A moment from Prince William and Prince Harry's childhood has become the focus of a new social media video, with footage of the brothers captured during a polo match in the 1980s becoming a hit with fans on TikTok.
The video has emerged amid the brothers ongoing rift, which was confirmed by Harry in his January 2023 memoir, Spare, and interviews promoting it. Among a number of bombshell claims against William, the prince claimed that the pair were never as close growing up as the public were led to believe. At the time of the book's publication, Harry revealed that he wasn't in contact with his brother and the pair haven't been seen to communicate publicly since.
Uploaded to TikTok by user royaltyfamily99, on July 23, the archive clip of the two princes captured at a polo game in 1989 has been widely viewed and liked in excess of 6,000 times, with numerous comments, many of which praised the brothers and reflected on their relationship today.
Captioned "young Princes William and Harry drinking cartons of juice and eating chocolate bars," the brothers are seen dressed in matching green polo sweaters as they watched their father, Prince Charles (now King Charles III), play at a polo ground in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, near their family home of Highgrove.
"They're soooo cute 🥰," wrote one TikTok user of the clip.
"All my 👀 on Prince Harry, so sweet 😋 😍," posted another, with a further adding: "A moment in time ✨️✨️."
During their childhoods, William and Harry were regularly taken to watch their father play polo, either by their mother, Princess Diana, or members of their household.
When the brothers became old enough, they began playing the sport themselves, with the pair taking part in joint matches up until 2019.
In 2022, Harry played the polo season at the Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club near his home with Meghan Markle in Montecito. The prince played as part of the Los Padres team, which included his long-time friend and international polo star, Ignacio "Nacho" Figueras.
In 2023, William played in the annual Royal Foundation charity polo match, raising funds for projects associated with the Prince and Princess of Wales. William's team took a victory, with Kate's congratulatory kiss for her husband dominating the event's coverage.
Though the brothers' relationship has been the subject of intense speculation in recent years, with Harry's memoir providing confirmation that many of the reports had been correct, Harry has publicly repeated on a number of occasions that he still has great "love" for his brother.
Speaking to Anderson Cooper about Spare, Harry defended himself against the allegation that he had been "cutting" about William in the book.
"I don't see it as cutting at all," he said. "My brother and I love each other. I love him deeply. There has been a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years. None of anything I've written, anything that I've included is ever intended to hurt my family. But it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up, and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers."
For his part, William has made no public comment about Harry's book or the content of interviews promoting it.
The last time the brothers both attended a public event was in May for the coronation of their father, but the princes did not sit together and there was no sign of communication between them shown in coverage of the day.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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