Prince William is preparing for his future as king, but Prince Harry‘s Hollywood lifestyle could distract from his reign.
“The problem is they have very much the same problem that I talked about with Princess Diana and Charles, which was known as the upstage problem,” royal commentator Tina Brown said on “The Ankler” podcast. “He does upstage William. There’s no doubt about it, you know, on the stage.”
Diana admitted she and Charles butted heads due to her being a beloved figure.
“We’d be going round Australia for instance and all you could hear was ‘oh she’s on the other side,’” Diana said, referring to fans being disappointed by not seeing her during royal walkabouts. “Now if you’re a man, or my husband, a proud man you mind about that.”
“With the media attention, came a lot of jealousy,” the late princess added in her Panorama interview from 1995.
In Harry & Meghan, featured guests alluded to his celebrity status becoming a source of tension for the Prince of Wales and Charles.
“I think Australia was a real turning point,” friend Lucy Fraser explained. “Because they were so popular, so popular with the public, the internals at the palace were incredibly threatened by that.”
“The issue is when someone who is marrying in, who should be a supporting act, is then stealing the limelight, or doing the job better than the person who was born to do this, that upsets people. It shifts the balance,” Harry noted.
Throughout his life, Harry has been critical of the British press, and he accused The Firm of pushing stories to protect William’s image.
“There’s leaking but there’s also planting of stories,” Harry said in the Netflix project. “So if the comms team want to be able to remove a negative story about their Principal, they will trade and give you something about someone else’s Principal.”
“So the offices end up working against each other. It’s a kind of weird understanding or acceptance that happens,” he revealed. “William and I both saw what happened in our dad’s office and we made and agreement that we would never let that happen to our office… To see my brother’s office copy the very same thing that we promised the two of us would never ever do. That was heartbreaking.”
experts believe Harry’s decision to publicize royal family secrets persuaded William to cut ties with the Duke of Sussex.
“It is widely known within the family that Prince William has laid down an absolute ban on Harry returning in any way, shape or form into his former royal family fold,” royal commentator Hilary Fordwich told an outlet.
“If anyone will relent, it would be King Charles III, whom, of course, Prince William won’t challenge, who still misses his ‘darling boy’ and would like to see more of Prince Harry,” Fordwich claimed. “However, to this day, after the release of Spare and the Netflix serial, as well as with everything else Harry has said, done, and not done, it’s Prince William who adamantly refuses to even speak to his brother.”