In April 2024, the Prince and Princess of Wales will celebrate their 13th wedding anniversary, following a year of royal highs and lows, fro...
In April 2024, the Prince and Princess of Wales will celebrate their 13th wedding anniversary, following a year of royal highs and lows, from the fallout of Prince Harry's memoir to the coronation of King Charles III and an unexpected surgery.
In his hit memoir, Spare, Harry compared the wedding of his brother and sister-in-law to a funeral, noting not only that its venue was in the same space as their mother's end-of-life service in 1997 but that emotionally, the events bore similar outcomes.
Harry and William's relationship has increasingly become a subject of public fascination as a steady stream of details have provided behind-palace-walls insight into their "heir" and "spare" dynamic since Harry split from the monarchy and moved to the United States in 2020.
Harry's January 2023 memoir revealed the most detailed picture of the relationship from the younger brother's point of view, including within it a number of critical descriptions of William's actions, none more so than an allegation of a physical attack launched over Meghan Markle's treatment of palace staff in 2019.
Despite the bombshell revelations, Harry has made clear that he still has "love" for his brother and hopes one day they can work on their relationship. This love was referenced throughout his book, coupled with the emotional block their difference in birth status brought between them.
One milestone occasion where Harry said he felt the distance between himself and William grow even wider was on the day of the 2011 royal wedding, with the prince making several mournful references in his book.
A Funeral Venue
One negative connotation William's wedding day had for Harry was the painful memories it conjured of the death of the princes' mother, Princess Diana.
The princess had died in 1997 following a high-speed Paris car crash with her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed. William was 15 years old at the time, and Harry was only 12.
Diana's funeral service was held at Westminster Abbey, the same place where William married Kate thirteen years later.
Writing of the journey from Clarence House to the Abbey, Harry wrote: "I peered out of the window: Westminster Abbey. As always, my stomach lurched."
He then voiced a dubiousness over its choice for such a happy day, referencing its link with his mother.
"I thought: Nothing like getting married in the same place where you did your mum's funeral," he wrote. "I shot a glance at Willy. Was he thinking the same thing?"
3,000 Bodies
While the day brought many memories of his mother's loss to Harry, he also wrote that his brother's wedding venue was a space closely connected with death.
"It wasn't just the memories of Mummy's funeral. More than three thousand bodies lay beneath us, behind us," he wrote.
"They were buried under the pews, wedged into the walls. War heroes and poets, scientists and saints, the cream of the Commonwealth. Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, Chaucer, plus thirteen kings and eighteen queens, they were all interred there. It was still so hard to think of Mummy in the realm of Death. Mummy, who'd danced with Travolta, who'd quarreled with Elton, who'd dazzled the Reagans—could she really be in the Great Beyond with the spirits of Newton and Chaucer?"
He added that the thoughts became a distraction, along with a medical issue that had developed during a recent trek to the North Pole: "Between these thoughts of Mummy and death and my frostnipped penis, I was in danger of becoming as anxious as the groom."
A Sense of Loss
Writing about William's marriage, Harry spoke warmly about his sister-in-law Kate and her joining the royal family but highlighted the inevitable change that came as his brother formed his own family.
"I loved my new sister-in-law, I felt she was more sister than in-law, the sister I'd never had and always wanted, and I was pleased that she'd forever be standing by Willy's side," he wrote. "She was a good match for my older brother. They made each other visibly happy, and therefore I was happy too."
He also noted that the inevitable change was happening at the abbey which was the site of the tragic memorial in 1997.
"But in my gut I couldn't help feeling that this was yet another farewell under this horrid roof. Another sundering," he said. "The brother I'd escorted into Westminster Abbey that morning was gone—forever. Who could deny it? He'd never again be first and foremost Willy. We'd never again ride together across the Lesotho countryside with capes blowing behind us. We'd never again share a horsey-smelling cottage while learning to fly. Who shall separate us? Life, that's who."
He'd had the same feeling, he explained, six years earlier when his father married Camilla Parker Bowles.
"And hadn't it come true?," he said of his relationship with King Charles. "In the Camilla era, as I'd predicted, I saw him less and less. Weddings were joyous occasions, sure, but they were also low key funerals, because after saying their vows people tended to disappear."
William and Kate did not respond to Harry's comments in Spare, in line with a blanket no-comment rule adopted by Buckingham Palace at the time of the book's publication.
In the memoir, the prince later revealed that despite the connection with death and loss, he had considered Westminster Abbey as a potential venue for his own wedding to Meghan Markle. The prince wrote that his initial thoughts of St Paul's Cathedral and the abbey were not supported by his older brother, later settling on St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.
