Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, you probably know that the Royal Family has been dreading the release of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare. Harry had already demonstrated that he wasn’t afraid to spill family secrets, either in interviews with Oprah Winfrey or on his Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan. And given the combative title of the book (implying that Prince William is the more important heir and Prince Harry is the titular spare), the royals seemingly had good reason to fear what Harry had to say about them.
And now that the book is out, those royal fears have been vindicated in a big way. The book contains Harry unleashing on everyone from royal aides (to whom he gave disparaging nicknames) to powerful media figures like Rupert Murdoch. But Harry saved his most venomous barbs for none other than his famous family.
What did Prince Harry have to say about the Royal Family, and what does this mean for his relationship with important figures like King Charles and Prince William? Keep reading to find out!
Dunking on William’s hair loss
For most people, commenting negatively about another person’s loss of hair would be considered rude and below the belt. However, that didn’t stop Harry from dunking on his own brother’s hair loss in the chapters of his memoir.
In the book, Harry recalls returning to England and reuniting with his brother for Prince Philip’s funeral. As he and his brother got into an inevitable argument, Harry found himself contemplating William’s appearance. “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.”
Some readers of the book think the reference to Diana may be an insult to William, implying that he embodies less of their famous mother’s positive qualities by the day, but it’s likely he just means William is losing his physical resemblance to Diana. The comment about his brother’s “alarming baldness,” though, is just plain mean, and there’s no mistaking that.
RELATED: Prince William’s Biggest Controversies Continue To Haunt Him
Many criticisms of King Charles
If Harry hadn’t gone for the cheeky title Spare, then his book could have had a different title: “Daddy Issues.” That’s because the book criticizes King Charles multiple times and in many surprising ways.
For example, Harry mentions in his memoir that Charles loved to morbidly joke about the longstanding rumor that Harry’s real father was James Hewitt, a man who was in a relationship with Diana but only after Harry was born. “Who knows if I’m even your real father?” Charles would cruelly ask. “Maybe your real father is in Broadmoor, darling boy!”
On a related note, Harry alleges that Charles was very cold when breaking the news of Diana’s untimely death. As reported by The New York Times, the young prince wrote that Charles “wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?”
Finally, Harry believes that Charles was just outright jealous of Meghan Markle. While discussing Charles financially cutting him off in the book, Harry essentially says that his dad was lying about not having enough money to support Harry and Meghan on top of already supporting William and Kate Middleton. “What he really couldn’t stomach was someone new dominating the monarchy, grabbing the limelight, someone shiny and new coming in and overshadowing him,” Harry wrote.
Harsh words indeed for King Charles!
Harry’s apparent disdain for Queen Camilla
Harry was always destined to have a weird relationship with Queen Camilla. After all, she was the “other woman” who essentially destroyed the marriage between then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
And it seems that Harry was very apprehensive about being introduced to Camilla for the first time, worrying that she might be a kind of evil stepmother type. In his memoir, Harry 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.” If that’s not bad enough, he had to psych himself up for meeting her by comparing the experience to an uncomfortable medical procedure. “Just like getting an injection. Close your eyes, over before you know it.”
Once they did meet, it seems like Harry was unimpressed with the woman, and he was left with a lingering curiosity why she didn’t make more of an effort to win him over. As Harry put it in his book, “I wasn’t her biggest hurdle,” he explained. “In other words, I wasn’t the Heir.” And to hear Harry tell it, both he and his brother begged Charles not to marry her.
RELATED: King Charles Horrified By Queen Camilla Over Racist Incident
Calling the Royal Family a ‘death cult’
One of Harry’s cruelest observations about his family may be something he didn’t mean to be so harsh. In one of the passages from his memoir, Harry claimed that after a hunting trip with his brother, he realized “that even our finest moments, and my best memories, somehow involved death.” Furthermore, “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.”
In context, it seems like the prince is mulling over the weirdly gothic nature of his family But considering that royals’ entire hierarchy revolves around who has died and who inherits what titles, “death cult” might be a more appropriate label than even Prince Harry could have guessed.