The Royals with Roya and Kate - Should William forgive Harry?

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

Prince Harry has renewed his call to reconcile with King Charles and Prince William — but are his public interventions making a private resolution harder? And should William meet his brother halfway?Harry's newly released GQ interview landed as senior royals hosted the Sultan of Oman at Windsor. Harry’s team says the timing was outside their control and denies his comments were a swipe at William. Days earlier, Harry and Meghan received a warm welcome in Nottingham as they continued to build their independent public role in Britain.Roya Nikkhah and The Times executive editor Jeremy Griffin debate what both brothers should do next, answer listener questions about forgiveness, trust and William’s responsibilities as a future king, and Roya reports back from Nottingham: can the Sussexes assert their independence without deepening tensions with the Crown?If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to press follow at the top of your podcast app.Roya and Kate will join the King and Queen’s Caribbean tour next week. What would you like to know? Send your questions and thoughts to [e-mail]: GQWatch us on YouTube.Read more: Harry and Meghan hate phrase 'working members of the royal family.'Further listening: Why Harry and Meghan face a school and security crisisProducer: Robert WallaceVideo Producer: Eve ChadbournExecutive Producer: Priyanka DeladiaImage: Getty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Royals, the podcast where we discussed what happens behind Palace Walls and why it matters. I'm Roya Nicar. Should William forgive Harry? Well, that's this week's big question after the Duke of Sussex called for reconciliation again with the King and Prince William while defending his decision to tell his story on his own terms. And it comes just days after Harry and Megan's public return in Nottingham, as they're going to be in Nottingham, as they continue to carve out new roles for themselves in Britain. So, can speaking out and rebuilding trusts go together? Does being a future king give William a responsibility to reconcile?

And can the Sussex has repaired their relationship with the Crown whilst building their own new public roles here? Well, Kate's away this week, but here to look at some of these questions and share his thoughts is the Times executive editor and friend of the podcast, Jeremy Griffin. Jeremy, welcome back to the Royals. Great pleasure to be here, Royer. So Jeremy, we have had quite a big update this week from Harry.

I feel like we say that every week. Because there I was in Windsor, along with the rest of the royal family, on a very soggy Tuesday, dutifully watching the Oman State visit play out. The King and Queen, William and Kate, hosting the Sultan of Oman, very strategically important visit, given what's going on in the Middle East. Just as that was all playing out, and a very wet Windsor Castle, bang, an interview with Harry Drops, very personal revelations about his feelings towards his family, the rifts with his father, the riffs with his brother, his father's health, why he's moved back. You have talked about, at times, having a complicated relationship with your brother, your father. Is that something that you agree?

Yes, of course. I think from a family perspective, again, another massively relatable issue for so many people. People, you know, there's sibling disagreements, there's broken relationships between, you know, kids and their parents, kids and one parent. Like that's, that continues to come up with me the whole time by people that I speak to. I'm sure. So I know how relatable it is. That's partly probably why there's so much fascination in the... Everybody's family.

Everyone's family. And then people maybe look at us and go, how are you going to work it out? And then maybe how I see you're going to work it out, maybe that will help me work my stuff out. And some people don't want it. How are you going to work it out? Well, some people don't want it to work out. I want it to work out. You do.

Of course I do. There's no... Again, with everything else that's going on in the world, the most important thing is to, you know, is to reconcile. That's the key point. What did you make of that? The timing didn't strike me as a complete co-insence. If I'm honestly, I was in the same position. I was in the newsroom at the time watching these pictures come in from the quadrangle at Windsor Castle.

Okay, this is a sort of fairly straight-laced, you know, royal event. Steady. Steady as she goes. Just the sort of thing we've seen, you know, on many, many occasions in the past. And then bam, in from the side, this interview ostensibly about a mental health initiative, if you like. His masterclass in grieving. But with some very interesting. comments about the family and about wanting to make up with the family in his own words.

