Endgame, p.20
Endgame, page 20
Because of the pandemic and the long run of virtual royal engagements, it had been almost eighteen months since I had been in the physical presence of the future King. But in July 2021, standing inches from the front end of his Range Rover, there we were, virtually eye to eye. I had just wrapped filming in Kensington Gardens for Good Morning America and, out of all the people, it was William’s moving car that I almost walked into outside the gates at Kensington Palace. It was my fault for being so engrossed in my phone, and I think both of us were a little surprised. I mouthed an apology but his unimpressed stare from the driver’s seat gave little away as we both paused for a very long second, though his perfunctory apology quickly brought an end to any awkwardness even if it was just a brief smile and a mutely mouthed “Sorry.”
Uncomfortable encounters aside, stories about the real William are becoming more common, especially after Harry pulled the curtain back on his own experiences. William’s combustible anger reached a boiling point when he physically assaulted his brother in 2019—an allegation from Spare the heir refuses to comment on. Harry recounts the moment when William shows up “piping hot” at the snug and storied Nottingham Cottage, a redbrick “grace-and-favor” residence on Kensington Palace grounds where Harry and Meghan lived until they relocated to Frogmore Cottage. According to Harry, William, in full “heir mode,” was there to “lay down the law” about Meghan and her “difficult” behavior. Since its release, book reviewers and the media have pored over what happened next, but it’s important to note that when Harry describes William grabbing him by the collar and knocking him to the floor, where bits of a smashed dog bowl lacerated and bruised his back, he prefaces it with “it all happened so fast. So very fast.” Evidence of a smoldering fury turned violent, this lightning-quick assault rattled Harry to such an extent that he immediately called his therapist after ordering William to get out. What troubled him more than the violence was the look in William’s eyes. “He wanted me to hit him back, but I chose not to,” Harry later shared. “What was different here was the level of frustration, and I talk [in the book] about the ‘red mist’ that I had for so many years, and I saw this red mist in him.”
As expected, many royal correspondents and Sussex haters (there are a lot of them!) rushed to paint William’s attack as nothing more than “brothers being brothers.” This may be true with children, but one doesn’t expect this kind of behavior from the future King and head of the Church of England, who was thirty-seven at the time. “Far from seeming cold and unfeeling, William’s desperate collar-grabbing bid to get through to Harry [showed] just how much love he has for his little brother. It made him look edgy,” wrote the Telegraph’s royal editor Camilla Tominey, bizarrely sounding like the excuses of domestic abusers everywhere. Imagine if it were the other way around? People would be calling for criminal charges to be pressed against Harry or for his Sussex title to be taken away.
It would take a highly trained psychoanalyst to get to the bottom of Prince William’s anger, but there are some well-documented triggers. Obviously, his ruptured relationship with his brother tops the list. “I actually love having him around,” William once told me about Harry at a private Kensington Palace drinks reception (one of many that took place behind the scenes with the royal press pack). Being forced to walk behind their mother’s coffin in 1997 surely solidified a connection between the two—they had to be there for each other in demanding situations like this, especially because their own father wasn’t always looking out for them. William once said that he and Harry were “uniquely bonded because of what [they] went through” after their mother died. In a 2019 ITV documentary, Harry spoke about this fraternal bond, stating, “Look, we’re brothers, we’ll always be brothers. And we’re certainly on different paths at the moment, but I’ll always be there for him, as I know he’ll always be there for me.” He went on to say, “As brothers, you know, you have good days, you have bad days.” Lately, it’s been only bad days for the two, and it’s a run that started years ago.
Though there had always been rivalry between the pair (not just as siblings but as members of the royal family), true cracks began to appear in 2016, when Prince Harry brought the California sun into the gray skies of his royal life. Meghan Markle’s arrival was a jolt to the system, but William soon expressed concerns that Harry was moving too fast with someone who had lived a life so far removed from that of his brother. For William, Meghan was the living embodiment of an “outsider,” and he believed Harry was swept up in her glamour and American joie de vivre to the point that he was refusing to acknowledge the rules and risks of managing a relationship within the institutional apparatus. At the expense of the family image, it was felt that Harry was rushing into something that had serious blowback potential.
As Harry continued to feel unsupported by William and the institution, the brotherly relationship went steadily downhill during the months that followed, and the more incendiary moments made headlines thanks to Palace leaks. By 2018, their father reportedly stepped in briefly to referee after Harry accused William of not doing enough to welcome Meghan into the family after their wedding. Charles convinced William and Kate to host the Sussexes for Christmas at Anmer Hall that year (their only holiday invite in the years they lived in the United Kingdom). The Band-Aid didn’t hold for long. Over time, William increasingly complained about Meghan to aides and family members. He didn’t like how opinionated she was, how she spoke to his staff, and how much of her Markle family dramas were in the press. “William shifted away from acting like a brother and became more like someone only focused [on the Crown],” a source close to the Sussexes said.
