An heir and a spare: Prince Harry set to settle score with British Royals in new memoir

Voluntarily exiled in California, Prince Harry is settling scores but his upcoming memoirs, hot on the heels of a tell-all documentary and TV interviews, look set to sound the death knell on his hopes of a family reconciliation.

The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex wants the world to know the "truth" about his childhood, forever marked by the death of his mother, Princess Diana. His autobiography, titled Spare, will detail his contempt for the British tabloids and his arguments with brother and heir to the throne Prince William.

William once threw his younger brother to the ground in a row over the latter's American wife, Meghan, according to an excerpt from Harry's autobiography reported by The Guardian newspaper.

In the six-hour Netflix documentary released in December and in two interviews for his book, which comes out on Tuesday, he accuses his father King Charles III of lying. He also claims "betrayal" by the royal "firm" for not protecting him and Meghan, the mixed-race former television actpr he married in May 2018.

He also criticised the royal family's press offices, which he said often spread false information about other members in order to protect the royal they were working for.

Buckingham Palace has not officially reacted to Harry's soul-bearing, which flies in the face of the royal motto: "Never complain. Never justify." The British tabloids have been merciless in their criticism of the estranged royal, and 59% of Britons now have a negative opinion of Charles's younger son.

For a long time, however, the prince with the fiery red hair was one of the most popular royals, his rebellious streak endearing him to the nation. Henry Charles Albert David was born on September 15, 1984, two years after his brother. He was then third in the order of succession to the throne.

In 1997, the image of the 12-year-old prince walking stony-faced behind his mother's coffin, with his head bowed, travelled around the world.

Difficult years

Difficult years followed. At 17 he smoked marijuana, drank and partied. In 2004, the prince got into a fight with a photographer after leaving a nightclub. The following year he caused a scandal by dressing up as a Nazi at a fancy dress party.

He passed his end-of-school exams at the elite Eton College, albeit with rumours of a helping hand, and spent a sabbatical year in Australia and Africa, taking care of orphans in Lesotho, where he set up a charity in memory of his mother. The athletic 6-foot 1-inch (1.86-metre) rugby and polo fan then joined the prestigious Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in 2005.

His military career lasted 10 years, and included two deployments to Afghanistan, in 2007-2008 for 10 weeks, then as a helicopter pilot from September 2012 to January 2013. He resigned in 2015. Harry created an international competition for wounded soldiers, the Invictus Games, the first edition of which took place in 2014 in London. But all the while he was still battling to come to terms with the death of his mother.

"Shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well," he told The Daily Telegraph in 2017.

William and Harry were once seen as very close after the death of their mother in a Paris car crash in 1997. But the brothers have fallen out since Harry married Meghan, a former actress, in 2018, and the couple then quit their royal role.

In another section of the book, Harry refers to his first meeting with Camilla, whom Diana had blamed for the break-up of her marriage. Harry says he and William had approved of Camilla, but asked their father not to marry her.

"Despite the fact that Willy and I asked him not to do it, my father went ahead," Harry wrote. "Despite the bitterness and sadness we felt in closing another loop in the history of our mother, we understood this was irrelevant."

Therapy 

With the support of his brother, he eventually got help. He revealed in a 2021 series on mental health, co-produced with the US chatshow host Oprah Winfrey, that he had undergone four years of therapy. That period encompassed his 2017 engagement to Meghan Markle, their 2018 wedding, and the birth of their son Archie in 2019 and daughter Lilibet in 2021.

The couple's romance appeared to be a fairy-tale love story that could rejuvenate the royal family. But relations deteriorated so badly that the couple left Britain and frontline royal duties in 2020, eventually settling in California. Since then, communications between Harry, his father and his brother have largely broken down.

"They've shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile. I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back," Harry said in one promotional TV interview for his memoirs.

Stinging criticism

Since their exit from royal life, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as Harry and Meghan are officially known, have delivered stinging criticism of the Windsors and the British monarchy which has included accusations of racism, which William has dismissed.

In an interview for the CBS show "60 Minutes," Harry said he himself was "probably bigoted before the relationship with Meghan." "Put it this way, I didn't see what I now see," Harry added. 

Last month their six-part Netflix documentary, which attracted record audiences, aired with renewed accusations, including that William had screamed at Harry during a crisis summit to discuss his future.

The main criticism from Harry and Meghan is that royal aides not only refused to hit back at hostile, inaccurate press coverage, but were complicit in leaking negative stories to protect other royals, most notably William. "I don't know how staying silent is ever going to make things better," Harry said in Thursday's ITV clip.

Asked why he was invading the privacy of his family, something he had railed against, he replied: "That will be the accusation from the people that don't understand or don't want to believe that my family have been briefing the press."

The title of his book "Spare" comes from an oft-cited quote in British aristocratic circles about the need for an heir, and a spare. Harry says Charles reputedly said to Diana on the day he was born: "Wonderful! Now you've given me an heir and a spare – my work is done."

How much the disclosures will resonate with the public is unclear. A YouGov poll this week found that 65% of those surveyed were "not interested at all" in his upcoming book, while another found greater sympathy among respondents for William and his wife, Kate, than for Harry and Meghan. Charles himself is still hoping for a reconciliation with his son, unnamed sources told newspapers this week.

In its leaked extracts, the Guardian says the king had stood between his two sons during a difficult meeting at Windsor Castle following the April 2021 funeral for their grandfather Prince Philip, the late Queen Elizabeth's husband. "Please, boys," Harry quoted his father as saying, "don’t make my final years a misery."

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