Details Revealed About Prince William And Harry's Relationship With Their Stepbrother

When it comes to the royal family, the tea is plenty — and piping hot. Prince Harry and Prince William's years-long feud has continually made headlines, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that there's plenty of drama to unearth when it comes to the two royals' relationship with their stepbrother, Tom Parker Bowles. Tom became an unofficial member of the royal family when his mother, Camilla, Queen Consort, married King Charles III in 2005.

Even though Tom didn't grow up behind the castle walls, his lifestyle wasn't that much different from his future step-siblings'. He attended Eaton, the prestigious boarding school where both royals received their education, and also had to navigate his parents' divorce, just like Harry and William had to contend with Charles and Princess Diana's crumbling marriage. Even though they have plenty in common, the two princes don't appear to be very close with their stepbrother. This might be because they never wanted their father to marry Camilla in the first place, as Harry divulged in his tell-all memoir "Spare."

Tom hasn't really tried to worm his way into the royal household either, despite his mother being the new queen. He has a successful career as a food writer, a career he reportedly became interested in thanks to his mother's love of cooking. It appears Harry and William seem to have little contact with their stepbrother, and it so happens that there have been instances where the two brothers gave Tom the cold shoulder.

The only time feuding royals seem to set aside their differences is when they need to show up for official events where the eagle-eyed press is hungrily waiting for any sign of discord between family members. It makes sense, then, that Tom Parker Bowles was in attendance at both Prince William and Prince Harry's weddings. While his attendance at William and Princess Catherine's nuptials was pretty uneventful, Tom made headlines at Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding when a lip reader claimed he made a joke as he made his way to the church. "I'm not hungover today so that's really good!" he reportedly said (via Geo News). Whether that was a sarcastic jab indicating that being intoxicated would have been preferable to making it through the arduous proceedings of a royal wedding isn't clear; it might just have been a good old joke.

In 2024, Tom made a rare comment about his relationship with the royal brothers while speaking to Vogue. He revealed that he's in regular contact with William and Catherine, telling the outlet, "I absolutely adore both of them." He indicated that he had a similar relationship with Harry but added that he was doing his best to sidestep all the royal drama that followed Harry and Meghan's abrupt exit from the UK. "I keep out of it," Tom said. "You just want everyone to be happy." That, however, seems to be an impossible task when it comes to the royal family.

The British royal family admittedly has some really weird holiday traditions, along with some strict rules about the holidays they can't break, but something you can apparently do is refuse to attend a holiday gathering when a family member you'd rather only love from afar is in attendance. At least, that was the rumor going around ahead of the Christmas holidays in 2024, when whispers that Prince William was planning on skipping the family festivities if Tom Parker Bowles was going to be in attendance ran rampant.

A source told the Daily Beast that, not only are Prince William and Princess Catherine not exactly fond of spending Christmas at Sandringham (apparently they find all the formalities a tad too much), but chances of them attending Christmas lunch at the estate if Tom was present was zero to one. Word is that William finds his stepbrother's lifestyle questionable. "It is best to avoid mentioning Tom around William," a mutual friend of the two told the Daily Beast. Apparently, Tom's past admission to drug abuse back in 1999 still doesn't sit well with the prince. Perhaps his stepbrother's past shenanigans remind him a little too much of Prince Harry's many controversial moments.

Despite the reported strife between him and William, Tom told The Telegraph that he was planning on attending the 2024 Christmas festivities for the first time because his mother, Queen Camilla, asked him to. "I haven't been to Christmas yet for various reasons," he admitted in a candid interview with People. He also told the Telegraph that he had no idea what to expect from a royal Christmas lunch. "I genuinely know nothing about it," he confessed. "I know there's turkey and sprouts and church. And I have to bring a suit and a dinner jacket."

There's a reason Tom Parker Bowles is rarely seen at royal events — he tends to try and keep his distance from the monarchy. While speaking to People, Tom opened up about his blended family, saying everyone was simply trying their best to make things work. "If they're happy then we're happy and that's where it all starts from," he said. He went on to praise Princess Beatrice and her sister, Princess Eugenie, as "two of the nicest women you'd hope to meet" and also mentioned Princess Anne's children, Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips, who Tom said he practically grew up with. Prince Harry and Prince William were mentioned, but Tom didn't elaborate on his relationship with them as he did with the other royals.

