One of the Windsors’ biggest go-to moves when they’re scapegoating someone or trying to delegitimize a critic or a rogue royal is pretty simple: just say that the person is crazy. Say that you’re worried about “their mental health.” Call the person “paranoid.” Say you have no idea where this person got those frankly bonkers ideas. The Windsors famously pulled that move (and then some) with Princess Diana. The Windsors have been trying to pull that move on Diana’s youngest son for YEARS. They’ll remind everyone of Harry’s own admissions about his mental health, then they’ll adopt a sympathetic tone of “poor Harry, he’s always had problems, he’s always been difficult, he’s always been paranoid. Well, guess what Russell Myers’ new biography of the Prince and Princess of Wales includes? Yeah, you guessed it. From The Royalist Substack:
I was told last year that William and his father were both left muttering darkly that Harry was “paranoid” when he suggested in a BBC interview last year that certain people at the palace wanted him dead. So I’m not surprised to learn that Prince William used the same word after he watched his 2019 interview with Tom Bradby, in which Harry first confirmed long-standing rumors of a rift between himself and William by saying they were on “different paths.”
Now a new biography of William and Catherine by the royal correspondent at U.K. newspaper the Daily Mirror, Russell Myers, has revealed that the interview, in which Harry also said camera flashes gave him PTSD, cemented William’s belief that he had “lost his brother,” and that Harry was “paranoid, angry, obsessive and firmly rooted in the past.”
William’s assessment makes it clear, I would argue, that William sees Harry’s rupture with the family not as the inevitable outcome of some historic injustice, but partly as a petulant choice and partly as the expression of a mental health crisis/breakdown.
Prince William concluded that his younger brother Prince Harry had become “paranoid” after watching the Bradby interview in which Harry publicly acknowledged a rift between them, according to a new biography of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
The book, “William and Catherine: The Intimate Inside Story”, says the ITV film, “Harry & Meghan: An African Journey,” marked the moment William felt he had “lost” his brother. An insider quoted in the book says William believed Harry had become “paranoid, angry, obsessive and firmly rooted in the past.”
In the film, Harry told ITV news anchor Tom Bradby that he and his brother were “on different paths,” confirming long-running speculation about a rift but insisting that he still loved William and that the pair would “always be brothers.” Myers reports that the Bradby documentary also crystallized William’s fear that he had “lost my brother.”
Myers places particular emphasis on the Bradby documentary as a turning point. I have long pointed to the film as a key moment when the feud between the brothers became effectively irreversible as Harry directly acknowledged, on camera, that the family was divided.
The new biography also revisits the long-running question of how William and his wife, Catherine, Princess of Wales, reacted to Meghan’s arrival. Myers suggests William was initially pleased for Harry and found Meghan “refreshing,” a portrayal that aligns with earlier accounts that William publicly supported the relationship and worried about media intrusion. I’m not so sure. People familiar with the early dynamics between the couples have told me that William and Catherine took an immediate dislike to Meghan and consistently urged Harry to slow down the romance, advice he interpreted as patronizing and snobbish. Indeed, that version of events echoes the account given in Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand’s 2020 book “Finding Freedom,” which reported that William’s warning to “take as much time as you need to get to know this girl” angered Harry, who heard in the phrase “this girl” a tone of class-based “condescension.”
It’s bizarre to me that Harry’s 2019 interview (as part of the larger ITV documentary, done during the Sussexes’ African tour) was some kind of breaking point for William. Think about all of the sh-t William had been doing to Harry and Meghan for months already! And all Harry really did was acknowledge that things weren’t going great and he felt that he and William were on different paths. Incredibly mild stuff in the grand scheme of things, right? It’s almost as if William was already primed to jump down Harry’s throat over any little thing at that point. And all of the stuff about Harry’s “paranoia” is… well. They called Diana paranoid too. Harry has well-founded fears about history repeating. Harry has every reason to be concerned.
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