Prince Harry and Prince William may currently be estranged, but the brothers share many things in common, including their traumas growing up.
Royal commentator and author of Gilded Youth, Tom Quinn shed light on how the two ‘lost souls’ found much-needed support after they married their respective wives.
“I think actually, in a strange way, the two boys, William and Harry, need their partners in a very similar way,” Quinn told Express.co.uk.
He argued that since both the princes were raised by nannies and paid staff, that impacted how they looked at relationships. He explained that the paid staff “could leave anytime.”
He added that unlike previous generations of members of the Firm, Harry and William were more in contact with both King Charles and Princess Diana. Whereas, royals before them would spend as little as half an hour a day with their parents.
Quinn described Diana as “perhaps more modern and loving” than Charles. “So, when they when their mother died, they had that terrible thing on top of the insecurity of being brought up by paid staff.”
He continued, “I think by the time they reached adulthood, they both needed a woman who was either in the case of William level-headed and strong in that quiet, solid, secure way Kate has or, in the case of Harry, someone like Meghan who was going to grab him by the scruff of the neck and say ‘this is the way to live.’
“But the end result was the same because the symptoms were the same. I think by the time Harry and William reached their late teens they were lost souls.”
The Duke of Sussex has been vocal about the support he received from Meghan Markle, whom he married in 2018, and how she ‘saved’ him. “People have said that my wife saved me. I was stuck in this world, and she was from a different world and helped draw me out of that,” Harry said in March in a livestream conversation with author Dr Gabor Maté.
In contrast, William hasn’t spoken so publicly about the support he received from his wife Kate, whom he married in 2011, though he is believed to find support in not just in his wife but also in her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton.
Royal commentator Rachael Andrew told OK! magazine last November that William “admires the way that Carole and Michael brought up Catherine, Pippa and James and that seems to be reflected in the way William is a down-to-earth father now.”