As a punishment for Harry, King Charles sent him off to meet with the Chief Rabbi, but the younger Prince was said to be furious that William had escaped without any trouble.
In his book, Battle of Brothers, Mr Lacey wrote: “Meghan was not the original factor in Prince Harry’s decision to get shot of his family.
“In January 2005 following the ‘Colonials and Natives’ costume fiasco, we now know that Prince Harry was drawn to re-evaluate his elder brother’s involvement and the unfairness of William’s emergence smelling of roses.
“It made Harry feel alienated. Friends recall ‘no speaks’ and quite a serious rift between the brothers at the time – as there had been after the ‘Drugs Shame’ of 2002, when Harry had first started to realise the price of playing the functional scapegoat.”
Author and journalist Katie Nicholl was told by a royal that “for the first time their relationship really suffered and they barely spoke…Harry resented the fact that William got away so lightly.”
Mr Lacey added: “It was the function of the elder brother to be perfect whether he truly was or was not, and it was the function of the younger one to make the rest of us laugh or complain or feel disapproving – and at all events to make us feel thoroughly superior to the poor clueless kid.
“This was the role that all of us shaped for Prince Harry over the years.”
Family psychotherapist Helen Villiers told Express.co.uk that their royal childhood would have influenced Harry and William’s relationship into adulthood.
She explained: “Where one child is valued more highly than another in his family system, regardless of whether or not the parents are trying to treat them equally, there will inevitably be rivalry and it could be that they are the heir to the throne and it could be that one is more academically intelligent or gifted or something than the other.
“And as a result, they are both internally in the family system valued more highly, but also externally valued more highly. If we look at William and Harry, growing up as children, William was heir to the throne, the firstborn boy and therefore, he naturally has had much more media attention priority.
“There is a constant narrative that Harry is not as good as William, which of course is going to absolutely show up in their relationship with each other because Harry will always feel that he’s less than and believed potentially, that William buys into that narrative, which he probably will because that’s the narrative they’ve been taught.”
