Several weeks after famed editor and royal expert Tina Brown tore into Meghan Markle for having “the worst judgement in the world” and alluded to the failures of her post-royal experiment with Prince Harry, she’s turning her critical gaze onto Prince William.
Brown, who was friends with the princes’ late mother, Diana, and authored a definitive biography of her, has written this week that William also isn’t making good choices, especially about how to protect the future of the British monarchy, over which he will one day rule.
Brown, the highly influential editor of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and the Daily Beast, also took issue with William’s recent “swaggery” comments about the monarchy’s future at the end of his South Africa trip for the Earthshot Prize.
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA – NOVEMBER 07: Prince William, Prince of Wales meets Anga Mbeyiya Founder and CEO of Ole Blu, during a visit to meet seaweed businesses from the region to celebrate local innovation and to learn about the potential for it to repair and regenerate the planet at Portside Tower on November 07, 2024 in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo by Ian Vogler – Pool/Getty Images)
When he becomes king upon the death of his father, Charles III, William said he would do things differently, “maybe a smaller ‘r’ in the royal,” The Guardian reported. He also discussed his plans for a more caring monarchy by “throw(ing) some empathy in there as well because I really care about what I do.”
“It helps impact people’s lives,” said William, who leads initiatives to reduce homelessness in the U.K. and climate change globally. “And I think we could do with some more empathetic leadership around the world.”
To Brown, some of William’s comments appeared to dismiss the accomplishments of his father, she explained in an essay for her new Fresh Hell Substack. His remarks also sounded tone deaf in light of a recent Sunday Times report about how his and his father’s ancient Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are worth “an eye-watering” $2.2 billion and rake in money by charging British government agencies for use of the land.
Brown said the Prince of Wales sounded “like a performative pinhead,” while explaining how she misses the presence of his younger, estranged brother Harry in the royal lineup.
“In happier years, it was the irreverent Harry (or Harold as William lugubriously used to call him) who could tease the Prince of Wales and take him down a peg,” Brown wrote. She also suggested that William is surrounded by yes-men, people who, “in Kara Swisher’s inimitable phrase about those who live in a gilded bubble, ‘lick him up and down all day.”’
LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 10: Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, and Britain’s Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, look on from a balcony as they attend the annual Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall on November 10, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by Toby Melville – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
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Brown’s comments come after the British-born, New York City-based journalist visited London, where she watched coverage of the annual Remembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph war memorial, a signature event in the royal calendar. Brown said it was “moving” to see “the valiant” Catherine, the Princess of Wales standing on the Foreign Office balcony at the ceremony, after a nearly year-long struggle with cancer.
But Brown said it was concerning to see King Charles III, looking “old and bleak.” The 75-year-old monarch also has undergone treatment for cancer over the past year and attended the ceremony without his wife, Queen Camilla, who was reportedly sick with a chest infection.
Brown said it was impossible to watch the coverage and to not think about the late Queen Elizabeth II, who considered the annual ceremony to be “the most sacred and unmissable of her royal duties.” Brown continued: “For Elizabeth, military service was anything but an ornamental necessity.”
For this reason, Brown said, there was “a gaping Harry-shaped hole in the depleted royal line-up” at the ceremony. She pointed out that Harry is a veteran of two military tours in Afghanistan and a founder of the Invictus Games, the nonprofit that “brings hope through competitive sports events for injured vets.”
But the Duke of Sussex was stripped of his military honors after he and Meghan acrimoniously left royal life and settled in the United States in 2020, with the idea of becoming rich and powerful Hollywood media moguls and global thought leaders. Harry and Meghan became further estranged from his relatives after he, especially, publicly criticized the royal family, alleging racism, cruelty, indifference and dysfunction.
Britain’s King Charles III attends the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London, on November 10, 2024. (Photo by ALBERTO PEZZALI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
But despite all that, Brown said Harry “surely deserved a place on the balcony,” and she argued that the British nation “needs his human touch and so does his ailing father.”
William recently acknowledged that the past year had been “brutal,” with both his wife and father struggling with a life-threatening illness. But the prince who “could plausibly lighten the load is still benched in Montecito,” Brown said.
Brown then asks the ongoing question for royal fans and critics: Could things change? Could Harry reconcile with his father or even with his brother, who reportedly is especially angry about swipes that Harry took against Catherine in his memoir, “Spare.”
“Enough with the feuds,” Brown said. “Families, including this one, need to stick together.”
“William, whatever his abiding resentments toward Harry for his intemperate broadsides in ‘Spare,’ should now suck it up and let his father give Harry something to do,” Brown continued. Harry’s participation in the monarchy has become ever more important “in an isolationist Trump world,” which Brown said means that the U.K. “needs to draw closer to Europe” and maintain its relations with the Commonwealth.
“William and Kate dread foreign tours that take the princess away from the children and cut into what William (to his advisers’ irritation) calls his ‘me time,’” Brown said. “So, unload the lesser but important red-carpet junkets onto the Sussexes who, chastened by five years in the wilderness, would export some modern royal flair, especially to ex-colonial trouble spots.”
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex watches an anti-poaching demonstration exercise conducted jointly by local rangers and UK military deployed on Operation CORDED at the Liwonde National Park during the royal tour of Africa on September 30, 2019 in Malawi. (Photo by Dominic Lipinski – Pool /Getty Images)
In a podcast interview several weeks ago, Brown noted that Harry never really trained to work, except for his years in the British army. But in the interview with The Ankler’s Janice Min, she praised Harry for being good at going around the world, playing the role of prince and showing support for his favorite causes. In recent “faux-royal tours” he’s undertaken, with or without Meghan, he’s “charming, he’s funny, he’s sweet, he’s authentic again,” Brown said.
Then again, in that same interview, Brown expressed skepticism about whether the British public would also welcome his American wife back into a royal role. Brown explained the reasons that Meghan has become disliked by the majority of Britains. They feel like the American former TV actor took Harry away from them.
“He’s the lamb to the slaughter in this situation,” Brown said. “I mean, he was terribly impressed by Meghan. He thought that she knew it all. She persuaded him that she was the savvy Hollywood wheeler dealer, who would come in and make them stars and all the rest of it. And he just sort of blindly followed her like a child, really.”
Harry’s popularity in the U.K. indeed plummeted after he left his home country, and he used interviews and “Spare” to criticize his family, according to various polls.
But Brown still predicted that Harry “could make a comeback.” She said, after all, “he’ll always be Prince Harry. He’ll always be the grandson of the Queen and the son of Diana. You can’t take that from him, whatever happens.”
So, Brown said, the British people would be happy to have Harry back, but only “if he came back alone.”