During the candid interview, Tom emphasized that he and his family do not see themselves as royals despite their mother being married to King Charles III. "We are married in, we are not the royal family — I've never for one second said that," he said, but quickly added that he gets along well with the family at large. "That's not to say myself and the children spend running around palaces. I have my own job and the children have school," he continued.

While Tom Parker Bowles might not have the warmest of relationships with Prince Harry and Prince William, he has publicly empathized with the constant (often negative and invasive) media attention the princes have to deal with. Speaking to The Telegraph, Tom recounted the media storm that broke loose when he got caught using drugs (he even got a stern talking-to from then-Prince Charles about his life decisions). This wouldn't be the last time the press would hound him. Given his mother's intimate association with the royal family after Princess Diana's death, Tom found himself hounded by paparazzi wherever he went.

"I remember being chased at 100 mph by paps trying to get a shot. My mother being screamed at to try to get a reaction. Pushing, jostling," he recalled. "It was horrific, and you are protective of your mother. Counting how many paps were at the gates to see who was watching us and taking photographs: It was all as normal as bacon and eggs in the morning."Looking back now, Tom said he didn't quite realize just how unacceptable the press' behavior was until later in his life. "It was barbaric," he said.

It's no secret that Harry has a hateful relationship with the media, and William's scandalous moments have also been turned into tabloid fodder more times than any pundit can count. Tom says he has a lot of empathy for his stepbrothers where the British press is concerned. While he made it clear that he doesn't publicly speak about William and Harry's lives on principle, he did condemn the media's treatment of them during his interview with The Telegraph. "It was appalling what they went through. I've had a billionth of what they've had to go through, but hell, I sympathize."

There have always been whispers that Prince Harry has some royal beef with Camilla, Queen Consort, and it turned out that these rumors were more than just tabloid fodder when Harry criticized his stepmother in his tell-all memoir, "Spare." He painted her as the villain in his story, recounting how he'd barely moved out of the palace before she turned his bedroom into a walk-in closet.

Camilla, Harry claims, was desperate to remedy her public image, and he believes she used him to do it, tipping the press off about his drug use in 2002, which put her and his father in a more favorable light when they did the responsible thing and sent him to rehab. "I had complex feelings about gaining a step parent who, I believed, had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar," Harry wrote. "In a funny way I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she'd be less dangerous if she was happy?"

It's to be expected that Tom Parker Bowles wasn't exactly thrilled with Harry badmouthing his mother in his best-selling book, and it seemed he indirectly clapped back at the prince's allegations while making an appearance on the "News Agents" podcast a few months after the memoir's release.

"This wasn't any sort of end game," he said of his mother's marriage to King Charles III. "She married the person she loved and this is what happened [her eventually becoming queen consort]." He also added that people have the right to their opinions, referring to various protests that were set to take place ahead of Charles' coronation. "You're allowed to protest, we're all allowed to have different views. I think that makes for an interesting and civilised country," he said. Whether he's adopted this view when it comes to Harry's allegations against his mother remains a mystery.

Whether or not Prince Harry and Tom Parker Bowles have actual beef behind the scenes largely remains a mystery, but the lack of concrete proof hasn't stopped the media from pitting the two stepbrothers against each other. Royal author Phil Dampier told Fabulous, a division of The Sun, that Tom's decision not to air his family's dirty laundry in public was admirable and stood in stark contrast to how Harry treated members of the monarchy.

Tom released a book of his own in 2024 titled "Cooking and the Crown: Royal Recipes from Queen Victoria to King Charles III," a tome any food lover would die for. It noticeably didn't include any family gossip — only family recipes. Dampier says Tom could likely write the bombshell of all books with all the inside information he's accumulated over the years. But apparently, Queen Camilla's son is much too decent to ever do such a thing.

"He has remained discreet and would obviously never do anything to upset his mother, who trusts him totally," Dampier claimed, calling Tom "the soul of discretion where the royals are concerned." Ironically enough, Tom's career as a journalist must have made it quite tempting to spill some hot tea over the years, but unlike Harry, he seems to have miraculous restraint, Dampier said.