A handful of words about who wants the royal feud to end, and who doesn’t, has pushed Prince Harry’s four-year silence with his brother back under the spotlight.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, 42, told GQ in an interview published Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, that he wants to repair his complicated relationships with his brother, Prince William, and his father, King Charles III, and his office has since denied that one line from the conversation was a swipe at William.
“Some people don’t want it to work out. I want it to work out. With everything else that’s going on in the world, the most important thing is to reconcile — that’s the key point,” Harry told GQ. The remark names no one. Readers took it anyway as a reference to the brother he has not spoken to in four years.
“It was absolutely not intended as a swipe at his brother or any other member of his family,” a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said, adding that Harry made the comment in a general context.
Silent Since Their Uncle’s Funeral
GQ’s Zach Baron recorded the 42-minute conversation in New York in late September for the magazine’s weekly “One More Question” series. Baron asked Harry whether he grieves those two relationships, and Harry said he does. Pressed on whether he genuinely wants reconciliation, he said he does.
Harry framed the breakdown as something strangers raise with him constantly — sibling disagreements, broken relationships between children and their parents. The brothers were last known to be in each other’s company in August 2024, at the funeral of their uncle, Lord Fellowes, and they are not believed to have spoken.
The interview went live as the royal family welcomed the Sultan of Oman to Windsor Castle at the start of a state visit. A spokesman for the Sussexes said the publisher alone decided when to run it and that nothing should be read into the date.
‘Opportunities for the Family’
Harry, Meghan and their two children, Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five, moved back to Britain in late August, six years after the couple stepped down as working royals and settled in California in 2020. Charles made clear in a letter that they returned as private citizens, not working royals.
Baron asked why he came back. “Opportunities for the family. Being able to put the kids in a British school has meant a lot to me. I didn’t know how important it was to me,” Harry said.
The couple carried out three engagements together in Nottingham on Thursday, Oct. 15, their first joint outing since the return. Harry saw the king at Highgrove House in July; since the family came home, the two are not known to have met, though they are believed to have spoken by phone.
Charles is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer. Asked whether the illness brought on a kind of anticipatory grief, Harry replied: “Yes, but he’s getting better.”
The MasterClass Behind the Conversation
The whole interview grew out of Harry’s MasterClass on grief, “Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss,” which he co-teaches with the neuroscientist Mary-Frances O’Connor. The 90-minute session covers how he coped with the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, when he was 12. Harry is believed to have been paid up to $100,000 for it.
“Scars stick around forever. But what your perception is, and what your mindset is to those things that have happened, letting go of the past, that’s something that I would encourage everybody to do,” he told the magazine. Of his mother, he added: “I love the fact that I’m able to now sort of carry the memory of my mother with me, with my work, rather than it hold me down, pull me back, or wallowing in that grief.”
He told GQ he does not want public sympathy, citing the support network and therapy available to him as a prince. Telling his own story, he said, strips power from other people who would otherwise tell it for him, and staying quiet does not stop the stories.
A Call to Strip the Titles
Russell Myers, the Mirror’s royal editor, turned on Harry over the interview on the Daily Mirror’s Pod Save the King show. “I mean talking about scars sticking around forever, he was the one who caused these scars,” Myers said. Jennifer Newton, the Mirror’s deputy royal editor, suggested Harry may feel this is the only way to communicate with his brother, who reportedly refuses to answer his calls.
The author Robert Jobson, writing for The Sun, called Harry a “man-child” and urged the removal of the couple’s royal status. “Strip the Sussex titles. Take them off the royal website. They don’t do the work, so why are they listed beside those who do?” he wrote, adding: “Every time they let this man-child walk all over them, it costs them more.”
Harry set out the brothers’ rupture in detail in his 2023 memoir, “Spare,” describing a 2019 argument at his London home that escalated after William’s remarks about Meghan, whom he called “difficult,” “rude” and “abrasive.” Harry wrote that his brother grabbed him by the collar, ripped his necklace and knocked him to the floor, where he landed on a dog’s bowl that cracked under his back.
In a BBC interview in May 2025, while he was still living in the U.S., Harry said he would love to reconcile with his family and saw no point in continuing to fight. He told GQ that the battles he considered necessary have already been fought, and that he now hopes to draw a line under the conflict and leave it behind for the greater good.