The heir's lack of hair, a so-called death cult,
and Beardgate. Prince Harry didn't spare any shady details in his fascinating memoir.
Prince Harry is well aware that his crowning glory has lost some
of its thickness as he's gotten older. In a 2022 appearance on
a Dutch TV special about the Invictus Games, Harry said of his thinning hair,
"I'm doomed."
The topic also came up during one of his last conversations with his late grandmother,
Queen Elizabeth II. They were discussing the effect a long
drought had on the lawn of Harry and Meghan Markle's former royal residence,
Frogmore Cottage. In "Spare," he recalled making his grandma laugh by joking,
"Looks like the top of my head, Granny! Balding and brown in patches."
Harry also made an observation about the state of his brother's head. When
Harry returned home for the funeral of their late grandfather, Prince Philip,
he found himself scrutinizing William, Prince of Wales, during an argument. Harry wrote,
"I took it all in — his familiar scowl, which had always been his default in dealings with me,
his alarming baldness, more advanced than my own;
his famous resemblance to Mummy, which was fading with time."
In discussions on Twitter, some readers theorized that his words
had a deeper meaning, suggesting that Harry was also trying to say that his
brother was becoming less like Princess Diana in disposition.
On "60 Minutes," Harry said that his intention was not to harm William, but he still could not
resist smirking when Anderson Cooper read the passage about his brother's baldness aloud.
"I'm generally concerned for the safety of my family."
The safety of his family is of utmost concern to Prince Harry,
so after he and Meghan Markle stepped down as working royals in 2020, he was naturally upset
when he learned that their security would no longer be paid for. In the Sussexes'
sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan revealed that she pleaded with The Firm to at least
allow Harry to keep his security detail. She recalled penning a letter that read in part,
"Please, it's very clear the protection of me or Archie
is not a priority. I accept that. That is fine. Please keep my husband safe."
When Prince Andrew lost his status as a working royal, his security situation
was reportedly handled much differently. In regards to Virginia Roberts Giuffre's sexual
assault case against Andrew, Buckingham Palace released a statement reading,
"The Duke of York will continue not to undertake
any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen."
Per The Telegraph, King Charles III later agreed to shoulder the
financial responsibility for Andrew's security at an annual cost of around
$3.6 million. According to "Spare," the Sussexes got no such offer. Harry wrote,
"[Andrew] was embroiled in a shameful scandal, accused of the sexual assault of a young woman,
and no one had so much as suggested that he lose his security. Whatever
grievances people had against us, sex crimes weren't on the list."
Before her marriage to King Charles III ended, Princess Diana had a long
love affair with former British Army officer, James Hewitt. As reported by The Independent,
Hewitt broke the beloved royal's heart by sharing details about their relationship with author Anna
Pasternak for her 1994 book, "Princess in Love." In her 1995 "Panorama" interview, Diana confessed,
"Yes, I adored him. Yes, I was in love with him. But I was very let down."
For years after the romance revelation, rumors circulated that Hewitt might be Prince Harry's
real father. However, the former cavalry officer insisted that this could not be
the case because his affair with Diana began after Harry's birth. He told The Mirror in 2002,
"I must state once and for all that I'm not Harry's father."
According to Harry, his real dad found the rumors endlessly
amusing. In "Spare," he recalled Charles saying,
"Who knows if I'm even your real father? Maybe your real father is in Broadmoor, darling boy!"
Harry added,
"He'd laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke."
Harry further expressed his displeasure
over the speculation that his father so reveled in, writing,
"One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt's flaming ginger hair,
but another cause was sadism."
Hewitt was more sympathetic to Harry when he was asked about the rumor on
Australia's "Sunday Night" in 2017. He said,
"It sells papers. It's worse for [Harry], probably, poor chap."
According to Prince Harry, there were conversations about King Charles III cutting
off his access to the royal coffers long before he and Meghan Markle struck out on their own,
eventually signing deals with Netflix and Spotify worth $100 million and up to $18
million, respectively. Per Forbes, Harry also left with an estimated
$10 million safety net in the form of his inheritance from Princess Diana.
Before Sussexit, Harry says that Charles essentially wanted to fire
him. As he pointed out in "Spare," the king wasn't just his parent, writing,
"He was my boss, my banker, my comptroller, keeper of the purse strings."
Harry recalled a conversation in which Charles seemed to suggest that Meghan
might not want to give up her acting career, allegedly telling his son,
"Well, you know, darling boy, there's not enough money to go around."
The monarch explained,
"I can't pay for anyone else. I'm already having to pay for your brother and Catherine."
According to Forbes, Charles divvied out $8 million from the
Duchy of Cornwall among himself and his sons in 2020. But Harry
believes that Charles' motivations had nothing to do with money. He wrote,
"What he really couldn't stomach was someone new dominating the monarchy,
grabbing the limelight, someone shiny and new coming in and overshadowing him."
If he's correct, then Charles' worst nightmare came true when
the Sussexes kept calm and carried on sucking up headline space after ditching the crown.
