A tryst in a field? Lines of cocaine? Prince Harry reveals all in his startling new memoir, Spare.
The feud between Prince Harry and Prince William has been well documented for years,
but many of the personal details about what life is really like behind the scenes for
the brothers haven't been shared by members of the royal family. All that
has changed with the release of Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, and the younger
brother appears more than willing to peel back the layers of his most intimate relationships.
In one passage, Harry reveals that William physically attacked him following a confrontation
at Frogmore Cottage, the home Harry was living in with Meghan Markle. It was 2019,
the same year Harry and Meghan's oldest child was born. Harry claims
that William called Meghan rude, abrasive, and difficult. Furthermore, Harry detailed,
Harry claims he came away from the experience with
bruises and cuts that were later noticed by Meghan.
Princess Diana died following a car crash in Paris, France, in late August 1997.
"Good evening. The people's princess is dead."
Ten years later, her youngest son found himself in the city for the World Cup semifinal, and
Prince Harry had an idea for how he might finally achieve closure in terms of his mother's death. He
asked his driver if he knew the tunnel where his mother had died, and upon receiving confirmation,
asked if they could drive through it at the exact speed that his mother was traveling that night.
They drove through the city, retracing the places Diana visited and her last sights,
before approaching and entering the Pont de l'Alma. Whatever Harry anticipated,
it wasn't this. He writes,
In the end, the choice to drive through the tunnel made things worse. As he puts it,
Prince Harry came under fire back in 2005 when he donned a Nazi uniform
at a party. As shared by TMZ, Harry was attending a "Native
and Colonial-themed soiree" and he wasn't sure if the costume was the right choice,
debating between that and his pilot uniform. In his memoir, he claims that he called his
brother and his then-girlfriend Kate Middleton at the time, who both said
the Nazi costume was the right choice. After showing them the costume in person, he wrote,
A photo of Harry wearing the costume was taken and distributed through the papers
that night and in the days that followed. In the 2022 Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan,
Harry expressed enormous regret for the decision. The fallout from the decision
to wear the costume was relatively impactful, with King Charles III telling his youngest son
to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp and watch the movie Schindler's
List. Harry also met with a rabbi in London and a Holocaust survivor in Berlin, Germany.
"It was one of the biggest mistakes in my life. I felt so ashamed afterwards."
Prince Harry was a member of the British military for 10 years and served two tours of
duty in Afghanistan during that time. Harry was deeply engaged in the conflict in Afghanistan,
and shares in Spare that this meant he took lives as many soldiers have before and since.
He wrote,
As a result, Harry knows exactly how many "enemy combatants" he killed.
Harry claims that he is not proud of this,
but he is also not embarrassed. He goes on to reveal the number of people he killed, writing,
"I'm out here doing my job. That's all I can say."
Harry goes on to assert that, in an ideal world, he'd like a different outcome. As he puts it,
King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla had a relationship before Charles met Princess Diana
and resumed that relationship while the pair were still married. The relationship
was frequently cited by Diana as one of the causes of the breakdown of their marriage,
and it's likely the public will never forget that Charles and Camilla kept up together.
"Well, there were three of us in this marriage. So it was a bit crowded."
Despite that, Charles and Camilla eventually married in 2005.
It has been reported over the years that Camilla gets along well with Prince Harry and Prince
William, but the younger Windsor reveals in Spare that this wasn't always the case. In fact, he
claims that both brothers discouraged their father from marrying Camilla altogether. Harry stated
that he and William were happy to have Camilla in the family, but only to a point, writing,
Stories detailing Prince Harry's alleged drug use circulated throughout his teens,
and Harry himself confirms some of those rumors in Spare. During one part of the book,
Harry admits to trying cocaine when he was 17 years old, writing,
However, cocaine didn't fully give Harry the experience he was looking for. As he explains,
Harry goes on to add that part of what he hoped to achieve by trying the drug was
to break out of the expectations set on him by his position, his family, and the world.
Before she married Prince Harry, Meghan Markle was an actor. While the two were dating,
she was playing Rachel Zane in the Canadian legal series Suits. Just like the rest of us,
Harry couldn't help but Google his love interest; unlike the rest of us,
Harry found several intimate scenes of his partner with her castmates.
"Tell me to stop, and I'll stop."
As he details in his memoir,
he decided to watch the sex scenes and later regretted the choice. Harry writes,
It turns out that Harry wasn't the only royal who was interested in Suits— although other
members of the family had different reasons for watching the show. When he told his brother
Prince William and his sister-in-law Kate Middleton that he and Markle were dating,
he found out that the pair were big fans of the show and watched it frequently. He writes,
While Princess Diana was married to King Charles III, she had an
affair with military officer James Hewitt.
"She had an aura of something special around her."
And because James Hewitt had red hair, rumors spread that he was actually Harry's biological
father — rumors that have no basis in fact. Harry writes in Spare that Diana hadn't even met Hewitt
until after he was born, but he nevertheless had to deal with the speculation from the media and
tabloids for years. He also had to contend with jokes from his father about the rumors.
Harry says that Charles was fond of incorporating the tale into stories, writing,
For Harry, the experience wasn't very funny — he termed it "sadistic" in his memoir — and
says that his father has never spoken to him directly or seriously about the rumors at all.
Prince Harry has been internationally known and important since his birth and, as a result,
it's not surprising that many women have been interested in him. In Spare, Harry opens up about
his first experience with sex, revealing that he was 17 years old when he lost his virginity to
an older woman, whom he says treated him not unlike an animal. Harry writes of the woman,
It's unclear what Harry thought of the experience at the time,
but it's clear in the book that he doesn't look back on it too fondly now. He wrote,
Harry does not, however, confirm the identity of the woman in question.
On September 8, 2022, Queen Elizabeth died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
"The queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon."
In Spare, Prince Harry recalls learning about his grandmother's passing — from
the BBC's website. The news left Harry saddened. As the prince noted in Spare,
the queen died while he was on his way to give her his final goodbye.
In his memoir, Harry reveals he made that last trip to Balmoral
alone after King Charles III allegedly asked him not to bring his wife, writing,
Prince Harry went on to write that King Charles justified this no-Meghan rule
by saying that Kate would also not be welcome at Balmoral. He wrote,
Indeed, the Princess of Wales did not attend the gathering.