Royal family

Here’s why a royal author says Prince Harry views his brother and his stepmother’s newly-formed bond as a “betrayal.”

After Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, stepped down from royal duties there were quite a few changes in the monarchy and family dynamic. The Sussexes’ departure meant that other working royals had to step up, and the relationships between senior royals became stronger as they have really come together for the Crown.

With the shocking news of King Charles and the Princess of Wales’ (formerly known as Kate Middleton) cancer diagnosis, Prince William and Queen Camilla have stood united and formed a tight bond. But according to a royal expert, one person who isn’t happy about the Prince of Wales and the queen’s newly-formed bond is Prince Harry.

What Prince Harry wrote about his stepmother in ‘Spare’

(L): Queen Camilla at a library in Northern Ireland |Tim Rooke – Pool /Getty Images, (R): Prince Harry during a Service of Thanksgiving for Queen Elizabeth | Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

There was a time when Prince Harry’s relationship with Camilla didn’t seem all that bad. In fact, he once told reports that she was not a “wicked stepmother” and that he and William “love her to bits.” But in his memoir Spare and televised interviews leading up to the book’s release in 2023, the Duke of Sussex completely changed his tune. He claimed that he and William never wanted Camilla to be their stepmother and described her as “dangerous” and a “villain.”

In a 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, Prince Harry said that Camilla was “dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press … and with her, on the way to being queen consort, there was gonna be people or bodies left in the street because of that.”

In one passage of his book the prince wrote: “I had complex feelings about gaining a stepparent, who I thought had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar.” Harry added that he and his brother pleaded with their dad not to marry her saying: “Just please don’t marry her, just be together, Pa.”

Expert says duke ‘distrusts’ Prince William’s relationship with Queen Camilla

Prince William and now-Queen Camilla attend the ‘No Time To Die’ world premiere in London | Karwai Tang/WireImage

If what Prince Harry said is accurate, Prince William has moved on and let bygones be bygones as he and his stepmother have now become close allies. The fact they have really banded together after the king and Kate’s cancer diagnosis is something royal expert and author Tom Quinn believes Harry is having a hard time digesting.

Speaking to The Mirror Quinn said: “[Harry] really distrusts that William actually gets on rather well now with Camilla — Harry will see this as a betrayal. He was shocked when William realized that Camilla, far from being the monster they thought her when they were children, is actually a rather nice woman. She is exceptionally good at listening with a sympathetic ear and William has definitely warmed to that.

“Harry on the other hand sees this as one more example of William letting the side down — for Harry things have never moved on really since his mother died. For Harry, Camilla was the wicked stepmother back then, and she still is. It’s all very sad, but shows that the huge geographical divide between the brothers — Harry in America, William in London — has become a physical manifestation of their emotional separation.”