It began, as these things often do, with a wedding dress. When Brooklyn Beckham, eldest son of David and Victoria, married American heiress and actress Nicola Peltz in Palm Beach in April 2022, the ceremony was meant to be a glittering fusion of dynasties. The Beckhams, Britain’s first family of glamour, part football terrace, part couture runway, were uniting with the Peltzes, Palm Beach titans whose wealth runs to billions and whose estate was deemed suitably palatial for the three-day affair.
Yet beneath the orchids and the Dior tuxedo lurked a sartorial snub. Nicola, radiant in a Valentino Haute Couture gown crafted in Rome, was not, as had been widely expected, wearing Victoria Beckham. For years, Victoria had cultivated her fashion house with steely determination, establishing it as a fixture on the international circuit. What better advertisement than her son’s society wedding? But as Nicola later explained, “her atelier couldn’t make it” in time. The quote, published in Variety, was meant to soothe. Instead, it fuelled whispers of froideur between bride and mother-in-law.
Victoria, ever controlled, appeared at the wedding in a liquid silver slip of her own design, her expression as inscrutable as a Balenciaga campaign. The tabloids smelled blood. A dynasty famed for its unity now had a fissure.
The Beckhams had, until then, perfected the art of solidarity. From those unforgettable leather ensembles in 1999 to David’s knight-in-waiting gravitas and Victoria’s seat at Paris Fashion Week, theirs was a brand built on togetherness. Where the Windsors struggled, the Beckhams thrived, aspirational yet relatable, polished yet playful. Which is why the alleged rift between Victoria and Nicola proved irresistible. Dynasty is theatre, and dynasties require characters. In one corner, the matriarch, an ex-pop star turned designer, meticulous about image. In the other, the ingénue heiress, accustomed to abundance, carving her place in a new family. Between them, Brooklyn, golden boy turned chef-photographer-influencer, torn between DNA and devotion. It was, on paper, a perfect society plotline. The British restraint of Hertfordshire colliding with Palm Beach opulence, a culture clash dressed as a couture drama.
For a time, the feud existed largely in subtext, in the absence of family tags on Instagram, the awkward smiles on red carpets, the careful wording of interviews. Nicola told Cosmopolitan that “people love to write stuff.” Victoria told Grazia that things “can get blown out of proportion.” Social media eventually saw tentative olive branches: birthday tributes, family photographs, the occasional affectionate emoji. By 2023, the feud narrative seemed, if not extinguished, then at least politely shelved.
And then came 2025.
In August this year, Brooklyn and Nicola staged a vow renewal. It was intimate, elegant, and utterly devoid of Beckhams. Thirty or more family members were absent, reportedly uninvited. Nicola wore her mother’s vintage 1985 gown, her billionaire father Nelson played a starring role, and the symbolism was unmistakable. To David and Victoria, sources said, it was “a final kick in the teeth.” The imagery, Nelson guiding, Nicola radiant in her mother’s dress, Brooklyn subsumed into the Peltz tableau, was read as more than a renewal. It was a declaration of allegiance.
The timing compounded the sting. Brooklyn had already skipped David’s fiftieth birthday celebrations, declined to post for Victoria’s birthday, ignored his parents’ anniversary. His digital silence was deafening. In the economy of modern celebrity, absence is as loud as presence.
If the vow renewal was the headline, the sibling unfollows were the footnotes that fans parsed with forensic glee. Brooklyn, it was noted, no longer followed Romeo or Cruz on Instagram. Romeo, for his part, leaned into family fealty, publicly celebrating David’s knighthood and appearing at Victoria’s side. Cruz, youngest son, denied rumours that Brooklyn and Romeo’s then-girlfriend, DJ Kim Turnbull, had once been linked, though the gossip persisted. The fraternal chill added fresh tension to an already brittle dynamic.
Until September, Brooklyn himself remained silent. Then, at the Ryder Cup Celebrity All-Star match, he broke cover. “There’s always going to be people saying negative things,” he told reporters. “Me and her, we just do our thing, we just keep our heads down and work. And we’re happy.” Nicola, he added, was “very supportive.” It was the first time he had acknowledged the feud publicly. The words were calm, the subtext less so. Here was Brooklyn, once the teenage poster boy of Brand Beckham, now choosing distance over dynasty. His insistence on happiness felt both defiant and weary.
Into this maelstrom arrives Victoria’s Netflix documentary, due October 2025. A follow-up to the wildly successful Beckham series that charted David’s footballing highs and lows, this instalment promises the story of her evolution from Posh Spice to fashion mogul. Will Brooklyn appear? Or will his absence, like at the vow renewal, tell the story itself? The Beckhams understand the power of narrative. If the documentary sidesteps Brooklyn, it will be read as deliberate. If it features him, reconciliation may yet be in progress. For a family whose very name is a global brand, the stakes are existential.
Not all is doom. In August, Brooklyn and Nicola were spotted in St Tropez lunching with Elton John, longtime Beckham confidant and godfather figure. Elton, ever the diplomat, is said to be urging rapprochement. David has quietly liked one of Brooklyn’s cooking videos on Instagram, a flicker of connection across the digital divide. And therein lies the paradox. Dynasties may feud, but they also reconcile. For every Windsor exile, there is a carefully staged balcony appearance. For every Kardashian split, a family photo-op. The Beckhams, masters of reinvention, know the value of a united front.
Ultimately, the Beckham family feud tells us less about couture or Instagram than about the spectacle of dynasty itself. The public crave perfection, but they relish imperfection more. To see a gilded family wrestle with recognisable dramas, in-law tensions, sibling spats, birthday slights, is to glimpse humanity behind the gloss. That Brooklyn and Nicola may be asserting independence from Brand Beckham is unsurprising; that the world cares so deeply speaks to the family’s unique place in the cultural imagination. They are not simply celebrities. They are an institution, as embedded in Britain’s modern mythology as the Royals.
Where does it go from here? Perhaps a reconciliation orchestrated over Christmas in Hertfordshire. Perhaps a cameo in Victoria’s documentary. Perhaps, less romantically, a continued estrangement managed via polite silence. But for now, the feud lingers, shimmering across headlines like heat on tarmac. It is not just a family quarrel. It is dynasty, theatre, and the paradox of celebrity, that the tighter the brand, the hungrier the audience for cracks. Brooklyn Beckham’s story is no longer that of a footballer’s son dabbling in photography.
It is the saga of an heir choosing between legacies, between the family he was born into and the one he has married. For the Beckhams, the challenge is to transform that fracture into yet another chapter of resilience. For the rest of us, it remains irresistible viewing, glamour laced with discord, couture stitched with conflict, dynasty laid bare.