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Prince Harry‘s memoir, “Spare,” was released worldwide on Tuesday. The book contains plenty of anecdotes about Harry’s father, King Charles III, and the complex relationship they have.
Harry’s relationship with his father has been strained since he stepped back from royal life in 2020. He previously told Oprah Winfrey that Charles stopped taking his calls when he resigned. In his memoir, Harry wrote that Charles and Prince William expressed confusion over why he left the UK at a private meeting after Prince Philip’s funeral in April 2021, just a month after the Oprah interview aired.
“Pa and Willy were still claiming to not know why I’d fled Britain, still claiming not to know anything, and I was getting ready to walk away,” Harry wrote of the meeting.
Later in the meeting, Harry said he accused Charles and William’s press offices of collaborating with the British press, to which they responded by saying he was “delusional,” he wrote.
Harry told Anderson Cooper in his “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday that he’s not currently on speaking terms with Charles or William, but would like to reconcile in private, People reported.
Representatives for the Duke of Sussex and Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
In one portion of the book about Harry’s experience at Balmoral Castle, the royal family’s summer home in the Scotland Highlands, he wrote about Charles doing headstands against the door of his room.
“Doors became identical, rooms interlocked. Easy to get lost. Open the wrong door and you might burst in on Pa while his valet was helping him dress. Worse, you might blunder in as he was doing headstands,” Harry wrote.
“Prescribed by his physio, these exercises were the only effective remedy for the constant pain in Pa’s neck and back. Old polo injuries, mostly. He performed them daily, in just a pair of boxers, propped against a door or hanging from a bar like a skilled acrobat,” he added.
Harry recalled the moment Charles informed him that Princess Diana had died, which was during a summer trip to Balmoral in 1997.
“Darling boy, Mummy’s been in a car crash,” Charles said, before letting him know that she didn’t make it, according to Harry.
“Pa didn’t hug me. He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?” Harry wrote. “But his hand did fall once more on my knee and he said: ‘It’s going to be ok.'”
Harry wrote that during his childhood, Charles had trouble communicating and being “intimate face-to-face,” so he would write letters instead.
“On occasion, after a long multi-course dinner, I’d walk upstairs and find a letter on my pillow. The letter would say how proud he was of me for something I’d done or accomplished. I’d smile, place it under my pillow, but also wonder why he hadn’t said this moments ago, while seated directly across from me,” Harry wrote.
Harry said he and William asked his father not to marry Camilla in 2005 because they worried that the wedding would cause “controversy” and entice the press to draw comparisons between her and Princess Diana.
“‘We support you,’ we said. ‘We endorse Camilla,’ we said. Just please don’t marry her,” Harry wrote.
He also wrote about his first meeting with Camilla, where he went for tea with her and Charles, and said she wasn’t a “wicked stepmother” like he expected.
“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. But she wasn’t. Like Willy, I did feel real gratitude for that,” Harry wrote.
Harry described a conversation with Charles before he proposed to Meghan, in which he said his father asked if Meghan planned to continue acting.
When Harry said that she wanted to support him and undertake royal duties, Charles responded: “Well, darling boy, you know there’s not enough money to go around,” according to Harry.
“I can’t pay for anyone else. I’m already having to pay for your brother and Catherine,” Charles added, according to Harry.
All working members of the royal family are funded by the Sovereign Grant, which is provided by the UK Government to support the monarch’s official duties, according to the royal website. Additional lifestyle funds are also provided by the Duchy of Cornwall estate, a private estate established by Edward III in 1337 to provide income to the heir to the throne, according to the Prince of Wales website.
The estate provides an annual income of £21 million, or around $25.4 million, according to the website. It was used by Charles to support himself and his family before being inherited by Prince William when he became heir to the throne upon Charles’ accession in 2022.
However, Harry wrote that he believed it wasn’t about the money, but rather because Charles didn’t want “someone new dominating the monarchy” and “overshadowing him.”
Harry described his and Meghan’s first meeting with Charles and Camilla at Clarence House, their residence in London. Harry wrote that Meghan wore her hair down, which he suggested because Charles and the late Queen Elizabeth II liked it when women wore their hair in this style.
“She often commented on ‘Kate’s beautiful mane,'” Harry said of the Queen.
Meghan also wore little makeup for the meeting, which Harry said he suggested because Charles “didn’t approve of women who wore a lot.”
Meghan spoke in her 2022 Netflix docuseries about how she wore muted colors during her time as a working royal because she wanted to “blend in.” As Talia Lakritz reported, she has returned to wearing bolder looks since leaving the royal family in 2020.
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