Two days ago, Prince Harry made a surprise appearance at the funeral of an uncle-in-law. He quietly entered the church in Snettisham, a rural village in Norfolk, and, when the service was over, he left without attracting attention.
Everyone present – there were about 300 attendees – must have wondered whether he would speak to his brother, the Prince of Wales.
However, William apparently left the church without exchanging a single syllable with his younger brother. The wounds inflicted by Harry Spare’s absurdly offensive memoir – which not only detailed an incident in which William knocked him to the ground, but also made disparaging remarks about his wife Kate – are still too raw to heal.
The occasion that brought the brothers together was a memorial service for Robert Fellowes, the late Private Secretary to the Queen from 1990 to 1999, who was made a life peer when he left office.
Lord Fellowes, the soul of courtly discretion and loyalty, was a devoted member of our late monarch’s household, the embodiment of all that makes the Royal Family tick.
Despite the continued frostiness between Harry and William, AN Wilson hopes they can “forgive each other’s faults and build bridges before it’s too late”.
Our constitutional monarchy is a machine whose gears are oiled by the likes of Robert Fellowes, and we can be sure he would have understood perfectly why William thinks Harry is out of line.
After all, Harry and Meghan handled their exit from the Royal Family in the worst way imaginable.
They tried to convince the Queen to agree to a crazy formula that would have involved them as part-time royals: spending half their time living as celebrities in California and the other half fulfilling royal duties in Britain or around the world (naturally, they expected to retain their royal titles and be treated with that special deference afforded to royals working in this hybrid role).
They did not seem to realise that we give such deference to people like the late Queen and Prince Philip, Prince Charles and Princess Anne not because we revere them personally – although we have good reason to do so – but because we revere the idea of the monarchy they serve.
Harry flew in to attend the memorial service for Robert Fellowes (pictured), the late Queen’s private secretary, but his brother appears to have left the church without saying a word to him.
St Mary’s Church in Snettisham, Norfolk, where the service took place on Wednesday
Prince William with his aunt, Lady Jane Fellowes, in 2021
Harry and Meghan had missed the point. They saw the monarchy as a vehicle that would allow them to bask in fame and felt completely free to be indiscreet and malicious with the rest of the Royal Family, who… No Being part of the B-list celebrity crowd – they are not in a position to answer.
So William was right: in a certain sense – cutting off his brother at Lord Fellowes’ funeral. Because the kind of part-time job Harry and Meghan wanted was never going to be offered to them before they left for America, and it certainly isn’t going to be offered to them now that they have behaved with such exhibitionism, such spite, such utter idiocy.
But according to some reports, it appears that the King’s spiritual advisers, especially Bishop Richard Chartres, the former Bishop of London, have been urging him to reconcile with his youngest son.
None of us will live forever, and the King’s recent health problems only underline how vital it is for family members to love one another, forgive one another’s faults and build bridges before it is too late.
There was something terribly sad about Harry’s fleeting visit to that Norfolk church. Despite what he might have claimed so self-pityingly in Spare, he and William used to love each other.
They lived through unimaginable tragedy together when their mother died. And it would have been fitting for them to embrace and reconcile at the funeral of their mother’s brother-in-law (Fellowes was married to Princess Diana’s sister Jane).
So let us all hope – however harsh our opinions of Harry and Meghan’s behaviour – that there will be a reconciliation.
The late Queen made it clear that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex could not be part-time employees. You are either a working royal or you are not, and they chose not to do that. And they must stay.
But this does not mean that they have to be eternally ignored or that, behind closed doors, Harry cannot meet with his father and brother.
After all, they’ve both been through the same horrific tragedy with him and are in a unique position to know what that must be like.