Harry and Meghan: At the heart of the Sussex saga is a brotherly bond that needs mending

Since Prince Harry and Meghan broke ranks last Wednesday, the Queen has wanted to be seen to be taking back control.

So it was only right that the statement we’d been waiting for came from Her Majesty.

The six sentences are in a more personal tone than we would usually hear from the monarch – and she uses the word “family” eight times, with three of those being “my family”.

A pointed reminder that while we may have been looking at the Sandringham meeting as a negotiation between the key members of the royal firm, this is about her grandson’s future.

She has agreed to a period of transition, where they can spend time between the UK and Canada, and that it’s okay for Harry and Meghan to live a more independent life.

If there was any attempt to talk them out of it, you don’t get any sense of that in the statement.

But in some ways it also felt like a holding statement, with nowhere near all the answers as to how Harry and Meghan’s new life will work. How will the finances work? Will they keep their titles? She refers to them as Harry and Meghan, and the Sussexes, not Duke and Duchess, in the statement.

Her final paragraph is also telling.

Again we hear she wants “final decisions to be reached in the coming days” but “these are complex matters for my family to resolve”.

And not just on a practical front but more personally when it comes to mending fractured family relationships.

After the Sussexes’ statement was published, the blame game started, with all of us guessing who or what led them to take the dramatic decision to step away from royal life.

So it probably wasn’t surprising that Harry’s relationship with his brother, Prince William, would be part of the speculation and has filled many column inches since the Sussexes released their statement.

But today there is one story the brothers both believe has gone too far; a point of agreement in what we know has been a strained relationship in recent months.

In another development we weren’t expecting, William and Harry’s spokespeople released a joint statement saying: “Despite clear denials, a false story ran in a UK newspaper today speculating about the relationship between The Duke of Sussex and The Duke of Cambridge.

“For brothers who care so deeply about the issues surrounding mental health, the use of inflammatory language in this way is offensive and potentially harmful.”

It appears they were referring to a story in one newspaper that suggested Harry and Meghan “regarded themselves as having been pushed away by what they saw as a bullying attitude from the Duke of Cambridge” – claims the palace had denied.

Since Harry and Meghan’s wedding there had been rumours the brothers weren’t getting on.

The decision by the Sussexes and the Cambridges to split their charitable foundation only added to the speculation. And it was during his tour of Africa in September, that Prince Harry confirmed it.

In an interview, he said he and William were now “on different paths” and have “good days” and “bad days” in their relationship.

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Today they’ve shown they are still united on one thing, their conviction to call out any stories written about them which they believe are false or have overstepped the mark.

On Sky News we’ve been showing a montage of photographs of the brothers: Laughing together at the London marathon for their heads together campaign, standing side by side wearing policeman’s helmets when they were little boys.

We’d got used to them being a close team. I’d always been told that when William becomes king, Harry would always be there to support him and be his wingman.

And that’s why this whole saga feels so sad. We may keep talking about the royal firm, but this is a family, and at the heart of it all are relationships that need mending.

(c) Sky News 2020: Harry and Meghan: At the heart of the Sussex saga is a brotherly bond that needs mending