Janine Henni is a Royals Staff Writer for PEOPLE Digital, covering modern monarchies and the world's most famous families. Like Queen Elizabeth, she loves horses and a great tiara moment.
A tense interview between Prince Harry and Prince William has resurfaced amid the release of Spare.
The Duke of Sussex’s unprecedented memoir hit shelves on Jan. 10, and his relationship with his elder brother was a major theme throughout. At one point in the text, Prince Harry, 38, recalled the time that he and Prince William lived together in Shropshire while training to be pilots at RAF Shawbury. The royal siblings were on different paths; Harry would learn to fly elite Apache helicopters, looking toward a second deployment in Afghanistan, while William was training to be a search and rescue pilot as it was deemed too dangerous for the then-second in line to the throne to see combat.
In Spare, Prince Harry wrote that he and “Willy” enjoyed sharing a cottage 10 minutes from the Royal Air Force base in 2009, their first time living together since Eton. He referenced a tense joint interview they gave at RAF Shawbury where his brother put him down, which has recently reemerged online.
"How much inter-service rivalry is there between you two?" a reporter asked the brothers, who stood before a helicopter in army green flight suits. "None at all," Harry said, as William agreed, and they began to speak simultaneously.
"Everyone knows the Army is a part of the RAF, so —" Harry said, as William cut him off. "I'm an old Household Calvary boy anyway, so it's fine," he said, referencing the regiment.
"And would you live together again, in as much experience being the same?" a journalist asked.
"Well, bear in mind, I cook him and feed him basically every day. I think he's done rather well," William said, as another reporter inquired about Harry's recent comment that he handled the dishes.
"He does do a bit of the washing up, then he leaves most of it in the sink, and then it comes back in the morning and I have to wash it up," William said, as Harry replied and shook his head with a smile, "Oh, the lies."
"You find yourself tidying up after him?" a reporter asked, to which William answered, "Yeah, a bit of tidying. He snores a lot as well. It keeps me up all night long."
"They'll think we're sharing a bed now," Harry chimed in, eliciting a laugh from the press pack.
Pointing to William's upcoming 27th birthday, another journalist asked if he expected to receive anything from Harry.
"Basically, he's probably only literally just realized that you said that now and hasn't got me a present, but I wouldn't expect anything else anyways. I'll be lucky to get a card," William said.
Elaborating on his ongoing pilot training, William said he was enjoying the instruction and excited about the future.
"It's quite a long way to go before I'm finished, but I'm looking forward to the challenges ahead and flying. To me, I didn't join the forces to be molly-coddled or treated any different. And as far as I'm concerned, in my eyes, if Harry can do it, then I can do it," he said. "I don't really separate us in that much difference."
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"And I think as a future head of the armed forces, it's really important that I at least get the opportunity to be credible and to do the job that I signed up for and to do the best I can. And that's all I ever wanted to do," he added.
Sharing his side of the story in Spare, Prince Harry reflected, “While sharing that cottage we agreed to a rare joint interview, in an airplane hangar in Shawbury, during which Willy griped endlessly about my bad habits. Harry’s a slob, he said. Harry snores.”
"I cleaned up after myself, and I didn't snore. Besides, our rooms were separated by thick walls, so even if I did snore there was no way he heard," he said. "The reporters were having fits of giggles about it all, but I cut in: Lies! Lies! That only made them laugh harder. Willy too."
"I laughed as well, because we often bantered like that, but 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," Harry wrote. "The Spare, sure, let him run around a battlefield like a chicken with his head cut off, if that's what he likes. But the Heir? No."
Prince Harry covers this week’s exclusive issue of PEOPLE, now on newsstands, where he opened up about what he hopes his family takes away from his memoir.
“I want people to read my memoir and come to their own conclusions — I don’t want to tell anyone what to think of it, and that includes my family,” Prince Harry says. “This book and its truths are in many ways a continuation of my own mental health journey. It’s a raw account of my life — the good, the bad and everything in between.”
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