Why Prince William and Harry have really fallen out - and it happened before Meghan

The two royal couples attended the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey last week (Image: REUTERS

The rift between Prince William and Harry is 'worse than ever', a new report has claimed.

As the Duke and Duchess of Sussex get ready to give up their royal duties on March 31, sources close to the family have said tension between the two brothers has been mounting and predates Harry's marriage to Meghan Markle.

The pair have been drifting apart since as far back as when Harry left the army in 2015, the Daily Mail reports.

Last week he embarrassingly told Russian pranksters - who phoned him pretending to be the Swedish environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg - that his military service had contributed to making him 'normal'.

"You forget, I was in the military for ten years so I'm more normal than my family would like to believe," he reportedly said.

Harry is said to have found his time in the army fulfilling and to have struggled with returning to civilian life, at points even considering becoming a firefighter or rugby coach, it is claimed.

Those close to the family say that at the same time, he was also becoming increasingly frustrated over playing second fiddle to William.

"Harry has always been looking for signs that he belongs, but soon all he could see – I think wrongly – were signs that told him he wasn't needed," said one royal source.

"He should have taken his father's advice and stayed in the military. Leaving the Army was the worst thing he could have done."

Another has claimed that: "It didn't help that William never let Harry forget which of them was going to be King."

William, meanwhile, is said to feel his brother 'disrespected' the monarchy when he made the bombshell announcement in January that he and Meghan would be stepping back from the royal family.

Harry publicly admitted he and his brother were 'on different paths' last October in an interview with ITN's Tom Bradby, during his and Meghan's tour to South Africa.

"We don't see as much of each other as we used to because we are so busy but I love him dearly and the majority of stuff is created out of nothing," he said.

In the same interview, Meghan admitted that she was 'not really OK'.

Last week the couple carried out their last official engagements before they give up their HRH titles at the end of the month.

They were labelled 'spiteful' by some critics for not bringing their 10-month-old son back to the UK with them so he could spend time with his family, including the Queen and Prince Philip.

However, it was later claimed that Archie remained in Canada due to his parents' fears over the deadly coronavirus COVID-19, which has claimed the lives of thousands of people around the world.