Are Princes William and Harry themselves to blame for the breakdown of their relationship?
The opening moments of Harry & William: What Went Wrong? (ITV) carried the promise of a Philomena Cunk-style mockumentary. “If this had taken place in the 15th century,” intoned the royal editor of Vanity Fair, with an entirely straight face, “one of these brothers would have been dead by now.”
Perhaps we could bring this logic to all royal documentaries. Would James Hewitt have lasted long in the court of Henry VIII? Don’t think so! Would Fergie’s spending habits have gone down well in Revolutionary France? One shudders to think. And let’s not get into the 14th century and that business with the red hot poker.
Alas, the programme did not proceed in this fashion. It was an otherwise perfectly sensible examination of the breakdown in relations between Princes William and Harry, a matter of legitimate public interest given that one of them is our future king.
There have been so many claims and counter-claims about the dissolution of The Fab Four, but here the sequence of events was set out in a pretty even-handed way. Meghan’s arrival certainly proved to be the catalyst - and the Palace bullying allegations against her (which she and Harry have denied) were the “Megxit” tipping point - but the experts here agreed that the root of the problem was with the brothers themselves.
According to Penny Junor, royal biographer, it can be summed up thus: “Harry is impetuous. William thinks things through.” Although the notion that William remains above media sniping was undermined later in the programme when it was suggested that the bullying allegations against Meghan were leaked to a newspaper by Buckingham Palace, with approval from on-high.
Our own Camilla Tominey provided a balanced view: Palace staff found Meghan and Harry demanding and difficult to work for, but the royal couple felt they weren’t being listened to, and the pace of the Palace was slower than Meghan had been used to (this is a woman who had run her own affairs for years before marrying into The Firm).
The contributors were on shakier ground when they discussed allegations of racism. Jeetendr Sehdev, a celebrity branding expert, made the rather hysterical claim that press coverage was “feeding into this idea that there was this evil black actress that had cast a spell on the good white prince”. Penny Junor declared: “I’m white so I can’t properly answer the question of whether the institution is racist, but from what I’ve seen… it is absolutely not,” a statement not exactly brimming with authority.
