Prince Harry’s autobiography, which was published yesterday in Great Britain, is just another part of the saga that has been going on for the last few years surrounding Prince Harry and his wife, former American actress Meghan Markle. As you may remember, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who retired from the royal house at the beginning of 2020 in favor of a “life of freedom and privacy” in the luxury town of Montecito in California, have not stopped speaking out against the royal family since then.
The royal family against Prince Harry’s book: “He didn’t write it, but Meghan”
The current book is actually the first part of four books that are expected to be published by “Penguin Random House”. The name of the book, Spare, is the common and unofficial nickname in a royal house for an additional heir, a spare, in addition to the official heir. In his 416-page book, parts of which were leaked to the British “Guardian” in recent days, the father of two makes numerous accusations against the royal house where he grew up.
The book was preceded by a six-episode docu-series on Netflix, and a long series of promotional interviews, among others on “60 Minutes” and “Good Morning America”, but the prince still manages to make new and surprising claims against his family in the book.
For example, although Prince Harry’s relationship with illicit substances over the years was well known, Harry says that as a “very unhappy” 17-year-old boy, he was willing to try “anything that changed the predetermined order.” According to him, he smoked cannabis and took psychedelic party pills, tried cocaine as a teenager and since then “did a few more lines”. Drugs, he writes, allowed him to see “another world”. Among other things, he recalled a trip to California in January 2016, where he got drunk on tequila and took magic mushrooms, which caused him to see, he claims, a trash can move, open and stare at him, and a toilet that started talking to him.
One of the more revealing stories that Prince Harry brings in his new book is the “humiliating episode” in which he lost his virginity to “an older woman who treated him like a young stud.” The event took place in a field behind a busy pub, and Harry thinks that someone must have seen them. According to him, when the meeting ended, the woman “slammed his butt and sent him away.”
Among other things, Harry also tells in the book about his military service in Afghanistan and that he killed 25 people during it. “It wasn’t something that filled me with pride, but I wasn’t ashamed of it either,” he writes. “When I found myself immersed in the heat and confusion of the battle, I did not think of these 25 as people. They were chess pieces off the board, bad people who were eliminated before they could kill good people.”
Following this admission, Harry was criticized; and expressed concern for his personal safety and the safety of the royal family. It is also claimed that British military officials who were involved in the war in Afghanistan may find themselves accused of war crimes.
The resemblance faded
Harry is remembered in the book in one of the biggest media sensations that took place around him, when in 2005, at the age of 21, he was photographed at a party in a Nazi uniform. He now explains that he was debating between a pilot costume and a Nazi costume before the party, which had a “native and colonial” theme, and consulted his brother Prince William and Kate, William’s girlfriend at the time. “I called Willie and Kate and asked what they thought,” he writes.
“‘Nazi uniforms,’ they said.” A short time later, a picture of him in this uniform made headlines in British newspapers and around the world and received a lot of criticism, mainly against the background of the fact that the incident happened two weeks before the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Prince Harry has quite a few allegations in the book against Camilla, the wife of his father, King Charles, and his stepmother. As you remember, Camilla suffered for many years from a negative image as someone who was considered the cause of the separation of Charles and Diana, and against the background of the connections she cultivated with the British media. Harry claims in the book that on her way to marrying Charles and eventually to the throne, Camilla “left bodies along the way, and one of them could have been mine.” Among other things, he accuses Camilla, and sometimes even his father Charles, of using him and his brother William for their own positive PR needs.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (Photo: REUTERS/Toby Melville)As far as the publicized relationship between William and Kate and Meghan Markle is concerned, Harry says in the book that before Markle joined the family, William and Kate were devout viewers of Suits, the American legal drama starring him. Harry claims that his brother and wife were amazed when he told them he was dating one of the stars of the show and couldn’t guess who it was. When he revealed to them that it was Markle, William found it hard to believe and told him: Fuck Off. He recalled that they peppered him with countless questions about it, and he began to worry that “they would chase Meg for an autograph.”
