Kate Middleton and Prince Harry reportedly had a "mutual respect" for one another, but weren't "really close", a royal expert has claimed.
Historian and writer Tessa Dunlop said the closeness we thought Harry, 38, and Kate, 40, shared "was a narrative we stuck on them".
Speaking to OK! about their relationship, Tessa said: "She laughed at his jokes, but I didn’t ever get the feeling they were really close.
"I think that was a narrative we stuck on them, I think there was probably mutual respect."
Tessa went on to say Kate did "kind of" mourn for Harry when he decided to step back from the Royal Family and move to America.
She added: "I think she was probably mourning for a kind of semblance of normality, as normal as it can be".
Kate, William, Harry and Meghan became known as the Fab Four, particularly after an image of them attending the traditional Sandringham church service on Christmas Day in 2017.
Karen Anvil's stunning snap enhanced her life and was sold to newspapers around the world as royal fans fell in love with the idea of the next generation of royals teaming together.
However, Tessa said the couples didn't design the image of closeness projected to the world.
She added: "They didn't say 'we were the fab four', we imposed all of these ideas on them and then felt disappointed when they didn't live up to reality.
"They are our national family and we have this idea that William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan are really friendly because whenever they got together, they were photographed."
It came after royal author Robert Jobson claimed Kate Middleton found a Windsor walk with Harry and Meghan, following the Queen’s death, “one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do”.
Due to “ill feeling” between the senior royal couples, the Princess of Wales is said to have struggled with the time spent together, after the Queen’s death last September.
In the new book, called Our King, written by Robert Jobson, it touched on the appearance Kate and William made with Harry and Meghan as they greeted royal fans outside Windsor Castle.
The well-wishers gathered there two days after the Queen died, aged 96.
Whilst the walkabout might have come across as a symbol of unity, following the death of the centrepiece of the monarchy, Mr Jobson claimed that sources told him that wasn’t the case.
He said such togetherness was an “illusion”, and he wrote: “Catherine later admitted to a senior royal that, such was the ill feeling between the two couples, the joint walkabout was one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do.”
The book includes a number of other shocking claims and revelations, including there were fears that if Meghan joined the Sandringham Summit via video link, it would not have been “secure”.
Alongside that, he reportedly wrote that Charles and William decided they couldn’t be alone with Harry following the Sussexes’ bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview, the Daily Mail reported.
It comes as relations between the self-exiled royals and The Firm remain at an all-time low.
At the beginning of the year, Prince Harry released his explosive memoirs Spare, where he repeatedly took aim at the Royal Family and senior members, as well.
One such claim included alleging that Prince William physically attacked him on one occasion.
In his and Meghan’s Netflix documentary a month previous, he also criticised King Charles as a father and took a swipe at other male members of the Firm for how they married.
Ahead of the upcoming Coronation for King Charles, whilst Harry and Meghan confirmed that they had been invited, they have not yet said if they will actually attend.
Reports suggest that the Sussexes are trying to negotiate their appearance, with The Times claiming that they wanted a role for their children - including acknowledging that it was Archie’s birthday.
