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September 15 2026: It’s a date on which Prince William could have changed the course of history.
On that date – his brother Prince Harry’s 42nd birthday – he would have had the easiest opportunity to begin a thaw in icy relations that have seen the brothers estranged for years.
The birthday could have proved a turning point: a moment to forget Megxit, Harry and Meghan’s infamous Oprah interview and the damaging revelations in Harry’s memoir Spare.
Indeed, King Charles is reported to have contacted his newly-returned son on the day in question, and Princess Anne, Prince Edward, and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie also got in touch.
But, according to entertainment journalist Rob Shuter – of the Naughty But Nice substack – Prince William and his wife Kate, Princess of Wales, did not.
“Harry heard from more royals than people would expect, including his father,” a royal source told Shuter. “But from William and Catherine? Nothing. No call, no text, no private message. Not a word.”
Shuter sagely suggests that the silence matters, because to extend the olive branch would have given William an easy way out of sorts.
“No summit, no apology and no need to address the bitter issues that have divided the brothers,” Shuter wrote. “He chose not to take it.”
Of course, Harry’s birthday cannot be viewed in isolation. But as just one in a series of recent events that has sent the palace spiralling.
For mere days after Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, returned – somewhat surprisingly to the country they had disliked intensely before Megxit – Harry’s uncle Earl Charles Spencer published a book that dropped a series of bombshells on King Charles.
Swan Song: Diana, My Sister makes a series of damning claims about the man who married Spencer’s sister, the late Princess Diana.
Among them is an allegation that, during an argument after Diana’s death, Charles told a grieving Spencer that they’d “forget her soon enough”.
It should be noted that the King responded to the claim via a palace spokesman, who said, “While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.”
Spencer himself has said that both William and Harry knew about his book in advance.
“I don’t like to talk about what I’ve been speaking about to William and Harry, but this will not be a surprise to them,” he told the BBC of the claims made in his book.
“I will tell you that these words will not be a surprise to them.”
However – while not saying it directly – Spencer also alluded to William’s fury over the matter.
In an interview with People, the earl revealed he told his two sisters and William and Harry about the book at “exactly” the same time.
“All I would say is one was…” he started, before tailing off. “So all four of them, I told them exactly the same time. And I can say that Harry is completely fine about it.”
Now, TalkTV host Mark Dolan has confirmed what Spencer’s words suggest: that Prince William is livid.
“So my royal sources tell me that William is absolutely furious about the book, that he doesn’t have a good relationship with his uncle, and he’s firmly on his father’s side,” Dolan told the Daily Expresso podcast.
“He’s disgusted by what’s in this book, which anyone that’s right-minded would be. Harry, on the other hand, deafening in his silence. And I’ve got to tell you that Harry’s silence in regard to this book is an act of war.”
His assessment was echoed by World News Reporter Emily Wright, in an opinion piece for Britain’s Daily Express.
“For the Prince of Wales, remaining tight-lipped in the eye of a storm is woven into his very DNA,” she writes.
“His silence now, as his uncle reopens old wounds, is entirely expected. William has built his entire public life around the institutional discipline required of a future King, ignoring the noise and refusing to get dragged into petty mudslinging.
“He understands that feeding the news cycle only prolongs his family’s distress, so he simply keeps his head down and carries on with his constitutional duties.”
The author says, however, that Harry “appears to operate under an entirely different set of rules”.
“Having built a new career out of ‘speaking his truth’ and demanding accountability from the institution he left behind, he now decides to fall completely silent, which is damning.”
Wright explains that a simple statement would have “signalled a genuine desire to mend broken bridges”.
“Instead, his quiet non-defence acts as an implicit endorsement of Earl Spencer’s attacks,” she writes.
“By allowing his father to be publicly dissected without uttering a word of support, Harry reveals that, despite his return to the UK and endless talks of reconciliation, the deep-seated grievances remain entirely unchanged.”
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