Just more than a year later, in January 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they were stepping back from their royal roles to pursue private opportunities in North America, of all places. It was reported in The Times that William had “bullied” Harry out of the family. A joint statement denied the story and called out the allegations as false remarks. “For brothers who care so deeply for the issues surrounding mental health, the use of inflammatory language in this way is offensive and potentially harmful,” the statement read. Reporters said it was a sign that the brothers could still come together, but the reality was Harry didn’t even know about the statement. “I’m so pissed,” one of their most senior aides told me the day it was released. “We were completely bulldozed.”
For William, the many fractures split wide open when Harry went public with his grievances against the family and the institution—first with Oprah in 2021, then on Netflix in 2022, and then again in his memoir the following year. Harry’s sustained offensive was too much for William. In his first post-exit interview, Harry asserted that William (and Charles) are “trapped” in the system—there is no exit for the next in line. While this is objectively true, a source close to William told me that the heir feels “far from [trapped] in any system.” But we do know that there are persisting reports that William has been—and always will be—envious of Harry’s freedom to “break away” from the royal establishment. Couple this slow-burning resentment with William’s outright anger at what he perceives as Harry’s relentless selfishness in his war against the two institutions he blames for his ills, and it’s easy to see why William’s fury is bubbling to the top.
The king in waiting believes Harry and Meghan blindsided the family, even the Queen, with their public complaints and their “oh so California” self-importance (an opinion he has repeatedly voiced in various ways to friends and aides during the past two years). Convinced Harry’s been brainwashed by an “army of therapists,” William says he no longer even recognizes his own brother, a source said. Before the family raised the drawbridge and enshrouded the Palace in silence as a response to Harry’s incriminating revelations, there were leaks to reporters that William and other family members, including Camilla, covertly sanctioned. The Independent claimed that the family feels Harry was “kidnapped by a cult of psychotherapy.”
They say deaths and births can bring battling families back together, but neither have helped the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex. In the wake of the Queen’s death, the brothers remained in their own separate corners. Over the Christmas holidays that followed, not a single message was exchanged (though gifts were sent by the Sussexes to George, Charlotte, and Louis). And even when Harry came to the United Kingdom in March 2023 for a pretrial hearing in his battle against Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, William and Kate kept their distance. “The Waleses are not in Windsor for the [Easter] school holidays,” their spokesperson said. Not that Harry had asked to meet.
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William’s reactions to Harry’s newfound freedom and justice-seeking campaigns to change the British media landscape are certainly more institutional than they are brotherly. At one point in his life, William hated the U.K. newspapers as much as (or maybe even more than) his brother. Which points to another source of William’s frustration—the “company man,” the monarchy’s next sovereign, must fall in line, even when it means eschewing his own brother. Harry and William’s estrangement in many ways resembles another sensational fraternal feud in the royal family, but in reverse. Nearly one hundred years ago, Edward VIII contentiously abdicated the throne to his younger brother George VI (Queen Elizabeth’s father), because the family and the establishment wouldn’t allow him to marry the love of his life, the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. After Edward’s abdication, the family was never whole again. The two brothers were effectively ripped apart by institutional duty and personal desire. Different royal players on a different stage, but the storyline is strikingly familiar.
At the center of both morality plays is the monarchic institution. After Harry’s trinity of revelations and what a 2023 episode of South Park mocked as a “worldwide privacy tour” (both William and Kate supposedly found the show’s send-up of the Sussexes “hilarious”), House Montecito’s stance on the institution is crystal clear: it’s a system of overlords and buttoned-up Machiavellis in cahoots with a tabloid cabal who are all hell-bent on upholding the Crown no matter the human cost. With William, however, it’s murkier and more complex. His current positions on Harry, Andrew, and the state of affairs in the outside world certainly suggest that he’s in full compliance with the system, that he’s accepted his role with few reservations, and that he’s prepared to captain the monarchy when called upon.
But let’s not forget that a mere six years ago it was a different story. Back then, the prince was not exactly known for his work ethic when it came to royal responsibilities, and the nicknames “Workshy Wills” and “throne idle” followed him, which in March 2017 was to the ski slopes and nightclubs of the Swiss Alps. While on a “boys’ trip,” the prince skied by day and partied by night in the chic resort town of Verbier. Photographs sold to The Sun showed him on the dance floor with an “Aussie beauty” who was most certainly not Kate. William was heavily criticized, of course, but what stirred up the Palace and Fleet Street enough for them to send up the flares was the fact that he was noticeably absent for the Commonwealth Day service, Britain’s largest interfaith gathering, held at Westminster Abbey every year, that took place during his trip. It’s harder to imagine now, but Prince William was AWOL, and at a time when Queen Elizabeth II was discernibly slowing down. He had already been skating on thin ice when it came to work, with even the likes of aging Prince Philip carrying out a vast amount more royal engagements than him (128 more, to be precise). A former communications staffer said William was “extremely reluctant” to fully focus on work. “There was a marked difference between William then and William now. There were long periods of time when it was only possible to get one sit-down meeting a month with himself and Kate for forward planning. It didn’t feel like his priority.”
