Prince Harry and William's Bond Compared Before and After Meghan Markle

Prince Harry's jokey relationship with Prince William and Kate Middleton during royal engagements before he met Meghan Markle is the subject of a viral TikTok video.

In the post, the Duke of Sussex can be seen in clips laughing and joking with his brother and sister-in-law. The video has been viewed 1.4 million times and liked almost 48,000 times.

The footage is captioned "Before and after Meghan Markle" and also says that "the right relationship is everything."

Harry, William and Kate can be seen enjoying each other's company in the video's first half, while the second half groups together a series of images and clips in which Harry looks less happy.

One comment read, "He wasn't miserable until she told him he was." Another said: "She's destroyed him.... I bet he hasn't properly laughed & felt joy for so long. It's so sad..."

However, Harry's account of how he fell out with his family is slightly more complicated. Also, there are a number of videos of Harry and Meghan smiling and joking with each other during their relationship.

Not least of all, the pair were seen cozying up at a Los Angeles Lakers game on Monday. They do the same in footage included in their Netflix series Harry & Meghan.

Harry's memoir, Spare, depicted a lifelong rivalry between himself and William, who, he said, implored him to pretend they did not know each other at their boarding school, Eton.

"Willy told me to pretend I didn't know him," Harry wrote. "'What?' 'You don't know me, Harold. And I don't know you.'

"For the last two years, he explained, Eton had been his sanctuary. No kid brother tagging along, pestering him with questions, pushing up on his social circle. He was forging his own life, and he wasn't willing to give that up," Harry wrote.

"None of which was all that new. Willy always hated it when anyone made the mistake of thinking us a package deal," Harry said.

He also suggested that he felt he lost his brother after William married Kate in 2011.

Spare reads: "They made each other visibly happy, and therefore I was happy too. But in my gut I couldn't help feeling that this was yet another farewell under this horrid roof.

"Another sundering. 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."

That is not to say there were no problems after Meghan arrived, and the book outlines how Meghan and Kate's relationship got off to a difficult start.

By June 2018, Harry and Meghan were already having clear-the-air talks with William and Kate after disagreements before the Sussexes' royal wedding in May.

That summer, Harry suggested that William blamed Meghan for a toxic atmosphere that had emerged in a shared private office at Kensington Palace. But Harry blamed it on staff brought in from the government by William.

Ultimately, the bond between the brothers deteriorated to the point where there was a physical confrontation between Harry and William.

Spare reads: "It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog's bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment,
dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out."

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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