When Prince Harry dramatically quit the Royal Family and moved to California with Meghan Markle in 2020, The Firm lost one of its most high-profile workers.
Royal expert and biographer Tina Brown claimed the departure means there is now a ‘Harry-sized hole’ in theAfghanistan veteran and his American wife.
And although the absence of Harry is having a profound effect on the professional capacity of the Royal Family, it’s also impacting them privately.
Ms Brown, who had lunch with Princess Diana just weeks before her death, claims the person who needs Harry back most is someone who now gets on with him the least: Prince William.
The former editor of Tatler and The New Yorker, 71, claims William surrounds himself with sycophants but his younger brother was good at keeping him grounded.
Writing on her Substack blog, Fresh Hell, she slammed an interview the heir did for his environmental award, the Earthshot Prize, at the end of his South Africa trip in November.
She opined: ‘William’s comment that his plans for a caring, sharing monarchy also include “throwing some empathy in there” made him sound like a performative pinhead.
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Diana’s old confidant Tina Brown has claimed the person who needs Harry back most of all is someone who now gets on with him the least: Prince William
‘In happier years, it was the irreverent Harry (or Harold as William lugubriously used to call him) who could tease the Prince of Wales and take him down a peg.
‘There are too many people around William now who, in Kara Swisher’s inimitable phrase about those who live in a gilded bubble, “lick him up and down all day”.’
Here MailOnline looks back at all the times Harry kept William in check by putting him in his place.
Showing his sporting prowess by whizzing past him in a foot race
One of the most photographed moments of Harry keeping William in check was when he trounced him in a race in 2017.
The two brothers went head to head in a sprint at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park alongside Princess Kate in front of dozens of well-wishers from the sidelines.
Harry won the race by a few metres, cheekily turning his head to look back at his brother who was grimacing as he struggled to keep pace while Kate finished last.
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One of the most photographed moments of Harry keeping William in check was when he trounced him in a race in 2017
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Harry won the race by a few metres, cheekily turning his head to look back on his brother who was grimacing as he struggled to keep the pace in second place
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The trio raced at a London Marathon Training Day for their charity Heads Together at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on February 5, 2017
The royal trio were there to spearhead the training day for their charity Heads Together, which focuses on mental heath.
The public example of Harry’s sporting dominance could have come as a shock to William, who as the elder brother was used to winning.
In a 2009 interview with BBC Newsround, he boasted that an arm-wrestling contest between them would ‘obviously’ end in his victory as ‘it’s not even a contest’.
But as William and Harry aged, the latter seemed to excel at their shared sporting hobbies, including boxing and polo – with him playing the elite sport at a professional level since moving to California.
Having digs at his baldness in an interview showing brotherly ‘banter’
Another memorable occasion when Prince Harry burst the heir’s bubble was during a joint interview in 2009 while training to be helicopter pilots.
In the ten-minute chat they traded several jibes about living together, which was seen as good-natured banter.
In Harry’s memoir Spare, he wrote that he and ‘Willy’ – who were in their mid-20s at the time – shared a cottage ten minutes away from RAF Shawbury in their first time living together since attending Eton College.
During the free-flowing chat, Harry complimented William by saying: ‘I think out of both of us, he’s definitely got more brains than me. We’ve established that from school.’ William then rolled his eyes jokingly.
Harry then teased about his brother’s ‘baldness’, but William laughed and snappily replied: ‘Pretty rich coming from a ginger.’
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The brothers traded several jibes about living together during a 2009 interview
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Although it was regarded as good natured at the time, Harry later wrote that William was perhaps feeling frustrated he would be unable to see combat like him
William also claimed he had to ‘cook and feed him every day’ and said Harry ‘leaves washing up in the sink’ and ‘snores’, but the younger brother responded by saying ‘oh, the lies’.
He continued: ‘The first and last time we will be living together, I can assure you of that,’ before William sarcastically interjected ‘it’s been a fairly emotional experience’.
But the friendly sibling rivalry displayed in the interview seemed to have been covering up a more deeply rooted resentment, according to Harry in his memoir Spare.
He wrote: ‘When I look back on it now, I can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t something else at play.
‘I was training to get to the front lines, the same place Willy had been training to get, but the Palace had scuttled his plans.
‘The Spare, sure, let him run around a battlefield like a chicken with its head cut off, if that’s what he likes. But the Heir? No.
‘So Willy was now training to be a search and rescue pilot, and perhaps feeling quietly frustrated about it.’
Pushing back on how best to manage wildlife conservation projects in Africa
The brothers reportedly had a falling out over their differing approaches to wildlife conservation in Africa.
A source told The Times in February that, despite sharing a passion for preserving protected species, William is said to support community-led initiatives to help locals conserve the land while Harry favours a more interventionist approach.
The firm-handed approach favoured by Harry is better for ensuring habitats are protected quickly, but it requires generous donations.
The method has also fuelled tensions with communities who have been cut off from age-old grazing and herding routes.
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Prince Harry also disagreed with his brother over the best way to conserve locations in Africa
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The Duke of Sussex’s hands-on approach is reliant on funding from donors
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Prince Harry (pictured with armed rangers) was African Parks president for six years until moving to its governing board last year
The disagreement over wildlife seems to go back a long way, with Harry describing ‘almost coming to blows’ with William in front of childhood friends in his autobiography.
In response to a question about why the two brothers both worked in Africa, the Prince of Wales is said to have replied ‘Because rhinos, elephants, that’s mine!’.
