Prince William and brother Prince Harry’s estranged relationship may have reached a point of no return after one specific line in Netflix’s Harry & Meghan was taken to be about William’s wife, Princess Kate Middleton.
According to Robert Hardman’s new biography The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy, William, 41, was not pleased when Harry, 39, claimed that men in his family often face a “temptation or an urge to marry someone who [they are] perhaps destined to be with.”
Several members of The Firm inferred that Harry was referencing William, according to Hardman.
“On top of all the other breaches of trust, here was Harry making a blatant attack on Catherine,” Hardman wrote in one passage. “For William, this was the lowest of the low.”
William met Kate, now 42, when they were undergraduate students at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. They wed in April 2011 before welcoming three children: Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5.
While William, Kate and Harry were once close, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have made multiple claims about Kate over the years. In Harry’s book, Spare, Harry alleged that Kate and Meghan were “forced to compete” with one another and that Kate had made Meghan cry ahead of her 2018 wedding over bridesmaids dresses. More recently, a Dutch translation of Omid Scobie’s Endgame book, which dropped in 2023 and is unaffiliated with Harry and Meghan, named Kate as one of the royal relatives who allegedly questioned Harry and Meghan’s son Archie’s skin tone. A source told Us Weekly that Kate was “saddened” by the allegations, denying that the princess was the one who made the comments.
A second source previously told Us Weekly that Kate was “appalled” that Harry was speaking about her in his documentary and memoir.
“Kate feels that Harry’s actions are atrocious,” the insider said in January 2023, shortly after Spare’s publication. “She is appalled at him for dragging her name through the dirt and is finding it hard to forgive.”
While Harry and Meghan have relocated from London to Montecito, California, they previously returned across the pond for his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in September 2023. Harry then attended father King Charles III’s coronation solo in May 2023 and left the next day.
The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy is available on bookstore shelves now.