William and Harry's complicated relationship: A timeline from happy boys to royal rift

It was not so long ago that siblings were thought to have an unbreakable bond having stood on the world stage, side by side, for some of the best of times — and some of the worst.

In some ways, many siblings will recognise elements of their relationship. But their unique situation as “heir and spare” added another dimension to their rivalry.

As Harry told Good Morning America’s Michael Strahan earlier this year, there was always a “competition between them” and over the past few years, their fractious relationship has cracked, seemingly beyond repair.

Here, Express.co.uk takes a closer look at the pair’s relationship from their youth all the way up to today.

READ MORE: Royal fans spot major clue hinting at William and Harry reconciliation

On August 31, 1997, everything changed for the princes. Their beloved mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, is involved in a horror car crash in Paris.

Harry wrote of his father telling him the news: “Darling boy, Mummy’s been in a car crash. There were complications. Mummy was quite badly injured and taken to hospital, darling boy.

“They tried [to save her], darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.”

One of the most searing and infamous images of the brothers will always be them, aged 15 and 12, walking behind their mother’s coffin through the streets of London as the entire world watched.

The moment, and whether or not it was an appropriate ask for such young children in a period of such immense shock, has long been debated. Harry touches on the same debate raging within the palace walls itself ahead of the funeral. Diana’s brother, Charles, was vocally against the idea.

Harry, however, writes that he wasn’t angry about the prospect. He wrote: “ I didn’t want Willy to undergo an ordeal like that without me. Had the roles been reversed, he’d never have wanted me – indeed, allowed me – to go it alone.

“So, come morning, bright and early, off we went, all together. Uncle Charles on my right, Willy to his right, followed by Grandpa. And on my left was Pa. I noted at the start how serene Grandpa looked, as if this was merely another royal engagement.

“I could see his eyes, clearly, because he was gazing straight ahead. They all were. But I kept mine down on the road. So did Willy. I remember feeling numb. I remember clenching my fists. I remember keeping a fraction of Willy always in the corner of my vision and drawing loads of strength from that.”

As time moved on and the boys returned to some semblance of life as normal, Harry followed in his older brother’s footsteps, enrolling at Eton in 1998. Harry wrote how he hoped that the pair would have had a close relationship but instead, he discovered that William “didn’t want to know him” while at school.

But having watched his own two children, Archie, four, and Lilibet, two, he said he now understands older siblings’ need for space. He told ITV in January: “It’s like, ‘come on, like you left me at Ludgrove and now I’m here at Eton… now we’re at the same school, let’s go’. And he didn’t want anything to do with me.

“And that hurt at the time. But now, well the gap between me and William is very similar to Archie and Lily, and to see Lily obsessed with Archie and Archie like ‘no, no Lily, I need my space, I need my space’, now I get it.

“I get it. I get how irritating a younger sibling can be to the older sibling. But in the moment, at the time, I didn’t really grasp that, I didn’t really realise it, but yes, I’ve always loved my brother.”

Historian and biographer Robert Lacey — who acted as a consultant on The Crown — wrote in his book The Battle of the Brothers that tension between William and Harry predates Meghan arriving on the scene.

When they were younger the Duke of Sussex had the reputation of being a “dirty rascal”, while “nothing seriously discreditable was ever written about the future William V”.

One incident that caused consternation took place in 2005 when a picture of Harry wearing a Nazi costume was plastered over the front page of the Sun. “What followed was a firestorm, which I thought at times would engulf me,” Harry wrote in Spare.

In his memoir, Harry recounts how it was William and Princess Kate’s idea to don the offensive outfit with the Waleses allegedly “howling” with laughter at the idea. The incident left Harry feeling “resentful and even alienated”, Mr Lacey wrote, as William had “coaxed” Harry into “errant and self-destructive ways”.

Mr Lacey continued: “Harry chose his costume in conjunction with his elder brother — the future King William V, then 22, who had laughed all the way back to Highgrove with the younger sibling he was supposed to be mentoring — and then onwards to the party together. The young prince began re-evaluating his elder brother’s involvement and the unfairness of William’s subsequent emergence smelling of roses.”

One former aide told Mr Lacey it was the first time their relationship “really suffered” and they “barely spoke” afterwards. They added: “Harry resented the fact that William got away so lightly.”

Harry felt as though a chapter had drawn to a close in April 2011 when William and Kate tied the knot at Westminster Abbey, describing the day as like “yet another farewell”.

In Spare, he recalled thinking how his brother, who he had escorted into the Abbey that morning, “was gone — forever”. He wrote: “Who could deny it? He’d never again be first and foremost Willy… Who shall separate us? Life, that’s who…

“And I recall Willy walking her back up the aisle, and as they disappeared through the door, into the carriage that would convey them to Buckingham Palace, into the eternal partnership they’d pledged, I recall thinking: Goodbye.”

Harry also revealed in his book that, contrary to public belief, he was not his brother’s best man: “The public had been told that I was to be best man, but that was a bare-faced lie.

“The public expected me to be the best man, and thus, the palace saw no choice but to say that I was. In truth, Willy didn’t want me giving a best man speech. He didn’t think it safe to hand me a live mic and put me in a position to go off script. I might say something wildly inappropriate. He wasn’t wrong.”

Instead, James Meade and Thomas van Straubenzee—two of William’s friends—were the best men.

Harry and Meghan met in 2016, and tied the knot in 2018. At first, it appeared everything was going to work out harmoniously — Harry, Meghan, William and Kate were dubbed the ‘Fab Four’ by the press.

