‘Heartbroken’ Prince Harry making same mistake as Princess Diana
He’s been described as “heartbroken” over his family situation, but Prince Harry is following in the same footsteps as his mum and it may not end well.
COMMENT
In the long and winding Harry and Meghan saga, most likely coming to a screen near you soon thanks to some enterprising Hallmark channel producers, one middle aged, greying man has played an unlikely but significant role. Meet Tom Bradby.
Bradby has been one of those peripheral figures in royal life since 2006 when he made a TV doco following Harry in Lesotho during the then young prince’s gap year.
Having proven that he could ask nice questions and not get muck on the palace chintz sofas, Bradby landed the plum gig of conducting William and Kate’s first interview as an engaged couple in 2010, asking such probing questions as, “Kate, what did your mum say?” (My guess: ‘Thank Christ we paid a small fortune for her to go to Marlborough’) and “Do you want lots of children?” (to which the obvious answer was, of course, how else will the Buckingham Palace gift shop move loads of commemorative china).
RELATED: Meghan move that made Kate
Bradby, though, really carved out his place in royal history when in September 2019 he and an intrepid camera crew joined the Sussexes on their high stakes tour of Southern Africa. These sorts of TV outings tend to be as riveting as watching Farrow & Ball paint dry, PR plays that show the royal principal in question in a nice human light, maybe hugging a small child here and there, while giving absolutely nothing of substance away.
But in 2019, Bradby (and one could argue Harry and Meghan) ignored that particular memo, instead using the interviews shot in South Africa to reveal the royal couple’s deep personal struggles at the time.
Harry seemingly confirmed the lingering argument that all was not well between himself and his brother William but the biggest headlines were reserved for Meghan, whose comments to Bradby saying she’s “not really OK” and “it’s not enough to just survive” soon ricocheted across the world.
RELATED: Mystery over Queen’s gift to Meghan
When weeks later it was announced that the couple would take an extended sabbatical it seemed an eminently sensible move; clearly they were struggling.
Now a new Bradby interview is making news with the ITV journalist having taken to a weekend chat show show to reveal that Harry is “heartbroken” after the dramatic events of the last year which have seen he and Meghan trade life as senior members of the royal family to become nascent West Coast content producers, with a sideline in a vegan latte business.
“So are they unhappy? No, I think they are content; the things they are doing they are quite excited by,” Bradby told host Alan Titchmarsh.
“I think he is heartbroken by the situation with his family – you don’t necessarily need to have knowledge to know that, but I think it is true.
“The situation with the family clearly isn’t ideal and it has been a very difficult year for them all.
“But are [Harry and Meghan] unhappy out there? No, I don’t think that’s right, I think they are pretty happy actually, but I think they wrestle with their position in life, I think they all do. I think William does too; I don’t think he finds it easy.”
So far, so much pathos.
RELATED: Harry’s huge Meghan miscalculation
Predictably, Bradby’s comments immediately made headlines, with “heartbroken” being slung about the place.
However, what is so interesting here is the fact that this current situation is starting to bear a resemblance to the early ’90s and the internecine, bloodless conflict known as the War of the Wales.
As Diana, Princess of Wales and Prince Charles’ deeply unhappy, fractured union spilled over into public view, each would get their side of things out into the open via sympathetic publications or journalists. Charles was an adulterous cold fish was the princess’s narrative; Diana, the other side countered, was unbalanced and (that old 19th century chestnut) “hysterical”.
At stake in this Fleet Street fight was who got to claim victim status; which party was truly the wronged figure in this fairytale gone spectacularly awry.
One famous incident came about in 1991 as Diana’s 30th birthday loomed. In the lead-up, speculation grew about why they would not be together on the big day. Charles’ cronies whispered to the Daily Mail that he indeed offered to throw his wife a party at their country house Highgrove; she countered by allegedly leaking that she had turned it down because the soiree would have only involved his “stuffy old friends”.
The birthday party imbroglio “was the first time that the two armies came truly into the open,” Diana’s longtime private secretary Patrick Jephson later wrote.
The same year, Diana began clandestinely working with Andrew Morton on the biography (Diana: Her True Story) which would come to define ‘bombshell’ status. (Heck, 30 years on it still does.)
In the wake of Diana’s release, when respected royal journalist Penny Junor wrote in Today that Diana’s behaviour had been “irrational, unreasonable and hysterical,” the princess is alleged to have asked Charles, “Why don’t you save yourself a phone call and ring the papers direct?”
To get his side across, Charles agreed to let journalist Jonathan Dimbleby pen an authorised biography, which came out in 1994, and in a companion TV interview he admitted publicly for the first time that he had been unfaithful to his wife and that he felt he had been pressured by his father into marriage.
The following year Diana retaliated, sitting down with Panorama’s Martin Bashir, infamously quipping, “There were three of us in the marriage so it got a bit crowded.”
These instances are just the briefest taste of the propaganda war of sorts that both camps waged to win public sympathy and cast themselves as the truly aggrieved party.
Of late, there have been signs that a similar sort of battle is heating up.
In the past 18 months there have been a steady rat-a-tat of stories from various ‘friends’ and ‘sources’ aligned to William, Harry and the palace who have spoken to the press in what is starting to look eerily similar to the events of the ’90s.
Rewind to October 2019, in the wake of Harry’s comments to Bradby when “a well-placed source” told the BBC’s royal correspondent that William was “furious” along with reporting the elder prince was “worried” about his brother.
One day later, a “source close to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex” told CNN that the duo had “single-handedly modernised the monarchy” and that “the briefings by so-called ‘palace insiders and friends’ are classic examples of anti-Prince Harry and Meghan hysteria”.
To be fair this particular MO is hardly restricted to the Wales brothers with Prince Charles and Buckingham Palace regularly slipping trusted writers and publications juicy morsels, quotes and stories.
To be clear I am not suggesting here that Bradby made his most recent comments at the direction of anyone. As he himself told TV host Titchmarsh, “I am always reluctant to say anything more because I don’t want to make anything worse or get in between anything or anything like that.”
However, the picture that has emerged in the past 18 months is of two princely ‘camps’ willing to jump to the defence of each man and put their views across.
What the War of the Wales proved was that each time a “source” or anonymous “friend” appeared in the press to argue the party line, each of these salvos made the palace civil war that much more intractable and toxic.
The hope has to be that William and Harry both don’t go so far down this same path.
While their relationship has clearly struggled, surely the universal hope here is that at some point in the not-too-distant future they find a way to move on from the hurts of recent years, that they can patch things up and enjoy a renewed bond and camaraderie.
If there is one thing that both Charles and Diana taught us, it’s that when it comes to conflicts waged in the press there is only ever one winner – the press. Let’s hope it is a lesson that William and Harry will come to fully understand too.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
‘Disappeared’: Kate mystery deepens
The Princess of Wales has undertaken her first major solo engagement since 2023 – and one very strange detail has emerged.
King’s secret plan for William revealed
“Don’t want that to happen again”: The King has had a huge hand in one key decision regarding his son, it’s been revealed.
Kate’s huge cancer update after surprise trip
The Princess of Wales shared a significant update on her cancer journey during an emotional visit to the nurses who treated her.