Christopher Andersen - Brothers and Wives: Inside the Private Lives of William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan

Christopher Andersen

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author

Brothers and Wives

Inside the Private Lives of William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan

Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne

The Good Son: JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved

These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie

Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger

William and Kate: A Royal Love Story

Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage

Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve

After Diana: William, Harry, Charles and the Royal House of Windsor

Barbra: The Way She Is

American Evita: Hillary Clintons Path to Power

Sweet Caroline: Last Child of Camelot

George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage

Dianas Boys: William and Harry and the Mother They Loved

The Day John Died

Bill and Hillary: The Marriage

The Day Diana Died

Jackie After Jack: Portrait of the Lady

An Affair to Remember: The Remarkable Love Story of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy

Jack and Jackie: Portrait of an American Marriage

Young Kate: The Remarkable Hepburns and the Childhood That Shaped an American Legend

The Best of Everything (with John Marion)

The Serpents Tooth

The Book of People

Father, the Figure and the Force

The Name Game

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First Gallery Books hardcover edition November 2021

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Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

Jacket design by Jason Gabbert

Front jacket photograph by WPA Pool/Pool/Getty Images

Back jacket photograph by Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

Author photograph Valerie Andersen

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-5972-6

ISBN 978-1-9821-5974-0 (ebook)

For my brilliant grandchildren, Graham, Charlotte, and Teddy

As brothers, you have good days, you have bad days.

Prince Harry

ONE BUT I LOVE HIM DEARLY / THEY DIDNT EVEN TELL THE QUEEN / WHAT THE FDOES HE THINK HES DOING?

Sandringham House, Norfolk

Three Oclock, Christmas Day 2019

W ILLIAMS HEART SANK. He was well practiced at not registering true emotion on his face, and with his father, the Prince of Wales, and his grandmother the Queen sitting only a few feet away, it was best for all concerned to simply remain expressionless. Gathered in the cavernous Long Library at Sandringham House, palatial centerpiece of the monarchs 20,000-acre country estate 96 miles north of London, senior members of the family were joining their countrymen in an annual ritual: viewing Her Majestys Most Gracious Speech, the Queens televised Christmas message to her subjects. In her six-minute address, the sovereign pointed to the birth of her great-grandson Archie Mountbatten-Windsor as the one genuinely bright spot in a quite bumpy year that included Brexit, Britains tortured exit from the European Union, as well as an underage sex trafficking scandal that led to second son Prince Andrews fall from grace, ninety-eight-year-old Prince Philips brief hospitalization before the holidays, and her new granddaughter-in-law Meghan Markles difficultand tabloid-fillingadjustment to her new role as a member of the worlds most scrutinized family.

None of this came as news to Prince William, who had a ringside seat to these and other troubling events buffeting the Windsor clan. Yet he was taken aback by the optics of his grandmothers speechalways one of the most watched and overinterpreted events on the royal calendar. The Queen had taped her address days before in Windsor Castles opulently appointed, damask-walled Green Drawing Room, where Archie had been christened the previous July. Wearing a cobalt-blue dress and the 30-carat sapphire-and-diamond brooch that her great-great-grandfather Prince Albert gave to his bride-to-be, Queen Victoria, on the eve of their wedding in February 1840, Her Majesty sat at a desk alongside several large, framed photographs positioned to be clearly seen by viewers. To the Queens immediate right was a black-and-white photograph of her father, King George VI, as well as small snapshots of Charles and Camilla and Philip. At twice the size of all the other photographs, a color portrait of the CambridgesWilliam, Kate, and their joyously rambunctious children George, Charlotte, and Louiswas placed front and center, dominating the shot.

In prior years, Prince Harry had always been included among the snapshots; in 2018 both he and wife, Meghan, were included with the other senior royals in the prominent central photo. But this year, neither the Duke nor the Duchess of Sussexmuch less little Archiewas anywhere to be seen. Palace officials would later try to explain that this years collection of royal family photos merely reflected the direct line of succession, but the damage was done. To the world at large, it appeared that Harry and Meghan, who had loudly voiced complaints about their treatment at the hands of both the press and Buckingham Palace, had been pushed out of the picture altogetherboth literally and figuratively.

William, who had spent much of his life shielding his younger brother from hurt feelings, was nevertheless reluctant to bring up the subject of the absent photosnot when everyone seemed to be in such an uncharacteristically ebullient mood. As she did every year, the Queen put considerable time and effort into writing her Christmas address herself. This time she felt she got it right. Yes, well, Her Majesty said, accepting the usual round of applause from family members after the broadcast concluded, I was particularly proud of that one. Unwilling to put a damper on the proceedings, William pulled his wife, Kate, aside and whispered to her that Harry was likely to be terribly upset that the Sussexes had been plucked from the usual lineup of royals flanking the Queen.

Kate agreed, but she cautioned her husband to keep his concerns to himselfat least for the moment. Besides, she reminded William, Harry was undoubtedly still asleep and blissfully unaware of any perceived slights or insults directed at him and his family. Indeed, nearly 4,700 miles away in British Columbia, the brother to whom William was psychically tethered would soon awaken to experience a Christmas unlike any he had ever knowna distinctly American Christmas. Rather than spend the holidays with the rest of the royal family at Sandringhamas the couple had done the previous two years (and as Harry, up until then, had done for all but two of his thirty-five years, in 2007 and 2012, while serving in Afghanistan as an officer in the British Army)they decided to celebrate Thanksgiving straight through Christmas and the start of the New Year at a $16 million beachfront hideaway on Vancouver Island with Archie and with Meghans mother, Doria Ragland. Fleet Street pilloried the Sussexes when they decided not to show up for Christmas at Sandringham, but it was a departure from tradition that the Queen had already come to terms with in 2012 and 2016 when William and Kate celebrated the holiday with Kates parents, the Middletons, at their home in West Berkshire.