“Spare,” the highly anticipated memoir of Prince Harry was officially released on Monday (9) and could become one of the best-selling books of the year. This is because the prince does not hold back details about his troubled relationship with the Royal Family, which will greatly please those who love following the dramas experienced by the British court.
Harry says he decided to write “Spare” when he traveled to Great Britain for his grandfather’s funeral in April 2021. There, he had the “stunning” realization that neither his father nor his brother really understood why he and his wife, Meghan, had moved to California. “I need to tell them,” he thought. “And so: Dad? Willy? World? Here it is.”
Next, some details that stand out in his biography:
He speaks openly about the death of Princess Diana
On the morning after the death of Diana, Harry’s mother, in a car accident in Paris, Charles, his father, woke him up to tell him what had happened.
“He sat on the edge of the bed,” Harry writes. “He placed his hand on my knee. Dear boy, mommy had a car accident.” He continued: “They tried, dear boy. I’m afraid she didn’t survive.
Harry writes that “nothing I said to him remains in my memory. It’s possible I said nothing. What I remember with surprising clarity is that I didn’t cry. Not a tear. Dad didn’t hug me. He wasn’t good at showing emotions in normal circumstances, so why would I expect him to show them in such a crisis? But his hand fell once again on my knee and he said: it will be alright. That was a lot for him. Fatherly, hopeful, kind. And very false.
Princes William and Harry begged Charles not to marry Camilla
“When asked, Willy and I promised Pa that we would welcome Camilla into the family,” Harry writes. “The only thing we asked in return was that he not marry her. You don’t need to marry again, we pleaded. … We support you, we said. We support Camilla, we said. Just, please, don’t marry her.
Leaks to the press about his family were common
According to the book, Charles and sometimes Camilla approved leaks to the press about damaging matters concerning Harry and William.
On one occasion, Harry writes, Charles cooperated with the tabloids on a story about Harry’s involvement with drugs: “No longer the unfaithful husband, Pa would now be presented to the world as the tormented single father dealing with a drug-addicted child.” Much later, in 2019, Harry writes, William was “furious” because “Dad and Camilla’s people had planted a story or stories about him, Kate, and the kids, and he would not take it anymore.
While in Afghanistan, he killed 25 Taliban fighters
“Most soldiers can’t accurately say how many kills are in their ledger,” Harry writes about his travels during the war. “My number: 25.”
He added: “While in the heat of combat, I didn’t think of those 25 as people. You can’t kill people if you think of them as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Ruins taken out before they could kill good people. On some level, I recognized that detachment as problematic. But I also saw it as an inevitable part of military life.”
Charles told Harry there was no money to support him and Meghan
The exchange between father and son when Harry announced his intention to marry did not go as expected.
Harry writes: “Pa did not financially support Willy and me, and our families, out of any generosity. That was his job. That was the problem. We agreed to serve the monarchy, go wherever we were sent, do as we were told, renounce our autonomy, keep our hands and feet in the golden cage all the time and, in return, the guardians of the cage agreed to feed and clothe us.”
William didn’t want Harry to be the best man at his wedding
<br“They told the public I would be the best man, but that was a blatant lie,” Harry writes. “Willy didn’t want me to give a best man speech. He didn’t think it was safe to hand me a live microphone and put me in a position to go off-script. He wasn’t wrong.”
Harry and Meghan felt “caught off guard” during negotiations about their future
The couple chose to leave England but hoped to retain some of their royal duties and keep the security that came with their titles. Instead, after a meeting dubbed the “Sandringham Summit” in January 2020, they learned that, in Harry’s words, “the solution was ready” – they would no longer represent the queen and their security would continue for only a 12-month transition period (In fact, they would lose that guarantee several months later.)
“I love my homeland, I love my family and I will always love,” writes Harry. “I just wished, in the second darkest moment of my life, that both of them had been there for me.”