Prince William and Kate Middleton are reportedly taking stock after King Charles’ recent meeting with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reopened one of the royal family’s most familiar storylines.

Royal commentator Emily Andrews wrote for Woman and Home that the Prince and Princess of Wales felt “betrayed and possibly even humiliated” after Charles’ private olive-branch meeting with the Sussexes. Andrews also claimed William and Kate were informed about the reunion late, while Queen Camilla was not aware until close to the meeting.

“It must feel like a humiliation for William and Kate, who are believed to want nothing to do with the Sussexes, and are thought to have urged the King to do the same,” Andrews wrote.

She also reported that palace sources said William and Kate held “crisis talks” about the latest developments, adding that their relationship with Harry and Meghan “seems to be broken forever.”

The reported tension follows years of public strain after Harry and Meghan stepped back from royal duties, gave high-profile interviews and aired family grievances in Harry’s memoir Spare.

“‘Crisis talks’ is often less a literal description of a single emergency meeting and more a signal that an institution recognizes a narrative has reached the point where it requires active management,” said Holly Baird, a crisis management expert with MediaSourcePR.

“In royal coverage,” she added, “that can mean conversations around messaging, timing, public appearances, surrogates and whether to respond directly or allow the story to burn itself out.”

Baird said the story keeps returning because the underlying conflict remains unresolved.

“Unresolved family tension creates an evergreen narrative,” she explained. “Every interview, public appearance, anniversary or perceived slight involving Harry and Meghan can give outlets an opportunity to revisit the broader royal family storyline.”

“While I’m admittedly Team Sussex, from a crisis communications standpoint I see the reunion as a potentially valuable storyline pivot for both camps,” Baird said. “After years in which conflict and estrangement have dominated so much of the coverage, a reunion creates an entirely different narrative lane: reconciliation, family and forward movement.”

She added that the “humiliation” framing may be strategically unhelpful to William and Kate.

“That framing assumes reconciliation requires someone to lose. Strategically, it can be quite the opposite,” Baird explained.

“The reunion provides both camps with an off-ramp from a conflict narrative that has become repetitive and has often overshadowed the work each side would presumably rather have the public discussing,” she noted. “If both sides handle that moment with grace and resist turning it into a competition over who ‘won,’ there is reputational upside for both houses.”