Harry said: “But I love him deeply. As brothers, we have both good and bad days. But […] I will always be there for him and I know he will always be there for me. " Nothing is less sure. The "Times" reports William's cold anger: "I've had my arm around his shoulder for thirty years, but now it's over," he reportedly told a friend.
ACT V MARCH 7, 2021
A bomb fell on Buckingham. Oprah Winfrey's interview of Harry and Meghan turned out to be worse than anything feared. William's only reaction to date has been his yelping, caught stealing during an official engagement: "We are anything but a racist family!" " Perhaps. We hope so in any case. One thing is certain: what they are, at the start of the year, is a disunited family, even if it is rumored that they spoke to each other on the phone after the interview. But when you think back to the two little boys who followed their mother's coffin, to the promises they made to each other, to everything they went through together, you think that all may not be irremediable. This year, Harry and William both passed 36, Diana's age when she died. And their road is still long.