This isn’t to suggest William was work-shy in other areas. Leading up to and after he tied the knot with Kate, William worked at his “day jobs” for several years. In 2010, he signed up as a Royal Air Force search-and-rescue pilot on Anglesey, a large island in northwestern Wales known for its charming rural villages and natural beauty. William and Kate made their home on Anglesey for three years, completely enamored of its sea-swept location surrounded by rolling verdant farmlands, rocky beachheads, and soaring limestone cliffs. White-washed stone on the outside, rustic beams and cozy fireplaces in the inside, and topped with a roof made of locally sourced slate, Bodorgan Hall is an eighteenth-century five-bedroom farmhouse situated on an estate near the Irish Sea. It is here where a baby Prince George spent the first few months of his fairly normal-looking life, where Kate could easily pop out to the nearby Waitrose in the town of Menai Bridge to pick up frozen pizzas on nights she didn’t feel like cooking or bags of Haribo candy to stuff in the side pockets of their car. Considering the location of his first home, his meaningful RAF work, and the glow around his new family, it’s no surprise William shied away from his royal duties during this time. “It’s where they are at their happiest,” the couple’s former press secretary Ed Perkins told me at the time.
The Firm planned for William to engage in a few years of service before taking on the lion’s share of his royal duties, but what they didn’t expect was for William to keep extending it. In 2015, William joined the East Anglian Air Ambulance charity, a helicopter emergency medical team in the eastern county of Norfolk, England. Both Charles and the late Queen supported his decision, but it’s now known that a handful of senior courtiers pushed against it. From their view, not only was it time for William to buckle down into his role in the family business, but they also believed this “middle-class job” was beneath the future King. Swooping in with the RAF was one thing, but choppering around with “ordinary people,” a source told The Times, just wasn’t in the royal paradigm. But he forged ahead anyway, and, to his credit, William stuck it out for two years, all the while fending off pressure from Palace busybodies and a nosy press. It was tough work, and he would later discuss how traumatic it was for him at times. I spoke to the prince about his role just a few months after the birth of his and Kate’s second child, Princess Charlotte, in May 2015. “Extremely tough,” he said of the twenty-four-hour shifts he would sometimes have to carry out, but one of the “most rewarding things I have ever done.”
William was motivated by his own individual value system (the Firm’s would have to wait), and by his husbandly and paternal instincts to keep his wife, son, and future children out of the media’s relentless gaze. He learned the hard way, but it didn’t have to be that way for Kate and their kids. After paparazzi continually harassed their children in public and a photographer was even found in the trunk of a car waiting for Prince George to surface at a playground near their home, William worked with his head of communications Jason Knauf on a 1,073-word plea that was then sent out to every editor in the country. The extreme and dangerous lengths certain individuals were resorting to to obtain new pictures of their children had to stop.
There were legal threats, too. William and Kensington Palace officials decided that to take away the value of these long lens pictures, they would release their own photos instead. Since then, the couple has released new portraits for each child’s birthday, as well as family holidays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and other milestones, such as first days at new schools. It was a smart move. “He would do anything to keep those children safe,” one of his aides shared with me at the time. “And he’s not just doing this for himself, but also for others in the family. One day Harry will have kids of his own.”
Two years later, William stressed the point when he said, “My mother did put herself right out there and that is why people were so touched by her. But I am determined to protect myself and the children, and that means preserving something for ourselves. I think I have a more developed sense of self-preservation.”
For a few years, this impulse for self-preservation served him well. William managed to successfully resist the expectations of others and carve out a private space for family life, all the while reporting for duty when necessary. But, eventually, the institutional demands placed on an heir proved impossible to skirt any longer. In January 2017—following increased pressure from the public, press, and institution, and at a time when an aging Queen Elizabeth II needed more support from other senior family members—he announced the end of his career as a pilot and reported to “Monarchy HQ” for his full-time position in the Firm. “Following on from my time in the military, I have had experiences in this job I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and that will add a valuable perspective to my royal work for decades to come . . . I have loved being part of a team of professional, talented people that save lives every day,” he said. And with that, William, Kate, George, and Charlotte left their country enclave in Norfolk to make Apartment 1A at Kensington Palace in London their full-time royal residence.
Since embracing his full-time duties, he’s quickly moved up the ladder. In just six years, his job title has already changed once, and it is only a matter of time until he steps into the Firm’s top position. William’s eleven years as the Duke of Cambridge lasted until the Queen’s death in 2022, at which point he automatically became the Prince of Wales—the Duke of Cornwall in England and the Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew in Scotland. With this promotion and mouthful of titles, William also inherited the private Duchy of Cornwall estate, a massive land and property portfolio that covers nearly 140,000 acres and was created by King Edward III in 1337. Prince Charles’s entrepreneurial efforts (and passion for farming) throughout his fifty years as a prince helped one of Britain’s oldest and largest land parcels to grow in worth to somewhere in the neighborhood of £1 billion. Its annual net surplus (£24 million for 2022–2023) is reinvested into the Waleses’ charitable endeavors and helps fund the family’s public and private lives.
