Might the King’s cancer diagnosis lead the Royals to put aside the squabbles that have torn the family apart and come together, having seen the bigger picture of life and death? It is quite touching that the prodigal son, Prince Harry, rocked up, however briefly, in London to visit his dad, though it’s hoped he’s not ‘wired for sound’ and that the heartfelt expressions from the King on how much he’s missed his ‘darling boy’ don’t turn up on any future Netflix documentaries. After all, Harry has ‘previous’ when it comes to spilling the beans; his hiss-and-tell memoir includes details of a supremely solemn event, the funeral of our late queen: ‘We agreed to meet a few hours after the funeral. I got there first. I looked around, saw no one. I checked my phone, no texts, no voicemails’ – before crashing straight into a Led Zeppeliny-subtle riff about what rotters his living blood relatives are.

Harry has ‘previous’ when it comes to spilling the beans

But while understanding Charles’ decision, I can’t deny that upon hearing that Prince William had ‘no plans’ to meet his brother, my disgraceful reaction was ‘YESSS!’ Though I believe that monarchy is a mistake, I have affection for the Diana-faced Heir Apparent (whether glad-handing Big Issue vendors or manhandling man-necklaces) and his well-groomed, well-meaning wife (great-great-granddaughter of a miner, daughter of a trolly dolly, portrayed by her errant bro-in-law as both a dress-up doll – ‘carefree, sweet…she loved clothes’ – and a Nazi-uniform-approver, which is pretty niche.) This late-flowering ‘feminist’ paints his stepmother as a treacherous vamp (‘Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy’), though it’s hard to picture Camilla ‘vamping’ some poor victim, complete with feather boa. There was ridicule of his father, too, in Spare; the king is apparently over-generous with the Eau Sauvage and carries a ‘pitiful’ teddy bear everywhere.

This is why I’m with William on this issue: though I could see the point of the thoughtful essay by Alexander Larman this week, I’m of the persuasion (probably as a spirited only child, impatient with creaky family hierarchies) that though blood may be thicker than water, the family we choose for ourselves should probably win out in the loyalty stakes if there has been a diss of a perfectly good spouse by a rude sibling.

On reading Spare, I was struck by how little we appeared to have known about the brothers’ relationship in the first place – which is perhaps more seemly than knowing too much, but I love gossip. Harry writes that William wanted nothing to do with him at school, and you can see his point; Wales Minor was an unpleasant child. There is great anger towards his brother for being born first, who Harry appears not to comprehend also suffered a great loss – and who, additionally, was uncomfortably aware from childhood that he was destined to become chief of the tribe who iced out his beloved mother. If Harry chafes at the minor level of responsibility he had, how would he have coped with his brother’s?

When Harry attempts to make his brother look bad in Spare, it only increased my liking for William. Well refreshed on the evening before his wedding, William insists on going out into the huge crowds outside Buckingham Palace to say thank you and shake hands, despite the warnings of his security team and the reservations of Harry. What a good marriage it transpired to be; whereas Prince William waited ten years to marry Kate Middleton, aware that the pressure and scrutiny of the position of royal wife is not for wimps, Prince Harry ’s carefree status meant that he had a whale of a time auditioning candidates. Not good-looking, not clever, not witty, it’s fair to say that his rank allowed him access to a wide range of women who he might not have got a sniff of if he’d been a postman – and he still made a lousy choice.

The situation between the Wales brothers opens a wider debate about whether we should let bygones be bygones. To err is human, to forgive divine – but when feuds are such divine fun, who could blame some of us for our mulish refusal to bury the hatchet? Diana herself had a slash-and-burn attitude towards friendship. For me, this added to her attraction: it was yet further proof that she wasn’t just some malleable posh drip. Di fell out with Fergie after accusing the duchess of giving her a verruca, and with Elton John over the usual rubbish two divas fall out over. (Though they made up over the murder of Gianni Versace, which illustrates death’s likelihood to give perspective to spats.)

The Royal ‘Fab Four’ briefly reconciled following the death of the Queen (Credit: Getty images)

Personally, I like a bit of ‘aggro’ in personal relationships, and a bit of a hissy-fit with my friends when things get too tranquil. I daresay writers exist who are ‘empaths’ who want a quiet life, but I bet they’re not any good.

‘I avoided writers very carefully because they can perpetuate trouble as no one else can’, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote after his crack-up. ‘What did they expect from me? I’m a writer!’ Truman Capote swaggered after selling out his ‘Swans’ for the sake of a good story and losing his entire friendship group overnight on the publication of the first instalment of his unfinished novel, Answered Prayers. I wouldn’t expect a non-writer to understand, but I think he made the right choice.

Diana herself had a slash-and-burn attitude towards friendship

Whenever I’ve been in the mood for a feud, inevitably some buzz-kill reminds me of the old saw: ‘When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yourself’. I always reply cutely: ‘O, I was planning on at least four!’.

My bitch-fight with my first husband was kept up on my side long after he stopped, as by then I had grown to love the campness of it; he saw it as some Sicilian-style honour thing, whereas I saw it as being as kitsch as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in a ding-dong choreographed by Darren Starr.

I’m also no stranger to what I think of as recreational revenge – a mildly unpleasant act driven not by passionate vengeance but by a moderate desire to simply irritate the object of one’s disaffection – every so often. The King has made the morally correct choice – but the Prince has made the all too human one, and I like him all the more for showing himself up as sinner rather than saint. At some point in the future, though, I do hope that King William will extend the hand of friendship to his brother – even if only to say ‘Gotcha!’ at the last minute, before breaking another princely pendant.