Prince Harry aired his grievances with the British press in "Spare," calling the media
out for breathlessly molding many of its stories about Meghan Markle into scandals,
no matter how harmless they appeared to be on the surface. During its coverage of Harry and
Meghan's wedding in 2018, the Express published a story with the sensationalized headline,
"How Meghan Markle's flowers may have put Princess Charlotte's life at risk."
The publication suggested that Meghan was putting her niece in mortal danger by
having her wear a floral crown adorned with poisonous lilies of the valley.
Harry mocked the hysterical semantics of the Express' report, writing,
"An accompanying photo showed my poor little niece wearing her crown,
face contorted in a paroxysm of agony, or a sneeze. Alongside this photo was a shot
of Meg looking sublimely unconcerned about the imminent death of this angelic child."
The Express even consulted a floral expert who warned that lilies of the valley are devilishly
deceptive beauties containing toxins that can affect the heart and potentially kill if ingested.
Meghan wasn't the only royal to use the blossoms — in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it
sentence, the Express admits that they were also featured in Catherine,
Princess of Wales' wedding. When she married William, Prince of Wales,
in 2011, the Express merely observed that the lilies of the valley in her bouquet
were significant because they symbolized a joyful renewal. But, as Harry concluded,
"The story of Meghan the Murderess was just too good."
Over the years, Prince Harry has often spoken about the loss of his mother,
Princess Diana. In 2017, he criticized his family's decision to parade him and
his brother before the public at her 1997 funeral, where the grieving siblings were
photographed and filmed trailing their mother's coffin. Harry told Newsweek,
"I don't think any child should be asked to do that,
under any circumstances. I don't think it would happen today."
In writing "Spare", Harry had to relive the heartbreaking moment he was informed
about his mother's death. He remembers King Charles III being distant and even
failing to offer his distraught son the comfort of a hug, writing,
"He wasn't great at showing emotions under normal circumstances,
how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?"
When recalling how he didn't break down and cry until Diana's burial, Harry took another dig at
Charles, suggesting that his dad never cared for her the way he and his brother did. He wrote.
"It was reported that Mummy's hands were folded across her chest and between them
was placed a photo of me and Willy, possibly the only two men who ever truly loved her."
He further suggested that his family's emphasis on following
royal protocol made it difficult for him to mourn properly, musing,
"Maybe I'd learned too well, absorbed too deeply,
the ethos of the family, that crying wasn't an option — ever."
"Did you try to be faithful and honorable to your wife?"
"Yes."
"And you were? Yes. Until it became irretrievably broken down."
In "Spare," Prince Harry refers to queen consort Camilla Parker Bowles as the "Other Woman," a
reference to King Charles III's extramarital affair with his stepmother. Charles admitted
to being unfaithful to Princess Diana in a 1994 ITV documentary. However, he claimed
that he didn't plan on divorcing her and only referred to Bowles as a friend at the time.
But after he and Diana went their separate ways two years later,
Charles could begin courting Bowles in earnest. When it came time for her to
meet Charles' youngest son, Harry revealed that he didn't really know what to expect. He wrote,
"I recall wondering, right before the tea,
if she'd be mean to me. If she'd be like all the wicked stepmothers in storybooks."
But he ultimately concluded that their first meeting would be more like an uncomfortable,
albeit brief, doctor's visit than a dark fairytale. He wrote.
"Just like getting an injection. Close your eyes, over before you know it."
Harry further revealed that his first encounter with the future
queen consort wasn't very memorable and shared his theory as to why Bowles didn't
go out of her way to leave a good impression on him. He explained,
"I wasn't her biggest hurdle. In other words, I wasn't the Heir."
Apparently, the heir wasn't all that charmed, either. According to Harry,
although he and William welcomed her into the family, both begged Charles not to marry Bowles.
"The world is in shock. Diana, Princess of Wales is dead, and Britain is in mourning."
While reflecting back on a hunting trip with William, Prince of Wales, Prince Harry came to
a morbid realization about the monarchy, with one of the darker "Spare" passages reading,
"I saw that even our finest moments, and my best memories, somehow involved death. Windsor castle
itself was a tomb, the walls filled with ancestors. The Tower of London was held
together with the blood of animals [...] Outsiders called us a cult, but maybe we were a death cult."
This sinister turn into Edgar Allan Poe territory comes after
Harry recalls William swearing on the life of their late mother during an argument.
One of the moments in Harry and William's lives that were touched
by death came in 2022 when Queen Elizabeth II's funeral brought the warring brothers
back together. In his interview with ITV, Harry remembered a moment of levity amidst
the tension — when he and William shared a dark joke about their mother's funeral.
"My brother and I were walking the same route,
and we sort of joked to each other and said, 'At least we know the way."
He also explained why Elizabeth's funeral wasn't as somber as Princess Diana's, saying,
"Our grandmother had finished life — there was more,
I think, of a celebration and respect and recognition to what she had accomplished."
