Two days ago, Prince Harry made a surprise appearance at the memorial service for an uncle by marriage. He discreetly slipped into the church in the rural Norfolk village of Snettisham and, when the service was over, made an equally low-profile exit.
Everyone present – there were about 300 in attendance – must have been asking themselves whether he would speak to his brother, the Prince of Wales.
William, however, apparently left the church without exchanging a single syllable with his errant younger sibling. The wounds inflicted by Harry’s absurdly offensive memoir Spare – which not only gave details of 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 which brought the brothers together was a memorial service for Robert Fellowes, the late Queen’s Private Secretary from 1990-1999, who was made a life peer when he left the post.
The soul of courtier-like discretion and loyalty, Lord Fellowes was a devoted member of our late monarch’s household, an embodiment of everything which makes the Royal Family function.
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Our constitutional monarchy is a machine whose wheels are oiled by people like Robert Fellowes. And we can be sure that he would have understood totally why William feels that Harry is beyond the pale.
After all, Harry and Meghan handled their exit from the Royal Family in the worst way imaginable.
They tried to bounce the Queen into accepting a crazy formula that would have involved them being part-time royals – spending half the time living a celebrity lifestyle in California and the other half performing royal duties in Britain, or around the world. (Naturally, they expected to keep their royal titles and to be treated with that special deference offered to the working royals in this hybrid role.)
They did not seem to realise that we give such deference to the likes of the late Queen and Prince Philip, Prince Charles and Princess Anne not because we revere them personally – though we have good reason to do so – but because we revere the idea of the monarchy which they serve,
Harry flew in to attend the memorial service for Robert Fellowes (pictured), the late Queen’s Private Secretary – but it seems his brother 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 viewed the monarchy as a vehicle that would allow them to bask in the limelight. And they felt perfectly at liberty to be indiscreet and malicious about the rest of the Royal Family who – not being part of the B-list celebrity crowd – are not in a position to answer back.
So William was right – in a way – to cut his brother at Lord Fellowes’s memorial service. For the kind of part-time role which Harry and Meghan wanted was never going to be offered to them before they went to America, and is certainly not going to be offered to them now they have behaved with such exhibitionism, such spite and such utter idiocy.
But, according to some reports, it would seem that the King’s spiritual advisers, especially Bishop Richard Chartres, the former Bishop of London, have been urging him to reconcile with his younger son.
None of us will live for ever, and the King’s recent health problems only underline how vital it is for family members to love one another, to forgive each other’s faults and to build bridges before it is too late.
There was something terribly sad about Harry’s flying visit to that Norfolk church. Whatever he might have so self-pityingly claimed in Spare, he and William used to love each other.
They lived together through an unimaginable tragedy when their mother died. And it would have been somehow appropriate for them to embrace and make up at the memorial service of their mother’s brother-in-law (Fellowes was married to Princess Diana’s sister, Jane).
So, let us all hope – whatever harsh views we rightly take 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-timers. You either are or you aren’t a working royal, and they opted out. And out they must stay.
But this does not mean that they must be everlastingly cold-shouldered, or that, behind closed doors, Harry could not be reunited with his father and his brother.
After all, both of them have been through the same ghastly tragedy with him and are uniquely placed to know what that must be like.
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