It’s hard to look at his nephew and know that he’s forgotten.
When Hamlet was an open-hearted child and hadn’t yet been taught to hate his uncle for being everything wrong with the world, he’d follow Claudius into the garden (and it was his before it was his brother’s) to ask about the plants, and he was never satisfied with a simple explanation. It has now been many years since he started to keep his distance to keep both of them safe from the king’s rages, and now he’s certain that when Hamlet looks at him he sees no way they could have been friends at all.
Hamlet, Claudius & Hamlet
When Hamlet was an open-hearted child and hadn’t yet been taught to hate his uncle for being everything wrong with the world, he’d follow Claudius into the garden (and it was his before it was his brother’s) to ask about the plants, and he was never satisfied with a simple explanation. It has now been many years since he started to keep his distance to keep both of them safe from the king’s rages, and now he’s certain that when Hamlet looks at him he sees no way they could have been friends at all.