ROYAL FAMILY
The sister I never had’: How Prince Harry’s relationship with Princess Kate has deteriorated over the years
The sister I never had’: How Prince Harry’s relationship with Princess Kate has deteriorated over the years
As someone who has been covering the British royal family for over a decade, it’s hard not to notice the sad shift in the relationship between the Princess of Wales and Prince Harry. From the outside, it seemed like a warm, brotherly-sisterly bond, full of laughter and shared smiles. Along with Prince William, the two were a close-knit royal trio.
While thousands of miles separated Harry from his brother and sister-in-law for six years, the Sussexes are now back living in the UK. Although they are once again on the same soil, the distance between them remains.
Russell Myers claimed in his 2026 book William & Catherine: The Intimate Inside Story that Catherine was less interested than William in having Harry remain a working member of the royal family. The Duke of Sussex and his wife, Meghan Markle, ultimately stepped back from their royal roles in 2020.
“As an ‘outsider’, Catherine had witnessed the deterioration of William and Harry’s relationship. She had seen Harry and Meghan become ever more bitter at having to follow the rules of a hierarchical and hereditary monarchy, until they felt as if they could follow them no longer,” Russell wrote.
“Sources suggest Catherine had less interest than her husband in trying to persuade Harry to stay in his current role. She believed William and Harry’s fundamental differences as the ‘heir and the spare’ had created the inevitability of Harry wanting more from his role than being a bit-part player.”
“I liked making Kate laugh”
Though it’s not just William’s relationship with Harry that has deteriorated, Catherine’s has too. Gone are the days when Harry would accompany his brother and sister-in-law on engagements, smiling alongside them and making Catherine laugh, which the Duke admittedly enjoyed doing.
“I liked seeing Kate laugh. Better yet, I liked making her laugh. And I was quite good at it,” Harry wrote in his memoir Spare. “My transparently silly side connected with her heavily disguised silly side. Whenever I worried that Kate was going to be the one to take Willy from me, I consoled myself with thoughts of all our future laughing fits together, and I told myself how great everything would be when I had a serious girlfriend who could laugh along with us.”
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