No royal has a “best friend”, publicly speaking: “They tend to hold friendships fairly equally,” says Arbiter. But Thomas van Straubenzee, seen at the match in Istanbul looking every bit as cheerful as William, might be thought of as the closest it gets. He and William met at Ludgrove preparatory school in Berkshire, in the 1980s. In his autobiography Spare, Prince Harry, who was – formally speaking – William’s best man at his marriage to Catherine Middleton, described him as one of the two actually filling that role. Along with James Meade, van Straubenzee gave the best man’s speech at their wedding reception, the younger royal claims.
The van Straubenzees are, more generally, a sort of second family to both princes. Thomas van Straubenzee and his brother Charlie were ushers at Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan in 2018, and Harry was Charlie’s best man at his wedding to Daisy Jenks the same year. These familial relationships are typical of royal social life, Arbiter explains, in the same way that Queen Elizabeth maintained friendships largely “with her cousins, and friends of cousins”. The best way to ensure privacy, it seems, is to befriend those whose own parents have already won the royal seal of trust.
James Meade
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