He also says that at the beginning of the relationship with Markle, he “made a mistake” and watched her love scenes in the series. “I saw her with a friend from the series in some office or conference room. I shouldn’t have seen such things,” he writes, adding that he regrets it and is sure that it will take an electric shock to erase these sights from his mind.
As far as Markle is concerned, Harry says that he got into a physical confrontation with his brother William because of her. According to Harry, the row took place at his London home after William allegedly called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “inconsiderate of others”, descriptions which Harry felt were a “press narrative” about his wife. According to the account in the book, the altercation escalated when William grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, tore off his chain and knocked him to the floor.
He landed on the dog’s bowl which broke under his back, and he said the fragments injured him. His brother, he says, urged him to strike back, but he chose not to. William later came back, apologized and asked him not to tell Markle. But according to Harry, she immediately noticed the “rubs and bruises”, forcing Harry to tell her everything. She wasn’t angry and wasn’t surprised, he says, but was “terribly sad”.
Harry recognizes in the book the embarrassing truth of the royal family – the men’s genetic tendency to baldness. In this regard, Harry recounts a tense moment with his brother. “I looked at Willie, I really looked at him, maybe for the first time since we were little: his familiar frown, which had always been the norm in his dealings with me,” he writes. “His baldness was more ‘alarming’ and ‘advanced’ than mine, and his resemblance to our mother Diana faded.”
A message from a tiger
And what about his relationship with his grandmother Queen Elizabeth, who passed away last September? Prince Harry says he was in London when the palace announced that his grandmother was under medical supervision at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. According to him, a few hours later, all members of the extended royal family boarded a plane to Scotland, but they did not invite him. By the time he reached Balmoral on his own, the Queen had already returned her soul to the Creator. “I looked at the BBC website and saw that my grandmother had already died. My father was a king,” he says. However, he discovers that he was allowed to break up with her. “She completed a whole life and her husband was waiting for her,” he says.
Queen Elizabeth in Parliament (Photo: Reuters)After Harry and Markle caused damage and embarrassment to the royal family when they said in an interview last year with Oprah Winfrey that “someone in the royal family expressed concern about the color that their son Archie would be and how dark he would be,” Harry is now claiming something else. “They are not racists,” he writes. “Neither I nor Megan said they were racist. The media determined that. They are unconsciously biased.”
Regarding the case of the tragic death of his mother Princess Diana, who was killed in a car accident while fleeing paparazzi, Harry says in the book that he contacted a “special forces” operator in order to contact his mother. Much to his excitement, he says it worked. His mother told him that he “lived today the life she could not live”. The caller also told him that his mother’s ghost “witnessed” his son Archie breaking a Christmas tree ornament with a picture of the Queen, enjoying the incident and even giggling. Harry even claimed that in his opinion, a close encounter that William and Lou had with a tiger while on vacation in Botswana was actually a message from their mother.
He also says that in 2007, while he was in Paris for the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup, he asked his driver to take him to the tunnel where his mother died in a car accident ten years earlier along with her partner, Dodi Al-Fayed. Harry asked his driver to drive at the same speed as the car the princess was driving and on the exact same route.
“We went over the bump at the tunnel entrance that supposedly sent Mum’s Mercedes off course. But it was nothing. We barely felt it,” Harry wrote. The unusual request did not help him, according to him, in his search for closing the circle: “It was a very bad idea.” Harry also says in the book that his father was the one who informed him of his mother’s death, but did not hug him. “He was not good at expressing emotions under normal circumstances, how can you expect him to show them in such a crisis?”, he writes. “But he put his hand on my knee and said: ‘It will be all right’. It was quite a lot for him. Fatherly, full of hope, kind.”
Harry states in the book that he and Markle do not intend to return to Britain in the future. “I don’t think it will ever be possible,” he writes. “Even if there was an agreement between me and my family, there is that third party who will do everything in his power to make sure that this will not be possible.” On the question of continuing to use the titles they were awarded, he said: “What difference will it make?”.