He says he has no intention of “hurting” his family. Prince Harry defended his memoir on television on Sunday, calling it “necessary”. First excerpts from the text threaten to see the royal family tear apart further four months before the coronation of King Charles III.
“After 38 years of seeing my story told by so many people with intentional distortions and manipulations, it felt like the right time to reclaim my story and tell it myself,” said the Duke of Sussex in this post. interview with the British channel ITV, broadcast two days before the official publication of his book “The Substitute”.
“I love my dad, I love my brother, I love my family and I always will. Nothing that I have written in this book has been done with the intention of hurting them or harming them”, he insisted, assuring that he hoped for a “reconciliation” on the condition of establishing ” responsibilities”, in particular on his departure for California (United States), with his wife Meghan Markle, in 2020.
Harry considers his memoirs “necessary” to establish “historical facts”, adding that he now feels “relief”. But according to the extracts from the book which have leaked to the press since the text was put on sale by mistake on Thursday in Spain, the prince spares almost no one, in particular his brother William, heir to the throne, already scratched in the “Harry & Meghan” docuseries aired on Netflix in December.
“Beloved brother and sworn enemy”
The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex calls William a ‘beloved brother and sworn enemy’ and accuses him of knocking him to the ground during a 2019 row over Meghan, whom Harry married the year previous. He also accuses his brother and his wife Kate of having had “stereotypes” towards Meghan, a mixed-race American actress, who “created an obstacle” to fully welcome her into the family. He describes more generally his long rivalry with William and how, as children, they used to fight. William also allegedly ignored Harry at school and even tried to get him to shave his beard before he married Meghan.
He also reiterates his accusations against certain members of the royal family whom he considers “accomplices” of articles hostile to him and his wife. Harry notably also attacks his father’s wife, Camilla, now queen-consort, claiming that certain details of private conversations published in the media “could only have been leaked” by her.
Asked about the interview given to American journalist Oprah Winfrey in 2021, Harry denied accusing the royal family of racism because one of its members had questioned the skin color of their unborn child. “No I didn’t. The British press said that,” he refuted, speaking instead of “unconscious bias.”
He hasn’t spoken to his father Charles III “for quite a while”
Buckingham Palace, the seat of British royalty, has so far remained officially silent on this avalanche of confidences. But denials and comments began to emerge in the British media. The Sunday Times quotes people close to Prince William as saying he is “sad”, “burning inside”, but “remaining silent for the sake of his family and the country”. In an interview with the American channel CBS, Harry clarified that William and he no longer speak to each other and that he has not spoken to his father “for quite a while”.
Harry leaves him to cast doubt on his intentions. “A lot can happen” but “the ball is in their court,” he told ITV. “I don’t think staying silent is going to make things any better,” he adds, adding he hopes for a “conversation” with his family, even though he “don’t think his father or brother will read the book.”
Many passages also testify to the trauma left by the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a road accident in Paris in 1997. On ITV, Harry admits to having “cried only once, at his funeral” , and recounts his discomfort when he had to, with his brother, shake the hands of people who came to meditate at the time in front of Kensington Palace, in London. The ITV program notably includes certain excerpts from the audio version of the book, read by the prince himself, such as the one where he tells how his father announced to him the death of his mother.
He is not asking, for the moment, for a new investigation into the death of his mother.
Harry describes the day of the funeral, when he walked behind the coffin. “The clank of the bridles (…) the hooves hitting the concrete and, sometimes… the gravel underfoot and the cries of the crowd”, he recalls. “But otherwise, complete silence is something that will remain forever (severe) in my memory “. Harry says he read the secret government file on his mother’s death, which his private secretary redacted from the photos of the accident. He also explains that, as an adult, he took the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, where the tragedy occurred. “There are a lot of things that remain unexplained,” he said. “But I have already been asked if I wanted to open (…) another investigation. I don’t really see the point of it at this point.”
In the British press, since Thursday, reactions have alternated between disbelief at the intimacy of certain anecdotes told by Harry, such as his loss of virginity, his drug use, and indignation at what is considered a frontal attack on the family. royal. Harry’s confession that he killed 25 Taliban fighters during his missions in Afghanistan sparked huge outcry.