There’s nothing like having a mutual enemy to unite two warring factions. So, despite still being bitterly estranged and, for the most part, more at odds than ever, there is apparently a common feeling extending all the way from Prince Harry’s home in Montecito, California to Prince William’s homebase in Windsor. And that uniting factor is the brothers’ shared antipathy towards the man who has long cast a shadow over their lives – their mother’s ex-lover, James Hewitt.

The former household cavalry officer has been an ominous presence lurking in the background ever since he and Princess Diana began their five-year affair in 1986, while she was still married to the then future King, Prince Charles (who was, himself, having his own extramarital relationship with his now wife, Queen Camilla). Diana and James broke things off for good in 1991, but their storied romance plagued the late Princess in the latter years of her life – and, by proxy, plagued her sons. It especially cast a great deal of pain upon Prince Harry, who – for years – couldn’t escape rumours that he was, in fact, Hewitt’s son, thanks to their similarly red hair. The fact that Princess Diana didn’t even meet the former army officer until three years after Harry was born did nothing to temper those whispers. It’s no surprise, then, that Hewitt is persona non grata for both William and Harry – and anything he has to say about them, or their late mother, is like nails on a chalkboard.

With that in mind, imagine the princes’ recent dismay when the 66 year old hit the headlines again last week, following an appearance on Good Morning Britain. While he was ostensibly there to promote his involvement in Operation Safedrop – a campaign to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine – the topic of William and Harry’s royal rift inevitably cropped up. Asked by presenter Richard Madeley whether Diana would have been able to “make a rapprochement possible” between her sons, James replied, “I think any mother would be worried and concerned about such a rift, as you put it, and she’d do her best to try and get them together.”

Rubbing salt into wounds, he also weighed in on whether Diana would have got involved in his Ukraine work. “Undoubtedly,” he said. “She was passionate about humanitarian work. I’m sure she would have been involved and very supportive.”

In the aftermath of the retired officer’s comments, we’re told that both Harry and William are respectively fuming. After all, it’s been over three decades since he was ever involved with Diana, and they’ve both worked so hard – ever since she tragically died in 1997 – to heal their own wounds and protect her memory. While they can’t prevent the world from having an opinion on her, the last person they want to hear from is the man who had a part to play in a painful chapter in their lives, during the very public breakdown of their parents’ marriage. 

“They’re both quite used to people running their mouths off and giving their opinions, and they mostly can ignore it,” says an insider close to the formerly tight-knit brothers, who have ostensibly been estranged ever since Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, stepped down as senior royals in 2020 and moved to the US. “This one is very hurtful because this guy had an affair with their mother. Just when they think he’s gone away and they won’t have to hear from him again, he seems to pop up, throwing his two cents in.”

And while it is acknowledged that the questions were put to him on live TV, we’re told the princes feel “it’s distasteful and brings up memories they don’t want to face.”

Hewitt’s decision to weigh in on the brothers’ relationship follows years of angst connected to his former romance with their mother. In 2023, during his high court case against Mirror Group Newspapers for alleged misuse of private information (a case he later won), Harry spoke about the pain he felt after a story came out in 2002, investigating whether Hewitt really was the prince’s father. Apparently, the writer had “plotted” to steal a sample of Harry’s hair to test his parentage – something which prompted the then 18 year old to question his paternity after all. It was only much later, in 2014, that he found out that the conspiracy theory was completely impossible – considering he was already three by the time his mother met Hewitt. He said in his witness statement: “At the time, when I was 18 years old and had lost my mother just six years earlier, stories such as this felt very damaging and very real to me. They were hurtful, mean and cruel.” 
 
As such, it’s fair to say Harry has a longstanding feeling of discomfort and resentment towards Hewitt. Likewise, William feels equally hostile towards the former military man, given that the topic of their affair formed a large part of Diana’s infamous 1995 Panorama interview. In 2021, the heir to the throne professed his “indescribable sadness”, after an independent inquiry found that Martin Bashir – the BBC journalist who conducted Diana’s sit-down with Panorama – had clinched his access to her after faking bank statements, and that the BBC had covered up his “deceitful behaviour”. The BBC and Martin Bashir publicly apologised to the Royal Family following the inquiry. Speaking about the interview, in which Diana famously spoke about there being “three of us” in her marriage to Charles (referring to Camilla), and also opened up about her affair with Hewitt, William said, “The interview was a major contribution to making my parents’ relationship worse and has since hurt countless others”.
 
Hewitt, for his part, has also slammed the interview, but any mention of him inevitable stirs memories of that painful time. As such, both William and Harry respectively, and insistently, want nothing to do with their mother’s former lover. And they certainly don’t want him wading into the very personal, and painful, bad blood that’s simmering between them, nor turfing up any discourse whatsoever on Diana. 
 
“They’re both so protective over their mother and her legacy,” says our source. “They feel she was taken advantage of during her lifetime – not just by the press, but by people like Hewitt, who had a very bad reputation for essentially leading her astray. They’ll never forgive him for that.”