Omid Scobie Says Kate Middleton Isn’t the Royal Peacemaker We Keep Hearing About

For years, royal coverage has tried to cast Kate Middleton as the family’s resident peacemaker. Once it became clear that Princess Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, were deeply estranged, the media repeatedly positioned Kate as the person who might somehow bring them back together.

How she was supposed to achieve that when questions have also been raised about her own relationship with her sister is anyone’s guess, but the press has certainly been committed to the narrative.

Now Omid Scobie is basically saying: not really. In ABC News Studios’ new IMPACT x Nightline documentary, Harry & Meghan: The Return of the Prince, Scobie says Kate has “very little to do” with the relationship between William and Harry. He also argues that while Harry’s relationship with King Charles has “thawed out,” he does not see the same thing happening with William.  

That is quite a departure from years of royal commentary presenting Kate as the woman standing between two warring brothers with a metaphorical tray of tea and some sensible advice.

The Peacemaker Story Was Always Doing a Lot of Work

The idea did not come from nowhere. After Prince Philip’s funeral in 2021, Kate was widely credited with helping ease tension when she spoke with Harry and William before stepping back and allowing the brothers to walk together. Royal commentator Katie Nicholl called her a “peacemaker,” and the label stuck.  

By 2022, Us Weekly was quoting an unnamed source claiming Kate was “frantically trying to play peacemaker.”   That is quite a career progression from one conversation outside a chapel.

Scobie’s assessment is considerably more mundane: Kate is William’s wife, not the appointed mediator of the Windsor family. Frankly, that makes far more sense.

Why would Harry’s relationship with his brother depend on William’s wife swooping in to fix it? Kate is hardly close enough to Harry to serve as some natural go-between, so the idea that she would be the solution has always felt strained.

And then there was Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in 2022. In footage from the service, Harry appeared visibly irritated when there was confusion over the order in which the couples were entering the pews. He looked towards William, who then appeared to indicate that Harry and Meghan Sussex should go in first. That hardly looked like a warm, trusting relationship between Harry and Kate.

Go first! pic.twitter.com/BXoee35ki8

— Jo (@jozzzaphen) September 19, 2022

Yet the media continued to cast her as the key to repairing the brothers’ relationship. William and Harry are two men in their forties. If either of them wants reconciliation, eventually they will have to speak to each other directly. It is not going to happen because Kate suddenly decides to play family mediator.

Maybe Kate Has Enough Relationships of Her Own

The funniest part of the eternal “Kate the peacemaker” narrative is how little evidence there has ever been that she actually occupies this diplomatic role.

Royal coverage regularly assigns women the emotional labour of fixing male relationships. William and Harry fall out? Send Kate. Charles and Harry have problems? Perhaps Kate can soften William. Everybody is apparently waiting for the Princess of Wales to conduct shuttle diplomacy through Windsor Castle.

Meanwhile, Kate has her own family, marriage, children and relationships to manage.

The “Kate the peacemaker” narrative looks even stranger when her own relationship with Pippa appears noticeably distant. Pippa missed Kate’s 2025 Christmas carol service and was absent from the family gathering after the Three Peaks Challenge, despite Carole, Michael and James Middleton appearing in the photographs, while Kate and Pippa have made very few public appearances together in recent years.

So the better question is why anyone decided Kate should be responsible for repairing William and Harry in the first place.

William Can Handle His Own Brother

Scobie’s other point is more striking. He says Harry and Charles have experienced some thawing, but when it comes to William, “I don’t see it will ever change.” That is Scobie’s assessment, not a confirmed prediction of what the brothers themselves will ultimately do.  

And perhaps that is where the conversation should stay.

Kate does not need to be recast as either saintly mediator or villainous anti-peacemaker. She is not the central party in William and Harry’s relationship. William is.

If there is still “iciness” between the brothers, then William and Harry are the people who have to decide whether they want to do anything about it. Kate can sit this one out.