Prince Harry’s met King Charles III for a private tea in London Wednesday—sparking questions about whether his relationship with Prince William might ever see similar progress.

The Duke of Sussex said as recently as May that his father “won’t speak to me” over a lawsuit Harry filed against the British government.

Yet just four months later, he was filmed arriving at Clarence House, his father’s home, and Buckingham Palace later confirmed they did meet, with the media recording Harry’s departure after 55 minutes. At an engagement in London later in the evening, the duke said Charles was “great.”

Perhaps understandably, some have now turned their attention to whether it is finally time for William and Harry to take the same step.

Good Morning Britain, a popular breakfast news show on U.K. network ITV, for example, polled its viewers on X, asking: “Is it time for Prince William to forgive and forget as well?”

The brothers, though, would have a somewhat steeper mountain to climb.

The last time they were together was in the days after Queen Elizabeth II‘s funeral in September 2022.

In fact, Harry’s meeting with Charles came exactly three years to the day after William and Princess Kate joined Meghan Markle and Harry to meet well-wishers outside Windsor Castle, on September 10.

They then marched alongside each other at a special ceremony for Elizabeth’s grandchildren while she was lying in state at Westminster Hall and again at her funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 19.

However, just four months later Harry confirmed just how deep the rift with William had become when he was asked by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes in January 2023 whether he still spoke to his brother: “Currently, no. But I look forward to us being able to find peace.”

At the same time, he told ITV’s Tom Bradby: “Forgiveness is 100 percent a possibility because I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back.

“At the moment, I don’t recognize them, as much as they probably don’t recognize me.”

“Though I would like to have reconciliation, I would like accountability, I’ve managed to make peace over this time with a lot of things that have happened,” he added.

“But that doesn’t mean that I’m just going to let it go. You know, I’ve made peace with it, but I still would like reconciliation. And not only would that be wonderful for us [the Sussexes], but it would be fantastic for them as well.”

That latter demand might well rule out finding peace with William, if Harry still thinks that way. Since then though, much has changed.

Charles evicted Harry from his U.K. home at Frogmore Cottage, announcing his decision days after the release of Harry’s book Spare.

Then, in February 2024, Charles was diagnosed with cancer. Harry dropped everything to fly to Britain and got under an hour with his father.

On a follow-up trip to Britain that May, they did not meet and Harry’s spokesperson at the time said that it was in part due to Charles’ “other priorities.”

The relationship with William, though, has been so dead and buried for so long that U.K. royal correspondents have virtually stopped speculating about it.

Finding a person who believes they should heal the rift is not so hard, but finding a commentator who believes they actual will any time soon is no easy task.

And that is no doubt in part because the royal rift that took place between the Sussexes and the Waleses did not actually involve the king directly.

Harry and Meghan fell out with William and Kate before they were even married, with arguments in the run-up to the formers’ May 2018 royal wedding that both couples initially hoped could be resolved.

Crisis talks that June, however, led to William berating Meghan for talking about Kate’s hormones: “It’s rude, Meghan. It’s not what’s done here in Britain.”

“Kindly take your finger out of my face,” Meghan replied, both quoted in Harry’s book Spare.

A rivalry emerged between the couples and it destroyed the working environment in the shared private office at Kensington Palace where William and his camp felt Meghan was bullying the staff, some of whom had been reduced to tears.

Harry argued in Spare that the problems were caused by staff William had brought in from the world of British politics. That particular difference of opinion has never been resolved.

The rift came to a head though in October 2019, just before Harry and Meghan left Britain to spend Thanksgiving in Canada, never to return full-time.

Harry and William had a 72-hour argument via text in which William accused Harry of being brainwashed by therapy and Harry appealed unsuccessfully for William to join him for a session.

“I was a stranger to my older brother,” he noted in Spare. “I saved the texts. I have them still. I read them sometimes, with sadness, with confusion, thinking: ‘How did we ever get there?'”

Of course, there have been past efforts to broker peace, including in the aftermath of Prince Philip’s funeral in April 2021, a month after Harry and Meghan’s Oprah Winfrey interview fired royal bombshells at the monarchy.

They still, though, could not see eye-to-eye and the details of that particular conversation wound up in Harry’s book, which will not exactly have built trust between the brothers.

“I tried to explain my side of things,” Harry wrote. “I wasn’t at my best. For starters, I was still nervous, fighting to keep my emotions in check, while also striving to be
succinct and precise.

“More, I’d vowed not to let this encounter devolve into another argument. But I quickly discovered that it wasn’t up to me. Pa and Willy had their parts to play, and they’d come ready for a fight.

“Every time I ventured a new explanation, started a new line of thought, one or both of them would cut me off. Willy in particular didn’t want to hear anything.

“After he’d shut me down several times, he and I began sniping, saying some of the same things we’d said for months—years. It got so heated that pa raised his hands. ‘Enough!’

“He stood between us, looking up at our flushed faces: ‘Please, boys—don’t
make my final years a misery.’ His voice sounded raspy, fragile. It sounded, if I’m being honest, old.”

The British public and media always felt William and Harry were unbreakable due to the shared bond of losing their mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in 1997.

Now though, it is difficult to see what could bring them back together.

Do you have a question about Charles and Queen Camilla, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We’d love to hear from you.