As expected, after Harry & Meghan: An African Journey aired on ITV in the UK on Sunday night, during which Meghan Markle said that it’s been a struggle to cope with the relentless attack of the British tabloids and Prince Harry revealed that worrying about his wife and child and their safety was affecting his mental health and that he and his brother, Prince William, were on “different paths” right now, all the focus yesterday was on the brothers’ relationship and the perceived deepening of their rift. The easy blame falls on Meghan and Harry’s impetuousness. But as I wrote in my post yesterday about the situation, there’s more behind their conflict – this is about support, or a possible lack of support. And while Harry and Meghan are openly at war with the tabloids, their biggest problem might be the internal battles happening between the royal households. Kensington Palace aides, who staff House Cambridge, keep talking and contributing to the tension and yesterday they were at it again. 

The BBC reported that in response to suggestions that William was “furious” with Harry for what he said in the doc, according to “a Kensington Palace source”, Will is actually “worried” about his brother and hopes he and Meghan “are all right”. That seems…caring, doesn’t it? Will being “worried” about Harry makes Will look good. But it doesn’t actually address the trouble – and there are all kinds of layers to the trouble.

The viper courtiers, as I’ve been saying for almost a year now, have been stirring up trouble, with leaks to the media in favour of their respective households. Last year, in Robert Jobson’s book about Prince Charles, there was all kinds of reporting from inside sources about Charles in comparison to his two sons. The stories in that book spawned the gossip we’ve been consuming for the last twelve months – from “a little grand” William to Harry’s temper. Now Kensington Palace sources are leaking in support of the Cambridges, often at the expense of the Sussexes. It’s a f-cking mess – and worse for the family overall, it’s a fractured family, a family that’s supposed to represent stability and consistency. 

That said, it’s not like the British royals have always been united. Prince Charles and Prince Andrew, for years, have had a turbulent relationship. But it was William and Harry who were supposed to be the closest, bonded by birth and then tragedy. This is the other layer to this drama – two brothers who were thought to trust each other above all and have each other’s backs may not have each other’s backs. Because if Harry, by his own declaration, is so upset at how he and his wife have been treated, to the point where he’s taking legal action, why wouldn’t his brother have his back on this? And not only has William has not called out the bias against Meghan Markle, his staff might be contributing to the negative reporting about her? 

Here’s a tweet that best sums up the situation – from Peter Hunt, the BBC’s former royal correspondent with a solid reputation:  

This is someone with a lot of experience covering the British royals, an understanding of how “senior royal officials” work, and how they cultivate relationships with the press – often to further their own agendas. In this case, as Peter Hunt notes, someone “spun for their own side”. That would be the Kensington Palace staff spinning for their own side. 

I wrote about this back in April 2019 when The Sunday Times published an article about the Cambridge-Sussex household split. Sorry, I’ll just quote myself here:

“Recall what Diana went through with the royal courtiers, how they undermined her, how she felt they were throwing her under the bus. William and Harry know the backstory. But if all this is playing out the way it sure seems to be playing out, with courtiers playing games behind the scenes and playing one brother off the other, and Harry thinks that William has become susceptible to that manipulation, of course their relationship is going to be strained; his brother was supposed to be his first defender. They were supposed to be beyond that bullsh-t.”

But even back then Harry may have reportedly had his suspicions, suspicions that have clearly intensified over the last few months and have resulted in them being, for now, on “different paths”. Remember that paragraph in the Sunday Times piece back in April:

“This sense of embattlement has been entrenched by William’s decision to reach other to senior figures in the media as he prepares for kingship and by the apparent decision of those same newspapers to side with the place over Meghan and Harry by peddling the most negative coverage of the duchess’s relationship with her father, Thomas Markle. “Harry sees that as part of the headwinds against him”, a friend said.”

So while William’s sidling up to “senior figures in the media”, those publications are dragging Meghan and Harry. Coincidence or conspiracy?

With that in mind, that Sunday Times piece came out three weeks or so after another story broke – you know, the one about Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley, who used to be really good friends with Princess Kate but there was some kind of turnip drama that went down in the English countryside and now they don’t talk anymore. Among the “Turnip Toffs” though, the rumour was that William may or may not have been uncomfortably close to Rose – but, as we all know, that story died, or at least they tried to kill it. How is it that the British tabloids, who LIVE FOR THIS SH-T, weren’t breathlessly publishing article after article about the curious case of the Cambridges and the turnip Rose? Coincidence or conspiracy? 

So Prince Harry is watching all of this go down, and it’s not like he’d want his brother to be embroiled in a turnip scandal, but he can see that the turnip scandal goes nowhere and by contrast the tabloids are popping off about his wife and his baby photos and the limited access he’s giving to the press to see the baby and private flights and he’s been hearing about how his brother is making friends with senior figures working at the papers that keep targeting him… and his brother says not one word about the racial bias in all of that reporting, and doesn’t denounce a Neo-Nazi group, which has been incited by the irresponsible reporting from those same publications, for making a poster of Harry with a gun pointed to his head calling him a “race traitor” and then he emotionally shares on camera that he’s pretty raw from the pressure. 

Well, it’s good to know that Prince William is “worried” now, right?