No one genuinely believes Harry and Meghan will ever apologize to William and Kate… but almost everyone has missed the real reason for their stubborn refusal: ROBERT JOBSON

When a family wants to make peace, someone picks up the phone or sends a note. Nobody floats the idea in a newspaper saying that you’re thinking about it.

The late Queen Elizabeth understood that. After the Oprah interview, her statement allowed that ‘some recollections may vary’ and promised the matter would ‘be addressed by the family privately.’ The principle still holds.

So I raised an eyebrow this week at reports in Britain’s Daily Express that Prince Harry and Meghan were ready to apologize to Prince William and Catherine. I’ve learned to take such claims with a grain of salt.

Within days, a noisy source close to the Sussexes, in something of a tiz, told People magazine the idea was ‘nonsense.’

Why didn’t the Daily Express listen? Had nobody there heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?

The denial did more harm than the report it set out to kill. Until then, the couple simply had not said sorry. Now they will not even consider it, and people who refuse to apologize usually believe they have nothing to regret.

Almost everyone missed that.

The Sussexes understand contrition perfectly well. They are connoisseurs of the form, though only as recipients.

When a British tabloid apologized to Meghan in 2022, her spokesman dismissed it as ‘nothing more than a PR stunt’ and added: ‘A true apology would be a shift in their coverage and ethical standards for all.’

In March 2021, Meghan told Oprah of concerns and conversations within the family about how dark her unborn son’s skin might be. Neither she nor Harry named anyone, leaving every senior royal under a cloud. William was reduced to telling reporters: ‘We are very much not a racist family.’

Two years later, a Dutch edition of a book by a writer friendly to the couple identified the King, then Prince of Wales, and Catherine. The publisher pulped it, too late to stop the names going around the world.

Pressed by anchor Tom Bradby of ITV, Harry denied accusing his family of racism. ‘No I didn’t,’ he said. ‘The British press said that.’ He preferred the phrase unconscious bias and offered his own rule: ‘If you are called out for unconscious bias, you need to make that right.’

Applied at home, that rule might have produced the letter his camp now says will never be written.

This matters beyond one family’s quarrel. The monarchy has almost no hard power and survives on goodwill. An unanswered charge of racism against the Sovereign and his heir’s wife strikes at its foundations, so silence from Montecito is never neutral.

Their business ventures have disappointed, too. After their Spotify podcast deal ended in 2023, Bill Simmons, one of the company’s executives, called them grifters. I would not use that word myself, but it caught a mood. They left royal life to escape the spotlight and have seldom stepped out of it since. In Britain, their popularity has never recovered.

Would William and Catherine trust an apology if it came? I doubt it. They have watched private conversations travel to Oprah’s studio and on into a ghostwritten memoir. Trust in families mends slowly, usually over Sunday lunch, long after the shouting.

I watched Harry grow from a small boy in short pants into a young officer back from Afghanistan, and I remain fond of him. His depression deserves to be taken seriously. Those confidences belonged with a therapist, though, not on the front pages.

Nor, some will argue, on a subscription service. His spokesman confirmed that MasterClass paid Harry to co-instruct Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss with the American neuroscientist Dr Mary-Frances O’Connor, but would say no more.

According to Forbes, MasterClass instructors can expect at least $100,000 up front plus 30 percent of the subscription revenue their courses generate. Grief is universal. Few of us are paid to discuss ours.

His work now revolves around the Invictus Games, which he founded for injured servicemen and women. It is his finest work.

The King, I suspect, wants something narrower: contrition toward his wife. In Spare, Harry wrote that he believed his stepmother had ‘sacrificed me on her personal PR altar.’ Queen Camilla has never answered back.

The same book records the King’s plea to his sons: ‘Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery.’ Whether Harry made amends to her this summer when they met at Highgrove, the King’s country home, we do not know.

People do change, and this family offers proof. Camilla went from the most vilified woman in Britain to a crowned Queen. In Spare, of all places, Harry wrote: ‘In a funny way I even wanted Camilla to be happy.’

Last year he told the BBC: ‘I would love reconciliation with my family. Life is precious.’ Months later he was having tea with his father at Clarence House.

Shakespeare’s Prince Hal wasted his youth in the taverns of Eastcheap and grew up to win at Agincourt as Henry V.

Nobody expects Harry to conquer France, or even to win back the hearts and minds of the British people.

Just saying sorry to his dad, step-mum, brother and sister-in-law would be a start.