Prince Harry has made another public appeal for peace within his family, telling listeners that, amid everything happening around the world, reconciliation should be the priority.
During a notably gentle interview, Harry appeared to be referring to his older brother, Prince William, when he said people often ask how the pair could repair their relationship.
He added: “Some people don’t want it to work out. I want it to work out,” a remark that seemed to carry a pointed message for those who doubt his intentions.
After years of reported distance between the brothers, the comments raise a familiar question: is Harry genuinely prepared to set past disputes aside and begin rebuilding the relationship?
According to sources cited by the Daily Mail’s royal editor Rebecca English, however, the latest intervention has reportedly prompted widespread frustration—and even a “chorus of eye-rolls”—within royal circles.
The timing was also criticised. Harry’s remarks came as King Charles and the Princess of Wales welcomed the Sultan of Oman, with some viewing the interview as an unwelcome distraction from the important royal engagement.
Critics have long pointed to what they see as a contradiction in Harry’s public approach: calling for family unity while also speaking openly about his grievances with the Royal Family.
That history, royal commentators suggest, may help explain why some members of the family have reportedly become tired of repeated public interventions and believe Harry has not fully acknowledged the role his own actions may have played in the continuing breakdown.
Prince Harry has been criticised over comments made during a 42-minute GQ interview, in which he said: “Some people don’t want it to work out. I want it to work out.”
William and Charles have appeared increasingly weary of the continuing tensions with Harry over the years, pictured in 2023.
Cracks begin to show during royal life
Harry’s public references to family tensions can be traced back to February 2018, when he and Meghan joined William and Kate for their first public engagement together at a mental health charity event.
When the group was asked how disagreements were handled within the family, the question appeared to create an uncomfortable pause among the four royals.
Harry tried to lighten the moment with a joke, saying he could not remember how disputes were settled because disagreements came “thick and fast.”
William responded in a similarly playful vein, asking whether the disagreements were actually resolved before joking that nobody knew.
Harry then acknowledged that working together as a family could be difficult, while adding that they remained connected for life.
At the time, many viewers interpreted the exchange as light-hearted banter. In retrospect, it has been seen as one of the earliest occasions when Harry appeared to hint publicly at tensions within the family.
That moment preceded a series of increasingly candid comments, as Harry’s frustration appeared to intensify in the years that followed.
Harry, Meghan, Catherine and William attend the first annual Royal Foundation Forum in February 2018.
The floodgates open after Oprah interview
One of the most prominent examples of Harry calling for better relations while also criticising his relatives came during his headline-making interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021.
During the interview, which included a number of serious allegations, Harry said his brother, then the Prince of Wales, had stopped communicating with him after Harry and Meghan stepped back from their roles as working royals the previous year.
But Harry seemingly left the door open to mending the rift, telling Oprah: ‘The relationship is “space” at the moment, and time heals all things, hopefully.’
He went on: ‘I will always love him – but there’s a lot of hurt that’s happened and I will continue to make it one of my priorities to try and heal that relationship.’
Yet Harry couldn’t seem to help himself, as he also used the interview to complain that his ‘family literally cut me off financially’ after he and Meghan stopped being working royals, despite their initial proposal revolving around financial independence.
And there were, of course, Meghan’s accusations that members of his family had been racist by asking what skin colour their son Prince Archie would have – something that no doubt hurt them deeply.
In a show of backhanded pity, Harry also mused: ‘My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave. And I have huge compassion for that.’
In an extraordinary interview watched by tens of millions of people around the world, Harry told Oprah he would always love his brother but added, ‘there’s a lot of hurt that’s happened’
Harry doubles down on ‘speaking truths’
Taking no time to pause and reflect on the negative reaction to the interview, Harry chose to double down on his Oprah accusations in another money-making TV show.
Later in 2021, he and Oprah collaborated yet again on the Apple+ series The Me You Can’t See, where Harry insisted he still wanted ‘reconciliation’.
He also defended his decision to do the original Oprah interview and said: ‘I like to think that we were able to speak truths in the most compassionate way possible, therefore leaving an opening for reconciliation and healing.’
But he once again managed to burn bridges further when he publicly blasted Charles’s parenting and said that his father told him: ‘Well it was like that for me, so it’s going to be like that for you.’
The prince also went on to accuse the Royal Family of ‘total neglect’ at a time when Meghan was allegedly suicidal.
As usual, he seemed to paint himself as the victim of his stuffy family, commenting: ‘I’ve got a hell of a lot of my mum in me. The only way to free yourself and break out is to tell the truth.’
The prince then used an Apple+ TV series to defend the accusations he made in their Oprah interview, saying: ‘We were able to speak truths in the most compassionate way possible’
Netflix documentary turns family pain into drama
Yet another expedition of Harry’s mixed messaging to his family came during the release of the 2022 Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan.
In the six-part series, there was a somewhat heartfelt moment when Harry admitted that his move from the UK hadn’t been all sunshine and rainbows.
