The funeral of Lord Robert Fellowes, brother-in-law to Princess Diana and a cherished advisor to Queen Elizabeth II, was always going to be a star-studded affair.
But there was one guest in the pews who turned heads as soon as he entered the little chapel in Norfolk.
Prince Harry, King Charles III's wayward second son, was a surprise mourner among the congregation.
His trip to the UK was kept a secret from the press, and while his brother Prince William was also at the funeral, witnesses say they maintained a careful distance from one another.
"They weren't speaking, one sat [on] one side of church, and the other was in the aisle on the other side," mourner David Hocking told the UK Times.
"It was very sad."
It's no secret that relations between Harry and the royal family have spiralled since he and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, alleged the Windsors failed to protect her from racist bullying by the British tabloids.
The close bond he and William once enjoyed is now so frayed that royal commentators have speculated that they may never speak again.
Now 40, Harry has not only transitioned from the cheeky, rebellious spare into a husband and father with deep roots in California, he has increasingly aligned himself with Diana's family, the Spencers, over the House of Windsor.
After Lord Fellowes' funeral, Harry reportedly stayed with his uncle, Earl Spencer, at the family's ancestral home of Althorp.
The sprawling property, which has belonged to the Spencers for centuries, is steeped in significance for the family.
It is the house where Diana grew up, and it is her final resting place after she died in a car accident in 1997.
But Harry's decision to stay there instead of booking a hotel room, or seeking his father's permission to crash at Buckingham Palace, was noted by royal commentators.
"The announcement of his staying at Althorp after the memorial service intentionally emphasises his links with his mother's family," Richard Fitzwilliams told the Daily Mail in August.
"What is clear is that he feels at home with the Spencers."
Just like his mother before him, Harry joins a long line of Spencer rebels.
For centuries, they have been one of the most powerful aristocratic families in England, almost always intertwined with the royals, and in many cases, causing heartache and headaches for the monarch of the day.
'The Spencers are difficult'
From humble beginnings as sheep farmers in the 15th century, the Spencers quickly amassed land, fortune, power and glamour.
No Spencer has ever sat upon the throne, but they all seem to have a way of becoming powerbrokers — and then troublemakers — within the royal court.
"The Spencers are difficult," the Queen Mother once said, according to Tina Brown's book The Diana Chronicles.
Robert Spencer, the Earl of Sunderland, was considered instrumental to the family's rise in the 17th century.
Through a mix of secrecy, betrayal and shifting allegiances, he served as an influential advisor to three successive monarchs.
He spent great stretches of time in exile due to his perceived duplicity, but always seemed to have a knack for winning back the favour of the ruling king.
"Nearly 300 years on, my father would talk about him with an ashamed, resigned chuckle," Earl Spencer wrote in his book The Spencers: A Personal History of an English Family.
Other glamorous power players followed.
Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, was considered one of the most influential women in England, ensorcelling Queen Anne so she could advance her political agenda and enrich her family.
As portrayed in the Oscar winning film The Favourite, the relationship between the two women collapsed in 1711 and Sarah was exiled from the royal court.
She died "immensely rich and very little regretted, either by her own family or the world in general", according to Scottish writer Tobias Smollett.
Other members of the Spencer clan who left an indelible mark on Britain include two illegitimate sons of King Charles II, the hard-partying and controversial Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
So by the time Diana was born in 1961, her blood was a heady brew created by powerbrokers, landowners and regal rebels.
A fiery eulogy foretells Harry's destiny
Like so many Spencers, Diana's time at the centre of British life was defined by glamour and scandal, by romance and humiliation, by triumph and finally, by tragedy.
She too ripped up the royal rule book, winning the hearts of her subjects, but earning the consternation of her new family.
Unable to bear her husband Charles's infidelity, she chose to give up the chance to be queen so she would no longer have to remain in a faithless marriage.
"I'd like to be a queen of people's hearts, in people's hearts, but I don't see myself being queen of this country. I don't think many people will want me to be queen," she told the BBC's Panorama program in 1996, when she was separated from then-Prince Charles.
"Actually, when I say many people, I mean the establishment that I married into, because they have decided that I'm a non-starter."
Nine months later, she died, triggering an outpouring of grief unlike anything Britain had seen before.
Her death created a deep schism between the Windsors and the Spencers, one that persists to this day.
At her funeral, Earl Spencer made an anguishing — and pointed — promise to his sister as Harry and William watched from the pews.
"We will not allow [your sons Harry and William] to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair," he said.
"We, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.
"We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born and will always respect and encourage them in their royal role but we, like you, recognise the need for them to experience as many different aspects of life as possible to arm them spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have expected nothing less from us."
In 2020, Harry and Meghan took their new son Archie to North America, and said it was time to "carve out a progressive new role within this institution".
A bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey soon followed, during which Meghan said racism from the tabloids had left her suicidal, and Harry claimed his family had cut them off without financial support or security.
Harry took up the mantle as the rebellious Spencer vexing the crown, refusing to be silenced by tradition or a family edict of "never complain, never explain".
In the years since he went into self-imposed exile in California, Harry has only grown closer to Diana's relatives.
"I see a lot of my mum in Lili," Harry said of his newborn daughter Lilibet in 2022.
"She's very Spencer-like. She's got the same blue eyes."
The rift between the Spencers and the Windsors remains. While Harry attended his father's coronation last year, none of Diana's relatives were invited, something the British media described as a "snub".
The frosty relations between these two powerful families spilled into the public domain when Harry returned Britain for the 10th anniversary of the Invictus Games in May.
While the royal family did not attend a service at St Paul's cathedral to mark the anniversary, Earl Spencer, Diana's sister Lady Jane Fellowes, and several Spencer cousins greeted the prince inside the church with hugs and smiles.
"Now that Harry has left the royal family, the Spencers have laid claim to him again," royal biographer Ingrid Seward told the UK Telegraph.
As speculation raged about the state of the king's relationship with his youngest child, Harry's team issued a statement.
"In response to the many inquiries and continued speculation on whether or not the Duke will meet with his father while in the UK this week, it, unfortunately, will not be possible due to His Majesty’s full programme," they said.
Will Harry ever reconcile with the Windsors?
Like his mother and countless other Spencers, Harry chafed at the confines of royal life, broke free, but then refused to remain silent in exile.
In writing a memoir and participating in a Netflix documentary, he has violated an unspoken pact with the Windsors to keep their secrets close.
But Harry claims that the only difference between him and his family is that they use a complex arrangement involving royal courts and tabloid reporters to leak private information.
"I will sit here and speak truth to you with the words that come out of my mouth, rather than using someone else, an unnamed source, to feed in lies or a narrative to a tabloid media that literally radicalises its readers to then potentially cause harm to my family, my wife, my kids," he told 60 Minutes last year.
Still, he has always been at pains to stress that he is open to a reconciliation.
"The ball is in their court. There's a lot to be discussed and I really hope that they're willing to sit down and talk about it," he told ITV last year.
Harry may have made a brief visit home earlier this year to see his father following his cancer diagnosis, but the feud between Charles's sons continues to play out in the British press.
William's anger with his brother is being noticed, even by the most conservative of British commentators.
"When it comes to his brother, William's disgruntlement can at times seem mildly pathological," pro-monarchy commentator Petronella Wyatt in May.
"To many, Charles and William's continued coldness towards Harry is beginning to look inhuman. It is important to remember that the Royal family is a microcosm for every family in Britain, and that a divided family, like a divided political party, has an intrinsic weakness."
Like many monarchs before him, King Charles III has a Spencer problem — one he seems unwilling or unable to solve.
