22 July 2023 , 11:05
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As the Prince and Princess of Wales' family expanded with the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte, Prince Harry was left feeling "displaced", according to a leading royal author.
Their close-knit 'family unit' left Prince Harry feeling cast out as Prince William started to spend more and more time with his Middleton in-laws.
In her book The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil, author Tina Brown cited a former aide who claimed that the brothers' “relationship hadn’t been the same since William married Kate”.
She adds that the distance between them grew even further following the birth of Princess Charlotte in 2015.
Prince Harry was confused by his brother's love of the countryside and his in-laws (Getty Images)In her eye-opening book, Brown wrote: “Though they were still ‘incredibly close, living next door to each other [at Kensington Palace], sharing the same office, and hanging out an awful lot,’" but claimed Harry “mourned his us-against-the-world bond with William".
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Brown adds: “Harry felt displaced by their bougie family unit, and couldn’t understand his brother’s obsession with his Middleton in-laws, whose Bucklebury world bored Harry to tears. The [Waleses] had become a tight unit, and William a full-on Windsor country bumpkin.
"On weekends when he wasn’t chez Middleton, he was tramping the grounds of Anmer Hall, the red-brick Georgian mansion on the Sandringham Estate that the Queen gave the couple as a wedding present, wearing a flat cap and tweed jacket like his ‘turnip toff’ Norfolk farmer friends."
The author continued: “For his part, William felt that Harry’s unabated Jack the Lad behaviour was getting tiresome.
"He was less amused than the British public by either the strip billiards debacle in Las Vegas or Harry’s ceaseless boozy nightclub forays with his rowdy friends. His younger brother’s recklessness exasperated him.”
The influence that the Middleton family had on the Prince of Wales cannot be emphasised enough - with William himself praising them for the way he was welcomed into the fold.
Referring to what the Princess of Wales provided her husband, Joe Little, Managing Editor of Majesty Magazine told the Express: "I would say, in terms of William, she brought her family.
"William fitted into the Middleton family very quickly and they took to him as a future son-in-law.
"I think also a bit of stability and grounding and a bit of normality that William perhaps wasn't too familiar with when growing up because clearly his parents' marriage was facing difficulties when he was a child and he was very aware of that and eventually their marriage disintegrated.
"With the Middletons, he got stability and a bit of normality, so for that William will forever be grateful."