He said: ‘I miss the UK, I miss my friends. I miss the weird family gatherings, when we are all sort of brought together under one roof for certain times of the year.’
But the prince, once again, couldn’t help turning the moment of sadness into a thinly veiled attack against them.
Ever the victim, Harry told the cameras: ‘I have had to make peace with the fact that I am probably never going to get genuine accountability or a genuine apology.’
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He also went on to accuse William of yelling and Charles of lying when they refused to bless the couple’s request for a ‘half-in, half-out’ Megxit that would allow them to earn a fortune while picking and choosing royal duties.
Describing the now infamous Sandringham Summit he said: ‘It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that just simply weren’t true. And my grandmother, you know, quietly sit there and take it all in.’
Harry and Meghan’s six-part Netflix documentary saw the prince open up about missing the UK, but then accusing King Charles of lying and Prince William of screaming at him
Bombshell interview with Tom Bradby
The next major instance of the Duke of Sussex’s split attitude towards his family came shortly before his memoir Spare was released.
Just days ahead of its official release date in January 2023, Harry sat down with ITV news presenter Tom Bradby to film Harry: The Interview.
Bizarrely, the trailer teased reconciliation as the primary theme, and Harry framed the book’s media tour as an effort to facilitate a mending of bridges.
At the sit down he candidly told Mr Bradby: ‘I want my father and brother back.
‘It never needed to be this way. I want a family, not an institution.’
But once again, Harry trashed any thought of peace by giving his family both barrels. He accused them of showing ‘no willingness to reconcile’.
Crucially, however, he followed up that statement by adding, ‘Though I would like to have reconciliation, I would like accountability.’
Although for the rest of the royals, it appears that giving Harry his long-desired ‘accountability’ seems to be the sticking point.
Prince Harry sat down with Tom Bradby and announced: ‘I want my father and brother back’. But he then took a swipe at his family by saying they have ‘no willingness to reconcile’
Spare shows Harry’s long-running grievances
Things went nuclear when Harry released his memoir Spare, as it revealed that his plethora of family grievances dated back to his childhood with William.
He called the Prince of Wales his ‘arch nemesis’ and made jabs at his appearance, pointing out his ‘alarming baldness’ and his resemblance to Diana that was ‘fading with time, with age’.
The memoir also revealed Harry’s claims of physical and verbal fights between the brothers, most notably the alleged Nottingham Cottage saga.
That argument, he said, arose from disagreements about Meghan, where William supposedly called her difficult, rude and abrasive.
Seemingly unaware of the severity of his accusations against the future king, and the disrespect he showed his family while asking for reconciliation, Harry continued his book press tour.
In his 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper as part of Spare’s promotion, Harry jaw-droppingly claimed he ‘never intended to hurt his family’.
And, in reference to the highly criticised passages about William, the duke confessed: ‘I don’t see it as cutting at all.’
It seems the Royal Family didn’t believe him.
Harry’s bombshell memoir Spare accused William of pushing him to the floor, but he said in an interview with 60 Minutes that he doesn’t consider the claims to be cutting ‘at all’
Reconciliation chances grow following Charles’s cancer diagnosis
Things looked like they could be changing after the King’s cancer diagnosis in February 2024.
The tragic event brought the father and son together for the first time in nine months, because Harry flew over from his home in the US immediately.
Hopeful royal experts told the Daily Mail they believed the trip could be a ‘sign of a truce’, with views that it was the ‘good news’ coming out of the ‘bad news’ about the King’s health.
And later that month, Harry too seemed to be searching for the silver lining when he told Good Morning America: ‘I think any illness, any sickness brings families together. I see it time and time again, and that makes me very happy.’
However, just three months later, Harry visited London for Invictus Games arrangements but failed to spend any time with his sick father despite being just two miles away from him.
This time it wasn’t a public criticism from Harry that had derailed things, with insiders claiming a row had broken out between the pair behind the scenes.
In the aftermath, aides clashed over ‘who was avoiding whom’.
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Can Prince Harry and the Royal Family put their differences aside and reconcile?
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex moved back to the UK with their children, Archie and Lilibet, in August this year
Harry and Meghan’s unexpected return to the UK
More than two years on, family reconciliation appeared to be on the horizon once again when Harry, Meghan, Archie and Lilibet visited the King and Queen at Highgrove this summer.
It was the first time the King had seen his grandchildren in years, and while the private meeting adhered to the King’s wishes for a ‘peaceful’ family reunion, weeks of leaks from Team Sussex had left him ‘weak and wary’.
And just a month later, the King was blindsided by the announcement of their return to the UK.
Clearly eager to use his father’s status, Harry has since extended a self-serving olive branch by asking Charles to open the Invictus Games in 2027, an offer the King has yet to accept.
Perhaps this rejection is too much for Harry to handle, as he sat down with GQ magazine last month to publicly call for a family reconciliation once again.
But when the interview was broadcast this week, it became just another example in the long list of Harry talking up peace while simultaneously waging war.
Given his record over the years, who can blame The Firm for viewing his talk of reconciliation with a royally big dose of scepticism?