WORLDS APART

As the Prince of Wales carves out a unique new role, the difference between William and his estranged brother Harry is starker than ever

- EMILY NASH

Reporting for duty in a role once earmarked for his younger brother, the Prince of Wales made a light-hearted joke about spending time with family being a "mixed bag".

Dashing in combat uniform and a beret, the heir to the throne was speaking to soldiers as colonel-in-chief of the Army Air Corps, on his first visit to Wattisham Airfield in Suffolk since taking on the title last year.

The position is one that royal insiders once believed would fall to Prince Harry when his father Charles became King. He would have been a natural fit for the job with his former unit at the airbase where he trained as an Apache pilot from 2011, had he not left royal duties behind for a new life in the US.

Instead, it has fallen to Prince William to step up to support the unit, and he spent time last week observing training drills, touring the facilities and even serving up bacon rolls for military families before piloting himself home in a Wildcat helicopter.

Asking about the pace of life and how often the troops saw their loved ones, he joked: “Some of them might not want to see you that much. It’s a mixed bag.”

Although his comments related to the ups and downs of military life, they could not have been more prescient, given the way the day was to unfold. William’s outing coincided with his niece Princess Lilibet’s fourth birthday, which was marked by an unprecedented flurry of social-media posts by the Duchess of Sussex.

They included private photographs of Meghan cradling a newborn Lilibet and cuddling her more recently, followed by two images of the Duke gazing into his baby daughter's eyes and walking barefoot and hand-in-hand with her down a sandy path.