Prince William and Prince Harry share the most brutal royal brotherly feud since Marvel’s Thor and Loki, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t share the same perspective on some things. For one, the Prince of Wales might be best buds with his imperial daddikins these days, but the two boys nonetheless still hold a grudge against King Charles, and likely always will.
The King’s extramarital affair with now-Queen Camilla while he was still married to Princess Diana is quite possibly the most notorious cheating scandal in the world, so it needs no introduction. Likewise, it’s no surprise to hear that Harry isn’t a fan of his stepmother, given all the scathing comments he makes about her in his memoir, Spare. What may come as a bit of a shock, though, is that William likewise has a strained relationship with Camilla.
Just days after the next in line to the throne was shown happily standing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with Charles and Camilla, intel claims that William is still smarting from a duplicitous “betrayal” at his own father’s hand.
William and Harry tried to talk Charles out of marrying Camilla, and can’t forgive him for making her queen
According to Christopher Anderson, author of the recent Charles biography The King, William and Harry have long been open with their father about their problems with Camilla. When the couple wed in 2005 — eight years after their mother Diana died in 1997 — the two boys were dead against it, even if they played the dutiful sons in public.
“[Prince William and Prince Harry] didn’t want their father to marry Camilla,” Anderson told Fox News. “They tried to talk him out of it… they had to put on a public face of acceptance.”
Anderson explained that Charles likewise had a battle to get his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, to come around to Camilla as well. In that case, however, Queen Elizabeth eventually made peace with her son’s choice of a second wife and finally consented to allow her to be queen consort shortly before her death in 2022. However, what the late Queen made her son promise was that he would not make Camilla queen officially — i.e. have her crowned alongside him during his coronation.
But guess what Charles did when his coronation came around? Exactly that. Given that this was one of their much-missed grandmother’s final requests, and given their own long-festering feelings about Camilla, William and Harry are said to still hold a grudge about that.
“We have to remember, he promised he would never make Camilla queen. And I think that’s one thing that still bothers both Harry and William,” Anderson revealed, before going on to discuss how his two sons have never gotten over Charles’ “betrayal”:
“It’s unfortunate that Charles… promised he would never make Camilla queen,” he said. “[He felt] that the way the people felt about Diana, they would never allow him to crown her by his side. But that’s exactly what he did. So, in that sense, I think both William and Harry feel a sense of betrayal to this day on that issue.”
Divorced and remarried families are always complicated, but apparently it gets multiplied by 1000 when it’s the Royal family.