Yeah, it came as something of a surprise, I think it's fair to say. Well, on the timing of it, because when it dropped, the WhatsApp groups sprung into action, there are a lot of questions coming from a few of us to the Sussex team saying, you know, why is this landed now just as a state visit is playing out a wide day of all days? And the Sussex spokesman was very clear, and I'm going to read you what they said. They said that the decision to drop that on Tuesday was totally down to GQ, out of their control. There was a comment that Harry said when he was asked about reconciliation with his brother and his family. He said, of course, I want to reconcile with my family, but some people don't want it to work out.

A comment widely interpreted as a swipe at his brother, suggesting William doesn't want to work it out. No, no, said Team Sussex. They said it was absolutely not intended as a swipe at his brother or any other member of his family. The comment was made in a general context and was not directed at his family in any way. Do you believe that? No. Someone's been in around the news game for, you know, three and a half decades. I say that's absolute cobblers.

Nothing about that makes sense. Now, you deal with the royal family and with the sussuses much more than I do, Roya. But my understanding of the way these things work is that they don't like to relinquish too much control over these media operations. So the idea that it was entirely down to GQ when this is. interview was published and that it happened to coincide with a fairly major royal event going on at Windsor that afternoon. And it was a complete coincidence. Just doesn't strike me as being very likely at all. We've been there before because I remember being on Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro with William for the Earthshot Prize last year. And just as William was literally arriving for his very

first engagement at the start of the Earthshot Prize week, bam, we get a statement from Team Sussex saying, oh, by the way, Harry's going to Canada for some military engagements. Again, apparently a total coincidence at the time. Yeah, so they've got form, right? That's why I don't believe that excuse or reason that was given. The other thing on the interpretation of Harry's words that you mentioned, they know exactly that those words can be read in more than one way. And they know exactly if you leave that sort of space for vagueness around a comment,

they know that the most likely interpretation of it is going to be that it's Harry criticising William. He was being asked about his family. Of course, yeah, yeah. So I don't buy those excuses, and that's how I'll term them, from the circle around Harry and from the media operation that allowed this to take place on the same day as a Royal Event in Windsor and which allowed that interpretation that he was attacking his brother. The strategy is curious, isn't it? Because you have Harry giving a big sit-down interview to GQ in which he reels off at length why he wants reconciliation with his family.

One of the reasons he's moved back is to be close to his family. He says some people don't want it to work out, you know, but he does. At the same time, it's blowing out the water or the coverage of a state visit. It seems curious strategy to think that that's going to improve relations with the royal family. Yeah. Again, I don't buy that that was his real motive either because, look, I don't know. Do you have siblings, Roya? I do.

Oh, yeah, okay, I have two brothers. Right. And occasionally there are a family fallouts. Of course there are. Now, what do you do if you fall out with your brother or your sister? there might be an awkward few weeks, if you like, where you don't talk to each other. But then you phone them, right? Or you text them.

You do something fairly normal. What you don't do is give an interview to a major publication, time to coincide with another Royal Event, in which that brother is taking part and tell the world that not everyone wants this thing to work out. It doesn't seem to be a very genuine attempt at reconciliation. One of the things that he was asked about by the GQ interview was the whole issue. of the family drama, the family riff, of course, with his father and his brother and why do members of the royal family? He and Megan have had a very... It's still driven with tensions, all those relationships. Since they moved back, Harry has not yet seen his father. He moved

back in August with Megan. He last saw them in July when he came back briefly, you know, with the kids. But since he's in back, they've not seen the king, you know, no one even discusses seeing William because they're estranged and there's no sign they're going to speak any time soon. He said, actually I'm sure people kind of understand it's slightly relatable maybe it makes us more relatable people have tensions in their families you know you know all about it he said to the interviewer do you think it does make the royal family more relatable

this ongoing family drama that is unfolding in such a very public way I think I always get the feeling that the king he always you know people close to him always say he'd much rather the work was speaking for itself rather than the family drama's overshadowing that hasn't just not been the case for quite a long time now Harry thinks it makes them more relatable, does it? I'll tell you, look, what is relatable is a family row.

