Prince Harry has made explosive revelations about the Royal family in his memoir Spare (Phil Harris/Pool via AP, File)
Prince Harry has made explosive revelations about the Royal family in his memoir Spare (Phil Harris/Pool via AP, File)
Prince Harry’s latest memoir Spare has acted as a written assault on his family - recounting family rows and intimate conversations in excruciating detail.
Released worldwide on Tuesday, nearly every chapter of the Duke of Sussex’s book revealed jaw-dropping attacks on the royal family.
Harry claims his brother, Prince William - or, as referred to in the book, “arch-nemesis” - assaulted him during a fight over Meghan and then proceeded to accuse now-Queen Consort Camilla of leaking stories about him through a palace spin doctor.
While Charles is given more slack than many had expected, Harry still describes him as an emotionally-distant father who, when breaking the news of his mother Princess Diana’s death, wasn’t even able to give him a hug.
"Shortly after our private meetings with her, she began to develop her long-term strategy, a campaign directed at marriage and with time, the Crown (with the blessing of our father, we supposed).”(Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
Queen Consort Camilla - who eventually married Harry and William’s father, King Charles III - receives a lot of hate in the Duke’s tell-all memoir, including claims that both he and William feared that Charles’ long-term paramour would turn out to be their “wicked stepmother” and “begged” the now-King not to marry her.
The Duke of Sussex recalls meeting Camilla for the first time, saying she seemed “bored” and that “neither of them was much fretted about the other’s opinion.”
He went on to say: “Camilla had played a pivotal role in the unraveling of our parents’ marriage, and yes, that meant she’d played a role in our mother’s disappearance.”
Prince Harry admitted that neither he nor his brother wanted to stand in the way of his father’s relationship with the “other woman”, however they didn’t understand why the couple were so set on getting married.
Charles, hopeful that Camilla would bond with his sons, arranged for both William and Harry to spend quality time with her individually in order to gain their approval before winning over the British public.
In his autobiography, Prince Harry writes an explosive paragraph in which he says: “Shortly after our private meetings with her, she began to develop her long-term strategy, a campaign directed at marriage and with time, the Crown (with the blessing of our father, we supposed).”
“News stories started appearing in all the newspapers about her conversations with Willy, stories which recounted lots of small details, none of which came from my brother, of course.”
The Duke detailed later on in the book how, after he had moved out, Camilla turned his bedroom at Clarence House into her dressing room.
In a follow-up interview with Anderson Cooper, he labelled her as “dangerous” because of the connections that she was creating within the British press.
“There was open willingness on both sides to trade information and with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being Queen Consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that,” he said.
Additionally, the Duke wrote in his memoir Spare that Camilla “sacrificed me on her personal PR altar”, and proceeded to accuse her of scheming to marry the now King to become Queen Consort.
Prince William
“He never tried to dissuade me from marrying Meghan, but he aired some concerns very early" (Photo by Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)
William - now the Prince of Wales - has been labeled as Harry’s “arch-nemesis” in the Duke’s autobiography.
He paints William as being engrossed by his position as future heir to the British throne, accused the Prince of ignoring him while they were studying at Eton College, and said his older brother frequently put him in his place.
While it has long been rumoured that tensions between the Harry and William arose when Harry and Meghan were married in 2018, the book suggests that the brothers’ rift started long before then.
Harry claims that Prince William told him to pretend they didn’t know each other at school, and hated being dressed in the same clothes as Harry.
Their distance in their childhood rippled into their adult life. William allegedly called Harry a “slob” while they lived together and, later, Harry feared William would abandon him following his marriage to Kate.
Meanwhile, Prince Harry claims he was forced to keep up his brother’s “bare-faced lie” that he was the best man at his wedding in 2011, when he wasn’t.
The Duke revealed his difficult relationship with his older brother meant “Willy didn’t want me giving a best man’s speech”, according to his memoir.
Prince Harry claims he was forced to go along with his brother’s lie that he was the best man at his wedding in 2011. (Photo by Gareth Fuller - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
He also claims the two disagreed over many issues, including Harry’s work in Africa, his choice to keep his beard during the wedding, as well as his decision to launch the Invictus Games.
Harry added that William “raised some concerns” about his proposed marriage to Meghan prior to their wedding in May 2018.
“He never tried to dissuade me from marrying Meghan, but he aired some concerns very early, and said ‘this is going to be really hard for you’ and I still to this day don’t truly understand which part of what he was talking about. Maybe he predicted what the British Press’s reaction was going to be,” he said.
Later on, he writes about how his brother pointed his finger into Meghan’s face during an awkward fight with Kate.
Harry has also claimed that there was a physical row between him and his brother after William called Meghan Markle “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.
Princess of Wales
“I liked seeing Kate laugh. Better yet, I liked making her laugh. And I was quite good at it." (Photo by Tim Ireland - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
While Harry appeared to praise his sister-in-law in various passages of the memoir, other parts of the book painted a picture of the Princess of Wales as overly stoic.
He says: “I liked seeing Kate laugh. Better yet, I liked making her laugh. And I was quite good at it. My transparently silly side connected with her heavily disguised silly side.”
“Whenever I worried that Kate was going to be the one to take Willy from me, I consoled myself with thoughts of all our future laughing fits together, and I told myself how great everything would be when I had a serious girlfriend who could laugh along with us.”
However, the book presents more critical moments that suggest a harder version of the Princess of Wales.
He places blame for the Nazi costume incident on Kate, saying he wore the outfit in part to make her laugh.
Elsewhere, he writes about Kate’s distant relationship with Meghan and their contrasting personalities - framing Kate as formal and uncomfortable with hugging and Meghan as “barefoot” and open.
He divulges into the tension between the pair, claiming the Kate grimaced after Meghan borrowed her lip gloss prior to an event.
He explains in excruciating detail the bridesmaid dress argument, sharing texts written between the two women during the row.
The fight between Meghan and Kate was, he claims, further heated by Kate’s unwillingness to visit Meghan’s tailor and Kate’s proposal to hold a party for the page boys while Harry’s soon-to-be-wife was busy dealing with a disagreement with her father, Thomas Markle.
