Prince William’s emotional account of his rift with Prince Harry to a U.K. newspaper has gone viral after the Duke of Sussex visited Britain to meet King Charles III following his cancer diagnosis.
The Prince of Wales had shared his feelings about his damaged relationship with his younger brother with Martin Ivens, then editor of The Sunday Times, over a beer at a pub in South London, England.
The pair met on October 11, 2019, days after Harry confirmed their falling out on camera for the first time during the filming of ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, which was still days away from being released.
William told Ivens: “I’ve put my arm around my brother all our lives and I can’t do that anymore; we’re separate entities.
“I’m sad about that. All we can do, and all I can do, is try and support them and hope that the time comes when we’re all singing from the same page. I want everyone to play on the team.”
The quote resurfaced and went viral on TikTok after Harry’s 11,000-mile round trip from California to London to see his father Charles in the wake of his cancer diagnosis. The post was viewed more than 741,000 times and liked more than 23,000 times.
Following their meeting, Ivens kept William’s views to himself for several months until Harry and wife Meghan Markle quit as working royals in January 2020, when he splashed the quote across the front page of the newspaper.
He later recounted the meeting in an article for Bloomberg, arguing William was, in reality, steelier than he comes across publicly: “That steel was in evidence when his brother, for so long a comrade-in-arms after the death of their mother, Diana, appeared to go off the reservation and embarked upon a war against the press.
“In the unlikely venue of a south London pub during a televised England football match against the Czech Republic, William, in that oblique way the royals speak, told me he couldn’t “put his arms around his brother’s shoulder” anymore. Not long after, Prince Harry was off on his American travels.”
Omid Scobie’s latest book, Endgame, added more detail to the story of William’s confessional moment when it was released last November.
“After a contact had tipped him off, William was aware that Harry had also discussed their ‘tensions’ and ‘different paths’ with journalist Tom Bradby for a forthcoming prime-time ITV documentary about the Sussexes’ royal tour,” Scobie wrote.
“Both William and his private secretary Simon Case felt that Harry’s candid confessions were going to be ‘a problem.’
“So, by the time William sat down with Ivens at the pub, it didn’t take long for him to open up about Harry.”
The meeting was not only days before the release of African Journey but also Prince William and wife Kate Middleton’s tour of Pakistan, between October 14 and 18, when tensions flared.
Prince Harry described in his book Spare how the brothers had a furious argument over text message even as William was ferried between royal engagements.
Harry had broken down in tears during the WellChild Awards, leading William to reach out.
“I’d become emotional in front of a roomful of sick kids and their folks just after becoming a father myself—nothing abnormal in that,” Harry wrote.
“He said I wasn’t well. He said again that I needed help. I reminded him that I was doing therapy. In fact, he’d recently told me he wanted to accompany me to a session because he suspected I was being ‘brainwashed.’
“‘Then come,’ I said. ‘It will be good for you. Good for us.’ He never came. His strategy was patently obvious: I was unwell, which meant I was unwise.
“As if all my behavior needed to be called into question. I worked hard at keeping my texts to him civil. Nonetheless, the exchange turned into an argument, which stretched over seventy-two hours.”
Harry concluded the anecdote by writing: “I saved the texts. I have them still. I read them sometimes, with sadness, with confusion, thinking: How did we ever get there?
“In his final texts, Willy wrote that he loved me. That he cared for me deeply. That he would do whatever is needed to help me. He told me to never feel any other way.”
The brothers, however, are not believed to have met during Harry’s flying visit to London to see Charles.
The prince arrived Tuesday and was gone by Wednesday, having seen the king for 30 minutes shortly before Charles left London for Sandringham, his country retreat in Norfolk, in the East of England.
