If Prince Harry is serious about reconciliation, he needs to stop talking
If Prince Harry is serious about reconciliation, he needs to stop talking
Melanie McdonaghWed, October 21, 2026 at 11:28 AM UTC
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Prince Harry and Meghan pictured in their interview with Oprah Winfrey - Reuters/Harpo Productions/Joe Pugliese
Prince Harry has spoken – at some length – about wanting a reconciliation with his father and brother in his first sit-down interview since returning to the UK.
Asked by GQ whether he was grieving for his “complicated” relationship with the King and Prince William, the Duke of Sussex replied: “Of course.” Reconciliation with the family was “the most important thing” to him, he added. “Some people don’t want it to work out,” Prince Harry said. “I want it to work out.”
To which the obvious riposte is, if making up with his father and brother really is what he wants, it’s best not to open himself up to a reporter from a New York magazine and share his deepest emotions with a global audience.
Think about it. The prime reason for Harry’s estrangement – besides the obvious one, that Prince William and other family members thought Meghan was pretty frightful – was that he had shared the falling-out with his sibling and father with absolutely everyone, for money. The revelations in his memoir Spare, especially the bit about a physical fight with his brother over Meghan, were riveting but devastating. It is not just Prince Harry, of course. His and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, when the Duchess accused a member of the Royal family of racism, was also a betrayal of trust.
Given that the cause of the rift is the willingness of him and his wife to air their difficult dealings with the rest of the family, it follows – doesn’t it? – that the best way to show that keenness for reconciliation is to keep quiet, preferably for the rest of their lives, and try to build bridges in private. But keeping quiet isn’t how Prince Harry and Meghan function.
The Prince makes much of wanting to help other people by sharing his own experiences, be that of “relatable sibling disagreements” or “broken relationships between kids and their parents”, and he’s fluent in therapy-speak. “Trying to make an impact in the world,” he told GQ, “that energises me.”
In particular, the interview was focused on grief, about which Prince Harry has conducted a MasterClass. And so most of it was the Duke of Sussex sharing his thoughts about how to move on.
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Certainly after losing a parent as a boy of 12, he knows about devastating loss. Most of us will relate to his observation that “losing your mother really sucks”. Others, however, will baulk at his insistence that “therapy gave me permission to grieve”. That may be so, but it’s this kind of psycho-guff, typical of California, that alienates so many.
The other obvious problem is that no one, even in the US, is really and truly interested in Prince Harry’s efforts to help others “heal”, or his own psychological journey – “I’ve done different forms of therapy; I’ve put in the work.” – so much as the nuggets he lets slip about his present and past relationship with his family.
Prince Harry spoke of his complicated relationship with Prince William and the King in an interview with GQ
How to break this? No one particularly wants Prince Harry (still less Meghan) to advise on “‘letting go of the past”. People fall on his terrifically irritating interviews, myself included, for what they tell us about him and the Royal family. And by talking about his difficult, fraught relationships with his father and brother – even if he thinks his observations are uncontroversial, and no matter how he dresses them up – the Duke of Sussex makes it impossible for the Royals to trust him.
The frustrating reality is that he and Meghan do have popular appeal – their appearance in Nottingham on a public engagement (which looked pretty much like a royal outing) was well received. And Harry could, conceivably, if he took some vow of tactical silence (a big ask), one day return to being a working royal, paid accordingly.
But the unhappy truth is that, for now, the prince’s family, and background, is his stock in trade.
And things could get worse yet. Harry is in talks about making a documentary for the 30th anniversary of his mother’s death. And with the best will in the world, it would be impossible to do that without touching on his mother’s feelings about Queen Camilla: “There were three of us in that marriage.” That would only further complicate his relations with the King and his sibling.
Every time he opens his mouth, it seems, Prince Harry makes the reconciliation he claims to seek that bit less likely.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
