William and Harry need to find brotherly love again

Bells tolled, cannons roared. The chief mourners processed into the chapel at Windsor, putting on their masks as they slowly walked behind the coffin of Prince Philip, joining the family members that amounted to 30 people in total.  

They gathered in households, more than two metres apart, Kate Middleton standing alone before she was joined by Prince William, with Prince Harry taking a pew directly opposite, facing them for the duration of the funeral.

So far as we know, the princes had not met in the days before yesterday’s funeral for their grandfather. They had spoken on the phone. Courtiers, it had been reported, were “walking on eggshells” due to the tension between the once-close brothers.

Yesterday, stony faced was fitting, walking with Peter Phillips as a cousinly buffer between them. Their faces gave nothing away. The wearing of masks in the chapel may have proved a relief to them. Rather more will be asked of these two grown men now, though, as it’s said a “soft” court of their father commences with the death of Prince Philip. The time has come for boys to become men.

Before Prince Philip’s funeral yesterday, the last time the Princes William and Harry were seen in public was to mark Commonwealth Day in early March 2020, just before Covid-19 called a halt to all of our plans.

What was surprising about that outing was not so much the tension between the brothers, but the scant attempt made to disguise it. Lip-readers later reported that Harry complained to Meghan about the cool hellos from his brother. As they left the church in procession in 2020, Harry looked distressed, William looked stressed, Kate was tight-faced, and only Meghan, better equipped as an actress to mask her emotions, seemed unruffled.

Until yesterday, and for reasons of the pandemic at least, the brothers have not been seen together in public since.

Yesterday came echoes of them as boys of 15 and 12 as they walked behind their mother’s hearse. They, too, must have thought of that day, of a time when they desperately needed one another, and by all accounts, were united in grief.

That unity, however, was always based on the status quo that has since been shattered. William was, when they were grief-stricken teens and on into their 20s, the one in charge. Harry was under his wing and, apparently, always conscious of his status as the spare to the heir.

This suited him as a youngster, but little brothers grow up and this is often a difficult transition for sibling relationships. More difficult indeed when one sibling is literally more important and powerful than the other within the family and, further, when that relationship is in the public eye. It would seem that trouble in this relationship began when William warned Harry not to move too fast with Meghan. Prior to this, William, Harry and Kate had been quite the trio. Harry had referred to Kate as the sister he never had, but latterly said he felt like a third wheel to the couple. He wanted to grow up himself, and William’s advice regarding Meghan rankled as it continued to cast him as the young fool.

Perhaps he has taken an overly destructive path, ultimately throwing his entire family under the Oprah bus, but much of what Harry has done in recent years has been in an effort to assert himself as an self-determining adult.

The fact that this has lead to the point where he and his brother can’t even walk side by side behind their grandfather’s coffin and not even get over it for the sake of their grieving grandmother, is a shame. The fact that a widowed 94-year-old has to issue instructions to her children and grandchildren over army uniforms and orders of procession is an embarrassment. The behaviour of the princes is, perhaps, an example of people behaving like kids while expecting grown-up respect.

This bears out, in fact, in the story carried in two UK broadsheets last week that suggested Kate Middleton might act as peacemaker in the fractured relationship. It would take a woman, don’t you know, to sort out the boys.

It was a wearying suggestion positioning Kate as peacemaker, and peace as only possible in Meghan’s absence.

No peace was brokered last week, but yesterday was a chance for William and Harry to rise above all of this. In every family, there is the sense of everyone moving up a rank when one of the older generation dies. This is even more dramatic when one is a member of a hereditary monarchy where succession and stepping up is everything.

Further, a loss reminds us all that life is fleeting and opportunities to make amends aren’t as abundant as we imagine in our youth. William and Harry are youths no more. It’s time to step up.