After so many years, you would think that Prince William, his palace courtiers and his friends would have some awareness about how pathetic it is to continuously mention Prince Harry. While the “mentions” are never flattering for Harry, the sheer fact that William and his allies can’t keep Harry’s name out of their mouths is more revealing of William than Harry. It’s especially funny because William tries to maintain the hilarious feint that he cannot defend himself against Harry’s “attacks,” all while William regularly trashes his brother off the record. I’ve long believed that one of the biggest issues of King Charles’s reign is that the entire family seems to base a lot of their words and actions on an audience of one: Harry. They don’t even understand how f–king bonkers they look to everyone else. Well, as we discussed, William has a vacation beard. It’s gross and it makes him look like he just crawled out of a two-week bender. The beard is a reminder that William has been on vacation for a full month and that he’ll be on vacation for two more months. But according to William’s “friend,” the audience for the beard was one person alone: Harry. William thinks that he just restarted the Beard War with his brother.

Prince William’s new vacation beard, displayed in a short clip to mark the closing of the Olympics, is being seen by friends as a “new installment of the beard wars” with Prince Harry. One friend of William’s told The Daily Beast: “It was a slight surprise to see William do a public video with the beard. It’s an unexpected new installment of the beard wars.”

The phrase refers to the bad-tempered argument about Harry’s beard between William and Harry that fed into the collapse of their relationship in the tense run-up to Harry’s wedding. In his memoir, Spare, Harry explained how he first ­­grew his beard while on an expedition in the South Pole and had come to rely on it as a “Freudian security blanket,” saying it made him feel “calmer.” Harry wrote that he asked his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who was reputedly not overly keen on beards, for permission to keep it for his wedding to Meghan Markle, and that she “understood.” But he said that when he told his brother, William “bristled” and said it was inconsistent with military rules—relevant as he was getting married in uniform—and precedent.

Harry then said, “When I informed him that his opinion didn’t really matter, since I’d already gone to Granny and got the green light, he became livid. He raised his voice.” William accused Harry of putting Elizabeth “in an uncomfortable position,” saying she had “no choice but to say yes.” Harry said the argument “went on, in person, on the phone, for more than a week…At one point he actually ordered me, as the Heir speaking to the Spare, to shave.”

Friends of William have long disputed Harry’s characterization of many events in his book but point out that William is in no position to publicly refute Harry’s claims. The “beard wars” are no different. One source, a former courtier who worked in the palace at the time of Harry and Meghan’s wedding, told The Daily Beast: “What the courtiers got so annoyed about with Harry is that over and over again he approached his grandmother personally to get special treatment and then he would turn around and say, ‘Well, Granny said so, so there.’ He was no great respecter of the line between monarch and grandmother, between the institutional and the personal.

“The beard was a case in point. It was a ridiculous argument but ultimately, William was right, frankly; he shouldn’t have gone and put his grandmother in the position. That was why after the split, people went to great efforts to block him from seeing her, because they were terrified he would wheedle concessions out of her.”

A senior publicist who has previously worked with the royal family told The Daily Beast: “William and Kate are always very keen to present themselves as normal, and normal guys, when they go on holiday, don’t shave for a week or two. Their whole brand is about being normal, being just like us, so coming out in a craggy beard and a polo shirt while on holiday is much smarter than putting on a suit and tie. They have perfected normal as brand image.”

[From The Daily Beast]

So… does Kate also stop shaving on holiday? Does she grow out her leg hair and her pit hair? Does she grow out a ‘70s-style bush? Questions for another time, apparently. Yes, there’s nothing more normal-guy than growing out a greasy, sleazy-looking “beard” for a video supposedly praising Olympians (who you ignored throughout the games) and then immediately briefing your media allies: THIS WILL MAKE HARRY JEALOUS! Harry’s not jealous. He’s had a beard for more almost a decade. And all of this fussing over Harry’s beard at this point is hilariously out-of-touch. William shows up with a beard and suddenly everyone is… mad at Harry?? “He was no great respecter of the line between monarch and grandmother, between the institutional and the personal.” IT WAS FACIAL HAIR NOT A NUCLEAR WEAPON.

Photos courtesy of KensingtonRoyal and Avalon Red.