Can the feud between Prince William and Prince Harry ever be solved? Certainly, it's King Charles’s wish that peace should reign. And now, I understand that he has tasked his right-hand man with trying to broker peace between the warring brothers.
Essentially, he wants what most fathers would want - his sons to be on speaking terms. And if that means asking William to forgive Harry for what he has done, then so be it.
It has been reported that Charles’s deputy private secretary Theo Rycroft has made it his ‘number one mission’ to reunite Harry and William.
Quite how he’s going to do that remains unclear.
But it would certainly make it much easier for the King to see Harry - and, indeed, attend the Invictus Games next year in Birmingham - if his two sons were at least on texting terms. The brothers, once so close, haven’t spoken for years.
I broke the story that they had first fallen out over William's well-meant warning to Harry that he didn't need to rush things with his then-girlfriend Meghan Markle. Harry ignored the advice, and things went from bad to worse, with the result that the Sussexes walked away from royal life, with a lot of public acrimony, in January 2020.
It was just after the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral in 2021 that Harry asked William and the then-Prince Charles to meet him privately in the grounds of Windsor Castle.
Just a month earlier, Harry and Meghan had given their incendiary interview to Oprah Winfrey, claiming royal ‘concerns’ over their baby Archie’s skin colour, emotional abandonment and that they’d been cut off financially. Harry went on to say that his brother and father were ‘trapped’ within the royal system, unable to leave as he did.
Punchy stuff. Some may say unforgivable. The late Queen memorably responded by saying, ‘recollections may vary.’
‘William banned any mention of Harry’
So when Harry, William and Charles did meet, in an attempt to clear the air, Harry writes in his autobiography, Spare, that he and William ‘began sniping’ and it got so heated that ‘Pa raised his hands.’ Standing between them, pleading, Charles said, 'Please, boys - don’t make my final years a misery.'
Harry then, in my opinion, frames the whole writing of Spare as a letter to his father and ‘my beloved brother, my arch-nemesis’ on why he left the UK and the Royal Family.
After the book’s publication in 2023, William felt utterly betrayed, as it went much further than Harry and Meghan's Oprah and then Netflix bombshells.
Old scores were rehashed, and a huge amount of new detail was given about William and Catherine's falling-out with Harry and Meghan, along with accusations aplenty that the Sussexes were victims in all of this - hung out to dry by both the establishment and William.
William reportedly banned any mention of Harry and Meghan, not wanting to get involved in their drama. Then the Princess of Wales was diagnosed with cancer in early 2024, meaning both she and William concentrated on their own immediate family to literally survive its devastating effects.
‘The King video calls Archie and Lilibet’
I understand that Harry tried to privately reach out to his brother via text and WhatsApp, but never received any reply. He then stopped trying.
For a period, Charles too didn’t speak to Harry. But then, I understand, conversations resumed last year - and the King invited Harry to tea at Clarence House in September.
Since then, I’m told they speak on the phone every so often. The King also occasionally speaks to and video-calls his Sussex grandchildren Archie, seven, and Lili, four, whom he has only met a couple of times.
So it makes sense that while Charles’s elder son is still holding a massive grudge and has refused his father’s pleading to make up, a diplomat may hold the key.
Theo Rycroft is an Oxford-educated lawyer who joined the Foreign Office in 2005 and has held a string of senior international roles including legal adviser to the Prime Minister, head of international and EU law at the Attorney General’s Office, and deputy head of mission at the British Embassy in Paris.
It is understood that Theo has made it his ambition to reunite Princes William and Harry, with a source saying that he believes the situation has become ‘ridiculous’ and is keen to resolve it.
He’s worked with William before, on several high-profile international engagements, including the prince’s hugely scrutinised trip for the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral (when he also met Donald Trump).
Certainly, I’ve always thought that William needs, at the very least, a working relationship with his brother by the time he becomes King.
But after all the betrayal, whether Mr Rycroft is the one to achieve William’s forgiveness remains to be seen.
This feature first appeared in Woman magazine. Subscribe now and get your first 6 issues for £1.