Everyone has them. I get that. So the public understands that nothing about the raw family is relatable at all. The way that they deal with these family rallies is not relatable. I mean that on both sides, because I do think that actually William could do his bits to patch up with Harry as well. But the way they go about this is entirely unrelatable. No one looks to the raw family and takes their pointers for how they should live their lives. And this is a particular instance of where it's all going horribly wrong.

Why would anyone look to the way that Harry and William are conducting their relationship and think, oh yeah, I get that, I get that. And perhaps I should do it in the same way. I just don't understand that mindset. Do you think that the more and more Harry speaks out? Because I get the feeling that since he's sort of decided to move back to the UK, we've seen them up and Notting him and we'll come on to that a bit more. But they've been out doing public engagements.

He's now been very outspoken in this interview. you really, you know, speaking heart on the sleeve stuff about the family dynamic, why he wants to be back here. You know, he says he wants to sort of, you know, reconnect with the family, but rebuilding trust with the family while constantly making these outbuss, I mean, it seems... It's going to do the opposite. Yeah. It's going to do opposite. Because there's a lot of pig-headedness within that family anyway. They clearly don't get on. I mean, you know better than I do when the last time was that William and Harry actually spoke to each other. It's been more than four years. Four years. So Harry,

Pitching back up in Britain, not being quiet about it, by the way, saying that he just wants a normal life and then doing as it seems everything he can to lead anything other than a normal life, doesn't seem to me to be the best tactic to pull those two strands of the family back together again. I just don't see it working if he carries on in this vein. It was quite interesting watching the choreography of the state visit play out because you had the key players, Charles Camilla, William Catherine, hosting the Sultan of Iman. And then a few of people. of us who were sort of watching that at Windsor and then also reporting on the Harry drama playing out again. Harry's never been involved in the state visit. No. I think the only state visit where Harry had an active role was in 2019. So Archie had just been born, so Megan stayed at home with the baby.

Harry had lunch with the Trumps and their entourage with the Queen and the rest of the family. And then there was a moment in the picture gallery at Bucking Palace where they show them items from the Royal Collection that are American. But I do remember Harry is sort of in the corner trying to. not to be photographed with members of the Trump's entourage. I think, I didn't know, I just looked at that and saw it play out and thought, you know, what on earth are you doing?

That's going to have, as you say, it's going to have the absolute opposite effect. Coming up. William seems to me has a very cold demeanour towards his brother now. Now, I don't know what goes on. Can you blame him? I want to bring in some of our listeners because every week we ask, you know, do write in with questions. And then we've had some really interesting questions on this. And one of our listeners, Sarah Kay, has made the argument she thinks William should demonstrate forgiveness.

And this is what Sarah has said. When is William going to practice what he preaches in this world of too much division and lead the way in reconciliation with Harry and Meghan? As a global role model and soon to be supreme governor of the Church of England, quiet faith or not, surely he has a responsibility to demonstrate genuine forgiveness. I love that Sarah Kay cites the quiet faith, which was a Sunday Times front page story about William saying, I have faith, it's quiet. What do you make of that? Is that a fair point?

Yeah, I think it is. I mean, there are two brothers in this relationship, and it's as much on William as it is on Harry, I think. If they truly want to repair their relationship, then, you know, frankly, they can go 50-50 and make sure that it happens. It's why I question whether they really want, to. Oh, but that's the point, isn't it? I think Harry probably does. I don't think William does. Exactly. William, it seems to me, has a very cold demeanour towards his brother now.

