‘Unreciprocated’: Princess of Wales’ massive Prince Harry snub revealed
After the Princess of Wales announced she had cancer in March, the Duke of Sussex reached out – only for her to take a dramatic step.
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On a blazingly bright February day, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex stood on a snowy slope in Whistler, Canada and gave the world the Harry we have come to know best – a titled man turning up on American telly talking about his family.
The Duke was in Canada to fly the flag enthusiastically for his Invictus Games. But with his father having revealed he had cancer only a week before, it was always going to be nigh on impossible for the Duke to dodge having to comment. (It’s tempting to get a bit Biblical here and to talk about someone having created a rod for his own very straight back, what with his previous royal laundry-airing track record).
“I think any illness, any sickness, brings families together,” Harry said.
Poor Harry had no way of knowing quite how wrong he was – and not just concerning his father. About a month after that interview aired it would be Kate, the Princess of Wales’ turn to reveal that she too had cancer.
Now, new details have come to light about just how bad relations really are between the Duke and Princess. Despite Harry’s thoughts about families being brought together by illness, it has since been revealed her diagnosis did not instigate hands reaching out across the Atlantic, but a pretty brutal bit of snubbery.
To start with, according to a report in the Sunday Times, Harry found out about his sister-in-law’s illness from the TV – like the rest of us.
See, with Harry set to turn 40 next month and the former perennial boy prince having now unequivocally hit the stodgy middle-aged years, meaty bits of reporting taking stock of the Duke’s rollercoaster last few years have begun in the UK.
First off the bat, the Times’ Roya Nikkhah, whose story about the former army captain makes him sound like a man lacking purpose, happiness and, just to wildly generalise, any sort of clue.
The piece sheds light on the events of March 22 and Kate’s cancer announcement.
On that particular day, the world was left making goldfish-like mouth shapes after the Princess of Wales released a video revealing the shocking news.
“Not our Kate!” the cry went up as everyone tried to reconcile the image of a bouncy, seemingly-picture-of-health-mother-of-three with a person about to undergo chemotherapy.
Harry, it turns out, was in exactly the same basket as the rest of us, according to Nikkhah, with brother Prince William having totally failed to privately inform his brother about Kate’s cancer.
Things did not improve from there.
The same day the Kate news broke, Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex put out their own public statement, a message that could have easily been contained on the back of a Wholefoods receipt.
It read, in its entirety: “We wish health and healing for Kate and the family, and hope they are able to do so privately and in peace”.
Privately, according to Nikkhah’s reporting, Harry was doing some sharing and caring too.
According to “sources close to the Sussexes”, the Duke and Duchess then “reached out privately to William and Kate. That contact was unreciprocated”.
Dry ice has a temperature of -78.5 degrees. This situation has to be hovering around -79.
Let me be clear – this is not in any way to criticise Kate or William, two people who were having to process life-changing and terrifying news while parenting three small children. The last thing they should have been worrying about was finding the appropriate words to respond to la missive Sussex. Bigger and far more important fish and all that.
Harry’s February comments about illness “bringing families together” has fallen at the implacable hurdle that is William who, reportedly, has no interest in channelling anything like Dalai Lama-esque absolution.
“The brothers are understood not to have spoken since the Queen’s funeral,” Nikkhah reports, while “those close to William say his brother rarely comes up in conversation”.
The Prince of Wales is “unlikely to forgive Harry any time soon for his slights against Kate in Spare, among them the suggestion she was cold towards Meghan”.
As a friend of William’s told the Times: “This year [the Prince of Wales’] focus has very much been on his wife, his children and his father. His brother isn’t really something that’s discussed”.
If you think fraternal relations are bad now, then hold on to your hats. If anyone is clinging onto Brady Bunch-worthy hopes, then pop your head out the window to check for airborne swine.
When the sad day comes that King Charles totters off to meet his maker and to harangue St Peter about getting into composting, William’s palace takeover could only see the brotherly rift worsen.
Nikkhah reports: “In the aftermath of the King’s coronation last year, William let it be known that he wanted his own crowning to ‘look and feel different’.” (Prince Louis livestreaming the whole shebang on Twitch?)
For his brother’s crowning, Harry needn’t worry about being unceremoniously plonked in the third row behind his aunt Princess Anne’s extravagantly-plumed hat as he was at Charles’ last year, because he won’t be getting an invitation at all.
“Friends of William say that as things stand he would not want his brother at his coronation,” the Times has reported.
It’s worth pausing here and reminding ourselves that this Arctic state of affairs seems to be a two-way street. After all, it was “sources close to the Sussexes” who told Nikkhah about William and Kate having ignored them back in March, a hardly flattering bit of information to have put into public circulation.
Nor are things going all that much better for Harry when it comes to his relationship with his father, with People revealing earlier this month that the King doesn’t take his son’s calls.
Conclusion?
As the UK has sweltered through summer, the Sussex Ice Age continues – and it seems unlikely to thaw any time soon, if ever.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
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