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When King Charles told Prince Andrew he was being stripped of his titles and turned into a commoner, it is unlikely that either man felt a rush of brotherly love.
Of course, the pair are far from the first siblings to publicly fall out with each other. We took a look at four of the most famous disputes between brothers in history …
Cain and Abel
Possibly the most famous tale of brotherly rivalry is the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, the first and second sons of Adam and Eve, who were born after their parents were expelled from the Garden of Eden.
According to the book of Genesis, Cain, a farmer, became jealous of his brother Abel, a shepherd, because God preferred Abel’s sacrifice of a lamb over his own sacrifice of fruit.
Feeling quite upset about this, Cain lured Abel out into a field and murdered him.
When God asked Cain where his brother was, Cain said he did not know and added: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
As punishment for his fratricide, Cain was forced by God to stop being a farmer and to wander the Earth as a fugitive with the “mark of Cain” upon him. He expressed distress for this punishment but never showed any remorse for his actions, and lived out the rest of his days in the land of Nod with his wife and son.
George VI and Edward VIII
After Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson in December 1936, his younger brother George became king.
Edward was not invited to the coronation, and George denied Wallis the title of Her Royal Highness, which affords privileges such as access to the sovereign grant.
In 1937, Edward and Wallis – then known as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor – accepted an invitation to tour the factories of Nazi Germany. They dined with high-ranking Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring and Joachim von Ribbentrop, and had tea with Adolf Hitler.
In 1940, prime minister Winston Churchill wrote to US president Franklin D Roosevelt to say that the position of the duke was causing the king “much embarrassment” and Edward was not welcome in the UK, so he had been offered the governorship of the Bahamas – a post he took.
The brothers rarely met again after Edward resigned from the governorship in 1945. In an interview he gave in 1970, Edward said he had offered his services to the king after the war but had been refused a new role.
He never returned to live in the UK and was not invited to the coronation of Elizabeth II.
Rudolf Dassler and Adolf Dassler
Before Rudolf Dassler founded Puma and Adolf Dassler founded Adidas, they ran a shoe manufacturing company together.
The Dassler Brothers Sports Shoe Factory opened in 1924 in Herzogenaurach, a small Bavarian town.
The brothers had the bright idea of specialising in making shoes for athletes, and began manufacturing leather football shoes with nailed studs and track shoes with spikes.
Their shoes were worn by Jesse Owens during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where the American won four gold medals.
Both men joined the Nazi party and after the war, the brothers testified against each other in de-Nazification trials held during the allied occupation of Germany.
In 1948, they split their business in two and each brother set up a rival sportswear company.
Adolf founded Adidas (a portmanteau of his nickname, Adi, and Dassler) and Rudolf formed Ruda (a portmanteau of Rudolf Dassler), but soon changed his company’s name to Puma.
Rivalry between the two companies was so fierce in the town that marriage between employees of Adidas and Puma was discouraged. Herzogenaurach became known as the “the town of bent necks” because locals were said to always look at a person’s shoes when they met them, and gained a reputation for being more divided than Berlin during the cold war.
When the brothers died in the 1970s, they were buried at opposite ends of the town’s cemetery.
Liam and Noel Gallagher
In August 2009, Liam Gallagher reportedly broke a red Gibson guitar that belonged to his older brother Noel backstage at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris.
The brothers, who had formed Oasis in 1991, had been arguing in public for years by then.
During one fiery exchange in 1995, which took place in front of the journalist John Harris during an interview for the NME, Noel said they had hourly arguments every day.
Shortly after the guitar was broken, Noel left the band saying he “simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer”. He later accused his younger brother of trying to attack him with the guitar by swinging it “in the air like an axe”. The guitar was later sold for £325,000 at auction.
The accusations appeared in papers lodged at the high court as part of Noel’s defence against a libel action brought against him in 2011 by Liam, after Noel accused him of missing a performance at the V festival because he was hungover.
Noel later admitted Liam had had laryngitis at the time and apologised.
The brothers continued to trade barbs for years: in 2016, Liam began posting photos of his brother with the caption “potato” in each one, claiming “he looks like one”.
In 2019, Noel gave an interview to the Guardian that was headlined with the quote: “I liked my mum until she gave birth to Liam.”
In 2025, the band reunited for a 41-date world tour.
Noel has since joked that he fell out with Liam because his brother stole his teddy bear in 1978. Earlier this year, he described Liam as “amazing”, adding: “It’s great being back in the band with Liam.”