Now, I don't know what goes on. Can you blame him? No, but I think also, just to go back to this point about, you know, relatability of this story, most families, if there is a family breakdown of this sort, will at least attempt to patch things up. I've seen no attempts from William to do so in the last few years. Now, I get that Harry's caused a lot of angst, a lot of consternation. They feel that he's damaged the brand. And I'm sure there are more personal issues below the surface that are not, you know, necessarily obvious to me as a casual observer. Perhaps they are more to you, Roy, but having said that, he is his brother. And I think he could be making more an effort to bring him, not necessarily back into the fold, but to at least

show that, you know, he still loves him as he's his younger brother. But I don't see that happening. And I do think there's a responsibility for William to pay as part to this effect as well. Interesting. I mean, I've always looked at it and thought, trying to look at it from William's point of view as well as Harry's. Harry clearly knows he's gave an interview last year saying some people will never forgive me for writing a book. Yeah. Lots of members of the world family will never forget some people will never forgive you for doing that Netflix documentary. I think from William, there are so many layers of it that he's going to find very hard to get past. It's not just the very loud, painful split that happened under the last reign. Of course, we know Queen Elizabeth

the second was pretty distraught that they had left and put out a statement saying we would much rather they had stayed working members of the Royal Family, but off they go and we wished them well. It was what followed. It was the Oprah interview and all those allegations or claims that were interpreted as racism in the Royal Family, although Harry and Megan later said that wasn't what we meant. There was a Netflix documentary. There were all the family secrets that poured out in spare, you know, claims of Fristie Cusswood. William and William knocking him to the ground. While all of that played out,

you then later had the King and the Princess of Wales being diagnosed with cancer. So William is sort of trying to deal with all of that. But I've always got the impression and my understanding from people close to William is that what has really upset him the most disregarding all of that, which has wounded him very deeply,

is the fact that his hope had always been that on the way to the top job, he would have a wingman next to him. He would have, you know, a sidekick a senior working royal, his brother, to help support him on the way to that job and when he's doing that job. And when Harry Megan stepped away,

which of course was their decision, they didn't want the life of royal engagements they appear to have returned to. The extra pressure that Harry and Megan and their family, stepping away from it, has put on William's own family is something I've always been told

he will find impossible to forgive on top of all the personal slights. That's very interesting. But I do think that the danger here is that William's going to be king one day and it's probably going to be sooner than he anticipated, you know, for reasons, you know, because the king isn't very well. And my fear for William and his reign is that Harry will become his Andrew, if you like. Now, for different reasons, of course.

Dawn and the side. That's why I think it's really important that this relationship is repaired. And a lot of it goes back to what Harry expects as well, of course. If what he's asking for is a sort of, you know, fraternal repair, if you like, then I get that. And I think William should do his bit to help. If there are strings attached and that can't happen unless he becomes a member of the, a working member to use that term again. We'll come on to that.

A working royal once more. Then I do see problems because I don't think that should happen. I don't think there is any route back for Harry and Megan into that sort of inner sanctum of the family, if you like, in the professional institutional sense. But if he just wants to make up, then I think William needs to do his best to ensure that happens as well. But otherwise, you know, Harry is not going to stop giving these interviews. No, he's got a long, he's probably going to inherit the throne at a relatively young age. So you then have Harry throwing stones at the institution constantly, which he is, you know, he is doing now.

Yeah. And it's making a lot of news now. It's not going to get easier for William. I don't think it will at all, man. We should look at another listener who's written in from America using the pseudonym the Countess of Chutney. I mean, read into that what you will, who's approached it from a slightly different position. So she describes William's boundaries as entirely justified and asks whether a permanent generational divide

could make him look petty and rather rigid to historians which I think is just what you've... That's kind of your position, isn't it? It's a... Do you want the reign of King William V to be one of... You know, the reign of King Charles III is one of, let's be honest, family discord. Absolutely.

Family discord whether that's Harry and Megan still not resolve, the former Prince Andrew still not resolved. a divided family, two sons estranged and at war, that continues into the reign of King William V. It's not going to be a good look for him, really. I don't think it will at all. And they adopt this Elizabeth's mantra of, you know, they never complain, never explain.

That was fine for the 70 years that the late Queen was around. Different time. It was a different time. And, of course, there were family disagreements, but it was generally, I mean, I always felt, there was an understanding between those senior members of the Royal Family that they all had a job to do and images to project.