But their shared reverence for their grandmother
wasn't enough to repair the rift between the brothers.
"Harry, wake up. You know, your mother wanted much more for you than this."
Princess Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell,
is an outspoken critic of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's post-Sussexit moves,
including their decision to appear in a Netflix documentary. In a 2022 "Lorraine" interview,
Burrell complained about the couple's use of footage and photos of Diana. He said,
"Talk about exploiting the princess' image."
He also snarked about Harry's memoir, saying,
"You have to wait for the 'exclusives' to come in
the book because the publishers haven't paid millions of pounds for nothing."
While Burrell slammed the couple for profiting from their connection to the royal family,
it's something he's guilty of himself — in 2003, he published a memoir titled "A Royal
Duty," which features a photo of Diana on the cover and promises to spill some of the
secrets she shared with him. Harry eviscerates the book and its author in "Spare," writing,
"Mummy's former butler had penned a tell-all which actually told nothing.
It was merely one man's self-justifying, self-centering version of events. [...] He
was milking her disappearance for money. It made my blood boil."
After "Spare" hit bookshelves, Burrell began popping up again,
appearing on "Sunrise" to suggest that Meghan is to blame for the changes he sees in Harry.
But some of those changes also have to do with Harry growing up. Burrell said,
"I first met him when he was in his mummy's tummy."
"I don't recognize the young man I see today."
The uproar over "Spare" hit a fever pitch when one author compared Prince Harry to
the Führer. In an interview with Times Radio, A.N. Wilson said of Harry's memoir,
"It is like reading 'Mein Kampf,' in that Hitler thinks he's a great hero
and you put the book down with absolute disgust."
But Harry doesn't just paint himself in a positive light in his book. He
also reflects back on some of the mistakes he's made in his life,
including an incident he'd likely much rather leave in the past — the time he wore a Nazi
uniform to a costume party in 2005. Harry later issued an apology for his tasteless behavior.
While he can blame no one but himself for the blunder, Harry claims that Catherine,
Princess of Wales, and William, Prince of Wales, had a small role to play in the scandal.
"It was your idea I think. It was your idea."
In his book, he recalls consulting with the couple when deciding whether he should dress
like a Nazi officer or a British pilot. Instead of offering Harry sound advice,
they purportedly told him to go with the offensive option. Upon seeing him
wearing the costume — which included a fake Hitler mustache — Harry recalled,
"They both howled."
On "Good Morning Britain," royal reporter,
Duncan Lacombe claimed that he later spoke to William about the scandal, saying,
"William was very much in on the joke. He didn't know what was such a big fuss that had been made."
"We're now at the same school. I haven't seen you for ages, now we get to hang
out together. He's like 'No, no, no. When we're at school, we don't know each other."
While appearing on "60 Minutes" to promote his memoir, Prince Harry revealed that he
and his brother were not as close as people assumed before Sussexit. He
spoke to Anderson Cooper about how it hurt his feelings when William,
Prince of Wales, proclaimed that they would not be spending time together at school, saying,
"At the time, it hurt. I couldn't make sense of it."
While Harry also made it clear that Meghan Markle was not the cause of their rift,
it probably didn't help that William may have looked down on the "Suits"
star because of her line of work and her country of origin. Harry wrote in "Spare",
"One day, sitting together in his garden, [William had] predicted a host of difficulties
I could expect if I hooked up with an 'American actress,' a phrase he always
managed to make sound like 'convicted felon.” Are you sure about her, Harold?"
William's reaction to Meghan hugging him also did not exactly scream a warm welcome. He recalled,
"[It] completely freaked him out. He recoiled."
Then there's Beardgate. William was purportedly livid because Queen Elizabeth II had given Harry
permission to keep his beard for his wedding, something the heir was not
allowed to do. Harry painted his older brother as a petulant child, writing,
"At one point he actually ordered me, as the Heir speaking to the Spare, to shave."
Ultimately, William did not win their week-long war of the whiskers.
In "Spare" and elsewhere, Prince Harry has portrayed Camilla Parker Bowles as
treacherous and ruthless — but he does give her props for making his
father happy. Harry has long believed that Bowles is responsible for some
of the stories about his family that get leaked to the press. He spoke about her
relationship with the media during his "60 Minutes" interview, telling Anderson Cooper,
"There was open willingness on both sides to trade information."
He added,
"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."
He suspects that Bowles chooses what to
leak in a bid to boost her own image. He wrote in his memoir,
"I had complex feelings about gaining a step-parent who, I believed,
had recently sacrificed me on her PR altar."
Before Bowles wed King Charles III, Harry was hopeful that her step
closer to the throne would end the alleged conniving and backroom dealing. He wrote,
"In a funny way I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she'd be less dangerous if she was happy?"
According to The Telegraph, royal insiders refuted Harry's specific
claim that Bowles had blabbed about her first meeting with William,
Prince of Wales, to a reporter. The sources said that her private secretary was actually
responsible and got axed over sharing the story with her media executive husband.