Prince Harry is reportedly eager to resolve the ongoing feud with his brother and the rest of the Royal Family that has provided uncomfortable reading for royal fans over the past few years.
The Duke of Sussex could begin mending fences as early as this week’s end, with a scheduled return to the UK on September 30 to attend the 2024 WellChild Awards.
However, according to Royal correspondent Charlotte Griffiths, Harry must first extend apologies to around 40 individuals before he can restore genuinely good relations.
During her appearance on the Palace Confidential podcast, Charlotte named a few of these key individuals, including expected figures like Queen Camilla who, in his memoir Spare, Harry labelled a “villain” who left “bodies in the street.” Also in Spare, His Majesty the King was unflatteringly described as an emotionally distant figure who has “trouble communicating, trouble listening, trouble being intimate face-to-face”.
But Charlotte’s list also includes lesser-known names such as Mark Dyer, a former Welsh Guards officer often referred to as a “second father” to both Harry and William, reports the Scottish Daily Express.
“Mark Dyer is Harry’s closest friend really,” Charlotte explains. “He’s a little bit older than Harry and he’s like a sort of mentor, godfather, father-figure in his life and he’s also a sensible army man.”
The former Royal bodyguard, known for his “fierce but fair” approach, is one of the few insiders who has managed to maintain a close relationship with Prince Harry while still retaining the trust of the King and the Prince of Wales. Charlotte believes that Dyer is the ideal person to “talk sense into Harry,” and help ease the tension between the feuding brothers.
Two other key figures in any potential reconciliation between Buckingham Palace and Montecito are the van Straubenzee brothers. Tom van Straubenzee, a close friend of Prince William, was reportedly one of the first to notice the dramatic shift in Prince Harry’s priorities, from a hedonistic party-goer to a socially-conscious Californian “woke warrior.”
Meanwhile, Charlie, the other aristocratic van Straubenzee brother, is known to have a close relationship with Harry. The Duke was best man at his wedding, and Charlie’s wife Daisy Jenks is one of the few Royal Family insiders who has formed a genuine friendship with Meghan.
According to Charlotte, the van Straubenzee brothers are ideally positioned to build the much-needed bridges between William and Harry: “Charlie’s wife is one of the few people that Megan is friends with in the UK and one of the very few women that she really kept in touch with.”
“I just think those van Straubenzee boys could really be the mediators. They’ve got one each those warring brothers and they could be brought together”.
“They used to hang out all the time, and be a real squad.”