Of course, they had their own problems along the way, Charles and Diana, you know, Andrew and Fergian, all the rest of them. And, you know, it's not like all the marriages stayed intact or anything like that. But I don't think that, that won't wash anymore. We're in a different age now. They're in a different age.

And the public, for better or good, gets its information in all sorts of different ways as well. And I think that affects the way that the Royal Family needs to conduct its affair. So I don't think this staying silent and hoping that it would all go away and protecting the dignity of the institution. While it's laudable, I don't think it's not going to make Harry go away. And as you say, he's going to continue to lob stones at them. And it's not, they won't just deflecting the way that they might have done during Elizabeth's reign.

They're going to wound William, I think. So in a practical, let's think about that. How would that practically look? How would William making an effort to patch things up with Harry, what would that look like? What could that look like, do you think? Well, they do still have back channels to each other. I mean, simply like they could WhatsApp each other and say, look, let's meet up, let's have a conversation, let's have a Zoom call, however they want to conduct it. Yeah.

And they can try to air their differences and patch things up that way. Now, it might sound naive to suggest that, but it doesn't seem to me that they've even attempted to do that so far, because as we know, they haven't spoken to each other for four years. Where it goes beyond that, I don't know. I mean, my suspicion is, as I said, that it's not just about the relationship with William. It's Harry hankering after a relevance that I don't think is going to be bestowed upon him again. Well, I felt that very much came to the fore in Nottingham last week. Yeah. Up in Nottingham, where they did their first set of joint public engagement since they moved back to the UK,

very carefully choreographed return to Nottingham, which was, of course, where they first made their first joint public engagement. appearance after they got engaged in 2017. I was up there covering the first engagement and it was very interesting to watch. I mean, from so many different perspectives, as much as their team say, well, we thought it was all going to be private and they weren't expecting any crowds at all, there were small crowds there. There were some people who turned out, there were an awful lot of press that had turned out. And for all the sort of sniping of people came, well, hardly anyone turned out, well, the very fact that a load of press did turn up, you know, absolute huge bank of

photographers at that first engagement at the community recording studio, just goes to show that wherever Harry and Megan go, you know, it's going to get a lot of coverage. And that engagement, for all intents and purposes, might not have been an official engagement on behalf of the institution, but it really did look, all three of them, really did look like royal engagements. How did the public react to them at that event? I mean, I... Was there warmth?

Yes. You know, they turned up. There were school children outside. There were people from a couple of local charities. They were clearly just passed by who'd seen crowds gathering and who'd pitched along. And, you know, they were given lots of flowers. You know, one lady who'd been there and Nottingham in 2017 came along with a photo of them from back then. You know, there were lots of hugs.

There were lots of, it's great to have you back. From what I saw, they were very warmly received, very warmly received. I was told they were quite surprised by that. I was told they were quite emotional about it because they weren't expecting anyone to turn out. Yeah. Well, I'm not surprised that people turned out for them because I think there is an element of box office around. And let's face it, you know, I meant to me for all the reasons that they want. But that shows that they can forge a role for themselves in this country

if they choose to do so because they have private initiatives that they support. And some of them mean a lot to people as well. It's just that they won't be imbued with that sort of royal seal, if you like, that it seems to me they're both hankering for so badly. And I think they're just going to have to get used to that. It doesn't mean that they can't lead worthwhile lives while they're in the country. It just means that they're not going to get lots of men with funny hats standing around them all the time and get to ride on horses and all the rest of it, you know. It's a good point. I mean, I did come away from Nottingham thinking that went as well as they could have expected all through engagements when we know well led to the news that evening,

but did come away for thinking also, what's it for and who is it for? Because as you said, they walked away from that six years ago and they can support all those initiatives privately. So who are those sort of public engagements for? Is it for the public or is it for the Browns Sussex? Well, I think it is. They're just nibbling around the edges, aren't they? It's another indication of how keen they are to be allowed back into the official raw fault. Do you think so?

