Shortly following the Queen's sad passing in September, Prince William, Princess Kate, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle all joined together to go on a walkabout in Windsor.
There, the four royals met with mourners and exchanged words of comfort. It marked the first time all four of them had joined forces in such a public way since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex left the UK, and as such it had quite a powerful significance.
But according to one royal author, this walkabout was quite challenging for the Princess of Wales. While the display looked like a reconciliation of sorts from the outside, sources close to the Royal Family told Robert Jobson that this was an "illusion." This means that Kate will have needed to put on a front that suggested harmony, when tensions were still high between the two couples.
"Catherine later admitted to a senior royal that, such was the ill feeling between the two couples, the joint walkabout was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do," Jobson writes in his upcoming book Our King (via the Daily Mail).
Indeed, at the time, commentators felt that this walkabout might have been a first step towards a real reconciliation between the Waleses and the Sussexes.
"Grief brings families together, and we’ve seen this coming together. So, if it’s going to happen, I think now is the best possible chance," Myko Clelland previously said.
"We’ll see what follows from this, but I think we’re in the right place. So we can’t judge the future yet, but all the pieces are where they should be and we’ll just have to watch this space.
"And I think over the coming weeks and months, we’ll see very clearly whether there has been a healing, or if we’re back to the days that we had before."
Sadly, what followed was that the two couples' relationship worsened, especially in the aftermath of the publication of Spare, which recounted stories about bitter Wales/Sussex arguments over the years. To this day, there is unfortunately no evidence that the two couples are on speaking terms.
