Princess Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, has claimed that the earliest signs of the now-titanic rift between Prince Harry and his older brother, Prince William, began over something as trivial as a single sausage.

Burrell, speaking on the Channel 5 documentary ‘The Palace: What the Royal Servants Saw,’ recounted an incident highlighting the stark contrast between the brothers due to their Royal destinies.

Burrell recollected a moment from the past, saying: “I heard one of the nannies say to William, I’m going to give you three sausages, William. You need to grow big and strong, because you’re going to be king one day.'”

Reflecting on the impact of this favouritism, he noted Harry’s reaction: “Poor Harry’s face across the table. I looked at him [and knew he was thinking] ‘Why did you get three sausages and I got two?'”

Having begun his career at 18 as a Buckingham Palace footman, before later serving as Princess Diana’s butler for ten years, Burrell had a front-row seat to Harry’s growing feelings of being sidelined, much before the Duke of Sussex opened up about his struggles in his memoir, Spare.

“I met both William and Harry in their early 20s, at a polo match, and chatted to them,” he said. “You could see that Harry always felt he was in second place.”

Despite the tensions, Harry was known for his upbeat, outgoing personality. Ken Wharfe, a former Royal protection officer for the princes, remarked, “Harry was the joker, people liked him,” acknowledging his warm and approachable nature.

However, Royal biographer Robert Jobson suggested that beneath Harry’s carefree demeanour lay a more complex character, noting: “Even though he had this persona of being this happy-go-lucky guy that was well respected, the reality, I think, is that he always had a complex character, He was always struggling with the idea of the service, of having a public role.”

Before Meghan Markle entered his life, Prince Harry appeared content with his “traditional” Royal duties, which included his military career and participation in bloodsports, according to sources.

However, Royal author Tom Quinn suggests that this all changed when the Duke of Sussex met his future wife.

He said: “I spoke to a couple of people who run the pheasant shoot at Sandringham and they said that they just couldn’t understand what Harry saw in Meghan because this was probably the only shoot she’d been to. And she hated it.

“She hated the idea of shooting 300 pheasants in a day. She didn’t like Harry’s Old Etonian friends.”

Quinn added: “Meghan must have been appalled that they shot living creatures. But that’s what the royal family did.

“There was a tradition in the royal family that children at their first shoot all that first hunt on their first kill, a child would have blood from the dead animals smeared on on their faces. It was called blooding.”

Prince Harry has since abandoned these traditions and is now embracing a modern Californian lifestyle.

As Tom Quinn puts it, he’s no longer “living in the 18th Century” like the rest of his family.