When Prince Harry abruptly left the royal family and moved to California with Meghan Markle in 2020, The Firm lost one of its highest-profile employees.

Royal expert and biographer Tina Brown claims the departure means there is now a ‘Harry-sized hole’ in the family as they continue to live without the Afghanistan war veteran and his American wife.

While Harry’s absence is having a profound impact on the Royal Family’s professional capabilities, it’s also affecting them on a personal level.

Ms Brown, who had lunch with Princess Diana just weeks before her death, insists that the person who needs Harry back most is the one he doesn’t get along with: Prince William.

The former Tatler and The New Yorker editor, 71, claims William surrounds himself with flatterers but his younger brother is good at keeping him calm.

Writing on her Substack blog, Fresh Hell, she criticized an interview the heiress gave for her environmental award, the Earthshot Prize, at the end of her trip to South Africa in November.

She said: “William’s comment that his plan for a caring, sharing monarchy also included ‘a little empathy added to it’ made him seem like a showman.

‘In happier years, it was Harry (or Harold as William sadly called him) who could tease the Prince of Wales and bring him down.

‘There are too many people around William who, in Kara Swisher’s unique phrase about people living in a bubble, “make fun of him all the time.’

MailOnline looks back at all the times Harry has stifled William by criticising him.

One of the most photographed moments of Harry restraining William was when he beat William in a race in 2017.

The brothers sprinted through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with Duchess Kate in front of dozens of fans on the sidelines of the stadium.

Harry won the race by a few metres, he turned to look at his brother who was grimacing as he tried to keep up while Kate finished last.

The royal trio were on hand to lead a training day for the charity Heads Together, which focuses on mental health.

The public example of Harry’s sporting dominance may come as a shock to William, the older brother and accustomed to winning.

In a 2009 interview with BBC Newsround, he boasted that their arm wrestling contest would ‘obviously’ end with him winning because ‘it’s not even a contest’.

But as William and Harry got older, Harry seemed to excel in their shared sporting interests, which included boxing and polo – as he has played the latter at an elite level since moving to California.

Another memorable occasion when Prince Harry disappointed his heir apparent was during a joint interview in 2009 while training to become a helicopter pilot.

During the ten-minute conversation, they exchanged many jokes about living together, which were meant as light-hearted banter.

In Harry’s memoir Spare, he wrote that he and ‘Willy’ – then in his mid-20s – shared a cottage ten minutes from RAF Shawbury in their first time living together since attending Eton College.

During the relaxed conversation, Harry complimented William by saying: ‘I think out of the two of us, he definitely has more brains than I do. We figured that out in school.’ William then jokingly rolled his eyes.

Harry then teased his brother about his ‘bald head”, but William laughed and replied irritably: ”It’s rich to come from a redhead.”

William also insisted that he had to “cook and feed Harry every day” and said that Harry “left dishes in the sink” and “snored”, but his younger brother responded by saying “oh, that’s a lie”.

‘The first and last time we live together, I can assure you,’ he continued, before William sarcastically interjected ‘it was quite an emotional experience.’

But according to Harry in his memoir Spare, the friendly rivalry between the brothers expressed in the interview seemed to have masked a deeper resentment.

He wrote: ‘Looking back on this now, I can’t help but wonder if something else was going on.

‘I was training to go to the front lines, the same place Willy trained to go, but the Palace ruined his plans.

‘The Spare, sure, let him run around the battlefield like a chicken with his head cut off, if that’s what he likes. But the Heir? No.

‘So Willy is now training to be a search and rescue pilot, and is probably feeling frustrated about it.’

The two brothers are said to have disagreed on the issue of wildlife conservation in Africa.

A source told The Times in February that, despite sharing a passion for conserving protected species, William is said to favour community-led initiatives to help local people conserve land while Harry favours a more interventionist approach.

The tough approach Harry advocates would be more effective in ensuring habitats are protected quickly, but would require generous donations.

This practice also increases tensions with communities cut off from long-standing grazing and ranching routes.

The disagreement over wildlife appears to have been long-standing, with Harry describing how he “almost got into a fight” with William in front of childhood friends in his autobiography.

When asked why the brothers were working in Africa, the Prince of Wales is said to have replied, ‘Because the rhinos, the elephants, those are mine!’.

Harry spent three weeks in Malawi in 2017 working with African Parks to relocate 500 elephants in an incredibly ambitious conservation mission.

He then became chairman before joining the board of directors last year.

At the end of the elephant relocation project, Harry seemed to take aim at his brother’s approach to conservation when he said: ‘In order to allow humans and animals to coexist, people increasingly have to use fences to separate the two sides and try to keep the peace.

‘Once a fence is up, you are managing a plot of land. Different rules have to apply, whether we like it or not. Under these conditions, human intervention in stabilizing nature may be required by park managers.’