Prince Harry Hinted at Rift With William Before He Met Meghan Markle

Prince Harry said Prince William's excitement at having a younger brother "didn't last long" in an old clip from before he met Meghan Markle.

The Duke of Sussex and the Prince of Wales can be seen watching back footage from Prince Harry's 1984 Christening, when he was three months old, in a 2016 documentary interview.

Harry's words date back to before he met Meghan Markle which is significant because the duke has argued that people unfairly blame his wife for the breakdown of his relationship with his brother.

How close William and Harry truly were before they became estranged is a matter of some debate, with Harry seemingly eager to push back on "this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers" while acknowledging "a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years."

Many fans appear to subscribe to the view that the brothers were close before that six-year period, which takes their relationship back to 2017, the year Harry and Meghan got engaged.

A clip from the documentary Elizabeth at 90: A Family Tribute went viral on TikTok after it showed the brothers talking about their childhood and their mother Princess Diana.

One comment, typical of the responses, read: "So sad. They were so close," while another said: "They seemed so close and it's sad how much changed between them."

The video was liked over 41,000 times and viewed over 624,000 times after it was posted with the caption: "Princes William and Harry watching a family video."

Diana can be seen holding baby Harry in her arms in the film, which went viral a little more than a week after what would have been their mother's 62nd birthday.

In the clip, William jokes: "It's hard to tell whether you're a boy or a girl in that dress," while Harry replies: "Thank you. I think that normally happens at that stage of your life, you don't really have much of a decision over what you're wearing."

"Look how excited you are, you've got a younger brother," Harry continued. And in an aside that would have been interpreted as a joke at the time, he added: "Didn't last long did it." William also says: "I don't think it's that."

Harry appeared at pains to invite William to say something positive about their relationship but got little back.

"Do you remember your little brother being born?" he said. William replied bluntly: "Not really. I must have been two."

The exchange would have been received as banter at the time but Harry's suggestion William was not entirely happy about having a younger brother does chime with his more recent account in his memoir Spare.

Harry suggests they were never that close, with William asking his younger brother to keep his distance when they were both at boarding school Eton: "Willy told me to pretend I didn't know him. 'What?' 'You don't know me, Harold. And I don't know you.'"

His portrait of their relationship is chaotic though as Harry's description of William and Kate Middleton's wedding shows him losing a seemingly cherished friend: "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."

And Spare makes it clear Meghan was a source of at least some conflict between them as it describes William knocking him onto the floor and into a dog bowl, during an argument about the duchess.

Asked on 60 Minutes in January by Anderson Cooper whether his characterisation of William in the book, including a reference to his "alarming baldness" was cutting, Harry replied: "My brother and I love each other. I love him deeply. There has been a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years.

"None of anything that I've written, anything I've included is ever intended to hurt my family. But it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up, and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers."

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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