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'On absolute ice': Feuding William and Harry are 'totally estranged and unlikely to speak at coronation'
27 April 2023, 18:14 | Updated: 30 April 2023, 06:56
Prince William and Prince Harry's relationship is like "ice" and the brothers are "totally estranged" with any contact between them unlikely to happen before the coronation, a royal expert has said.
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Tina Brown, the former Vanity Fair editor told LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr that things are unlikely to get better while Harry reflects on his life and resents William for, in Harry's eyes, making him the "spare" to the heir.
"They are totally estranged. I do not think there will be any contact between them at the coronation," she said.
"I think that their relationship right now is on absolute ice. The longer Harry dwells on what happened in his life, the more he feels resentment against William, because he feels, I think, that William was even more calculated, essentially, in making him number two, making him the spare, and feel like the spare at all times.
"So, there's no contact between them, I'm told."
Harry is due to fly in for the coronation, but the trip is only expected to be brief and there is speculation over whether he or any of the royals will attempt to use the ceremony as a chance to start rebuilding bridges.
Tina Brown: ‘Their relationship right now is on absolute ice!’
Ms Brown believes Charles would like his sons to repair their relationship but she worries that would take a long time.
She pointed to the breakdown of the relationship between George VI and his brother Edward VIII, whose reign ended over his plans to marry Wallis Simpson.
"I think Charles wants to have some kind of rapprochement," Ms Brown said.
"But I think it's going to take years… It never happened between George VI and the Duke of Windsor, it just got worse. Alienations tend to get worse as time goes by, rather than better."
It has been reported that Harry still has no idea where he will sit during the coronation at Westminster Abbey on May 6.
Meghan will not attend the coronation and instead stay at home in California to celebrate their son Archie's fourth birthday.
She has denied she is staying in the US because an unnamed senior member of the royal family expressed concern about the skin colour of Archie when she was pregnant with him.
A spokesman for the Duchess of Sussex said she is not thinking about "conversations from four years ago".
"Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating," the spokesperson said.
Harry has recently been embroiled in legal action against News Group Newspapers, in which he has disclosed a number of claims to the High Court.
Prince William was "completely unaware" his brother planned to reveal details of an alleged secret phone hacking payout until it was made public, insiders claimed.
The Prince of Wales was given the "very large" secret payout by Rupert Murdoch's media business to settle a phone-hacking claim, according to court filings.
It is claimed William was given the sum in 2020 following a legal claim made against the owner of The Sun and the News of the World.
According to Prince Harry, the "£1 million" payment shows the existence of a "secret agreement" between the royals and News Group Newspapers (NGN), which came about partly in an attempt to rehabilitate the Queen.
NGN, which published The Sun, is being sued over alleged unlawful information gathering at its titles.
It has denied that ever happened at The Sun and wants the court to throw the case out.
