Prince William came close to acknowledging parts of Prince Harry's account of their childhood in a recent interview in which he vowed to do "anything I can to make sure we don't regress in that situation."
The future king opened up to actor Eugene Levy in an episode of his Apple TV show The Reluctant Traveler, criticizing unspecified aspects of the relationship with the media during his younger years.
William said: "I hope we don't go back to some of the practices in the past that Harry and I had to grow up in and I will do anything I can to make sure we don't regress in that situation. I want to create a world in which my son is proud of what we do."
One striking, and under-reported, aspect of his comments however is just how comfortable he was expressing a shared negative experience between him and his brother, after all the bad blood that has passed between them in recent years.
It can therefore be read as a tacit acknowledgement that William may not disagree with everything Harry has said.
Harry's criticisms of the media have been a huge part of the narrative he has drawn publicly about royal life, at times even taking a swipe at his brother's different approach.
In a lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch's media empire, for example, he accused William of striking "some favourable deal in return for him going 'quietly,'" in a 2023 witness statement seen by Newsweek. The case was eventually settled out of court in January for an undisclosed sum.
In part as a result, a general perception has taken hold in the public and media that William does not back his brother's war on the press.
And William may well oppose Harry's tactics but his comment to Levy hints that he may still remember the days when they saw eye-to-eye on the press.
Levy did not ask William to elaborate on the specifics of what he meant but Prince Harry's book, Spare, does give some insight into practices not just by the media but also the palace that are no longer used.
In the early 2000s, William went to Sandringham to hunt game instead of a skiing holiday with Charles because, Harry said, he feared being presented before "the Wall" of press photographers at the alpine ski resort.
"'Rather shoot partridges,' he told Pa," Harry wrote. "A lie. Pa didn't know it was a lie, but I did. The real reason Willy was staying at home was that he couldn't face the Wall.
"Before skiing at Klosters we'd always have to walk to a designated spot at the foot of the mountain and stand before seventy or so photographers, arranged in three or four ascending tiers -- the Wall.
"They'd point their lenses and shout our names and shoot us while we squinted and fidgeted and listened to Pa answer their daft questions. The Wall was the price we paid for a hassle-free hour on the slopes. Only if we went before the Wall would they briefly leave us in peace.
"Pa disliked the Wall -- he was famous for disliking it -- but Willy and I despised it. Hence, Willy was at home, taking it out on the partridges."
Given his father also disliked the experience, it may be the brothers blame it more on the palace staff at the time than Charles but needless to say, it does not happen anymore.
Even on their birthdays, Princess Kate has on many occasions taken her own pictures of her children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. Alternatively, they have recently been using a single photographer handpicked by them, such as Josh Shinner, who took George’s photo, released in July, when he turned 12.
In reality though, the idea William and Harry held the same hostile feelings towards the media was once completely uncontroversial. After all, they both lost their mother, Princess Diana, when she died in a 1997 Paris car crash while the paparazzi pursued her vehicle.
And William did once mount his own fightback against the tabloids and with no small measure of success -- he just got there years earlier than Harry and quit while he was ahead.
William in fact took the first step toward exposing the phone-hacking scandal back in the mid-2000s after being told he might be a victim by journalist and friend Tom Bradby.
The palace complained to the police who launched the first, original phone-hacking investigation leading to the criminal conviction of News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire following a guilty plea in November 2006.
They also issued apologies to Prince William, Prince Harry and their father Charles who was then Prince of Wales. Those guilty pleas established as fact that phone hacking had taken place at the News of the World paving the way for The Guardian to later launch an investigation into the practice exposing that it was in fact far more widespread.
In the end, it led to the closure of the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid and the commission of the Leveson Inquiry into the conduct of the press which caused seismic change within Britain's news media.
With time though, William's role in getting the ball rolling has been largely forgotten including by his own brother who accused him of taking an out of court settlement from Murdoch's News Group Newspapers to "go quietly."
Yet William does keep the press at arms length and his interview with Levy was a case in point. As a teenager, ahead of his gap year, he was required to give a press conference in which he answered questions from the media about his plans.
Now, he can pick and choose friendly celebrities to ask him softball questions and come across to the public as relatable in answering them as much or as little as he wants to.
It may look less hostile to the media from the outside, but in his own very different way he has also sought to change his relationship with the press.