I'm interested in that, Jeremy, because I don't get the feeling that they want to be back on the payroll as official working rules. I think they would like to pick and choose here and there, but I don't think they want to be full-time working roles. You know better than I do. That could well be right. I guess that doesn't negate the fact that they want to be seen as more relevant and part of the official brand, whether or not they have to do everything that then comes their way and appear in the court circular three times a day. Well, they definitely want to be more, seen to be more royal, don't they? Yeah, they do. There was another, after Nottingham, there was another interesting, you know, look back and look forward to what they're doing. Because when I was sort of asking their team about, you know, how they felt it or went. A very interesting train of thought emerged, which was that given we'd seen them in Nottingham do three engagements that looked very much like the old official royal engagements they used to do, I was told that they really hate was the phrase, they hate the phrase working members of their royal family. I was like, interesting, why? And I was told it was because working members of the royal family, of course, is a phrase that has been used for generations by Buckingham Palace, by the institution, by,

Monarchy to define members of the royal family who do engagements officially on behalf of the institution, who receive sovereign grant funding, who travel overseas on behalf of the government, who attend official events like Trooping the colour, the national service of members at the Sanitaph. But Harry Megan apparently take great exception to this phrase, because, as they say, we are royal and we work. Yeah. Which is a very different interpretation of the phrase working royals to the one that the monarchy uses. Yeah.

But everyone knows what working. rule. I mean, this is so telling, and I think it goes back to what they really want to this relationship and how they want to be perceived. It clearly puts their noses out of joint that they're not seen as working royals, despite the fact that they take part in events like they did at Nottingham the other day. I think the scales fall from the eyes when they was a brilliant story, by the way. It's spectacularly bad own goal, I would say, from the Sussex household to let this information out there, because it tells you everything you need to know. They're desperate to be seen as relevant as whether or not full-time.

Royal. Yeah, as royal, properly royal. And that they don't like being described as former royals, which again, I thought was extraordinary because their team seemed to think it changes how people talk about them. And you get this constant refrain, he is still the king's son. He is still fifth and nine to the throne. Well, he reminded us, of course, in the cheek here and two. He's a prince.

He did. He did actually say that. I'm a prince. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're sorry for me, I'm a prince. It is fascinating. I also looked to Nottingham and thought, in the context of the GQ interview landing this week, again, conversations about reconciliation, course reconciliation, going out there and doing these events that look like all events, that is not going to help. You know, the king and queen around opening the Welsh parliament at the Senate didn't get very much coverage. Let's be honest on the same day as Harry Magna Nottingham. That is not going to help patch things up with the royal family. No, I mean, you know, we may not have given big licks to the King and Queen at the Welsh Senate anyway, but it doesn't take away from the fact that timing can be everything when it comes to these sort of events. And for me, the whole GQ interview was PR Guff.

You know, it was there for Harry to say not in so many words, look, I'm here, everybody believe me, I want to be part of the Royal Family again. It's just my nasty brother, won't pick up. the phone, doesn't want to talk to me. I don't buy any of it for a second. It's as transparent as a newly polished window that this was just an attempt to get the public on side again.

I think it's so tin-eared. I don't understand why Harry doesn't... This is not going to work. It's not going to work. Well, it hasn't worked for the last five, six years. The best way to patch up is to go through back channels and make a private call, private text,

see what they can do, but with realistic expectations. because if, as I said, if the string attached to that is, well, you know, we want to be proper rules again, to use a phrase again that I'm sure they would hate, then go figure. That's not going to work. Well, a huge thanks to Jeremy Griffin this week. Me and Kate, we both be back next week and we'll be joining the King and Queen on their Caribbean tour. We'd love to feature more of your questions along the way. What would you like to know about the tour, the Commonwealth, or the Royal Families' Roald. in the region. You can send your questions and thoughts to the royals at the times.k.k. And make sure you don't miss an episode by following the royals on your podcast app or by subscribing to the times royal channel on YouTube. Until then, thanks to join us on the

Royals and we'll see you next week.