William served as Harry’s appeared happy and jovial at the wedding, and the couples reported plans to work together to drive their chosen charities and patronages forward.

Both couples lived, seemingly harmoniously, as neighbours within the grounds of Kensington Palace. But things would soon begin to change, starting with Harry and Meghan announcing a relocation to Windsor.

In 2018, after Harry and Meghan married, rumours began to swirl that there was a rift between them and William and Kate, fuelled by the fact that the Sussexes had moved from Kensington Palace to Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor Estate.

But Vanity Fair’s royal editor Katie Nicholl explained that they had actually fallen out over Christmas 2017 because Harry was disappointed with William’s treatment towards Meghan.

Having spoken to a close friend of Harry’s, she said: “Harry felt William wasn’t rolling out the red carpet for Meghan and told him so. They had a bit of a fall out which was only resolved when Charles stepped in and asked William to make an effort. That’s when the Cambridges invited the Sussexes to spend Christmas with them.”

In March 2019, the two households split which further added to speculation about a rift between the brothers but Buckingham Palace described it as a “long-planned move” in a statement at the time.

A month later, a clip was widely circulated apparently showing William and Harry not speaking to each other while attending the same Easter service, further fuelling rumours. By June of that year, Harry and Meghan split from the royal foundation they had set up with the Waleses.

In October 2019, following an unauthorised royal documentary William & Harry: Princes at War which claimed that the rift was caused by the Prince of Wales warning his brother not to rush into his relationship with Meghan, Harry addressed the rumours.

In the ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, where the Duchess famously revealed that she was feeling “vulnerable”, Harry referred to “stuff” that had happened between the pair.

He said: “Part of this role and part of this job, and this family, being under the pressure that it’s under, inevitably, you know, stuff happens. But look, we’re brothers, we’ll always be brothers. And we’re certainly on different paths at the moment, but I’ll always be there for him, as I know he’ll always be there for me.”

It was also in 2019 that Harry alleges he was physically attacked by William. In Spare, the Duke claimed that William grabbed him by the collar, ripped his necklace and threw him to the floor during a row about Meghan.

He said William had called the former Suits actress “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive” before the alleged incident took place. Harry said William told him to hit him back before leaving, looking “regretful and apologetic”.

In January 2020, Meghan and Harry announced they would be stepping back as senior royals which sources claimed left William “really sad and genuinely shocked”.

In the Harry & Meghan Netflix docu-series, released last year, Harry said he was stunned by William shouting at him during a meeting where the Royal Family discussed the couple stepping back.

He said: “It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father says things that just simply weren’t true, and my grandmother quietly sit there and just take it all in.”

Later that year, Harry and Meghan signed a deal with Netflix which William was reportedly “livid” about as they are the giant that produces the hit series The Crown.

In the Sussexes’ famous interview with Oprah Winfrey, Harry did not discuss his relationship with his brother in great detail but he did say: “I love William to bits. He’s my brother. We’ve been to hell together. But we’re on different paths… The relationship is ‘space’ at the moment. And time heals all things, hopefully.”

Although William responded to Meghan’s bombshell claim that a member of the Royal Family had questioned what skin tone Archie would be, stating that the Firm are “very much not a racist family”, nothing was said publicly about Harry. However, in the Harry & Meghan docu-series, a clip is shown where Harry receives a text from William after the interview and becomes visibly distressed, stating: “I wish I knew what to do.”

Both William and Harry then appeared to put the feud aside in light of tragic events that shook the family. In April 2021, they were seen walking side by side at their grandfather’s funeral and the pair met to talk.

The following year, it was reported that Harry and William were in touch over FaceTime but at the Queen’s Jubilee celebration last year the relationship was reportedly at “rock bottom” with the Prince and Princess of Wales skipping Lilibet’s first birthday celebrations held at Frogmore Cottage, while the Sussexes were in the UK.

A close friend of William told the Daily Mail: “[William] alternates between grieving for what he has lost and feeling really, really angry about what his brother has done. He truly loves Harry and feels he has lost the only person, aside from his wife, who understood this strange life of theirs.”

In 2021, the Sussexes’ biographer Omid Scobie said: “The relationship between Harry and William is still very much one of distance. I don’t just mean physical [distance], across the Atlantic, but they are not talking that much, and that is exactly how sources close to William have put it.”

But the pair put on a united front to unveil the statue of their mother in the Sunken Garden in Kensington Palace on what would have been her 60th birthday and following the death of their grandmother last year.

After the news that Harry was bringing out a memoir broke, it was reported that the Royal Family felt as though the relationship with Sussexes was damaged. When Harry and Meghan reunited with William and Kate following the death of Queen Elizabeth, the brothers and their spouses avoided interacting with each other.

Tension appeared to only grow between the pair as bombshells — such as William allegedly planting stories about Harry — was dropped in the Netflix docu-series. But while promoting his memoir, Harry said in various TV interviews that he would “like to have his brother back”.

However, several sources suggested that the rift between the pair was now irreparable after Harry detailed the physical interaction between his brother and the text messages sent between Meghan and Kate over the bridesmaid dresses.

It seems the brothers’ relationship is now at its lowest point. Royal photographer, Arthur Edwards, told 9Honey in May: “I know first-hand that William is definitely… they are not talking. At the Queen’s funeral when they walked out together at Windsor, that was a stunt, that was all just organised. There’s no feeling there anymore and it’s sad.”

Prince Harry attended his father’s Coronation but left after the ceremony swiftly to return home to California for Archie’s fourth birthday.