Explainer
Spare memoir: What fresh claims has Prince Harry made against the royals?
Prince Harry has been making a series of damaging claims about the royal family ahead of the publication of his memoir 'Spare' next week.
In the run-up to its release, the Duke of Sussex has been giving a series of television interviews about its content. The book was also accidentally put on sale in Spain early.
ITV News looks at the allegations made in Spare, his interview with ITV's Tom Bradby and CNN's Anderson Cooper.
William was consumed by a "red mist" when he physically attacked Harry
In an extract of Spare, Prince Harry reportedly alleged a confrontation concerning his marriage to Meghan Markle took place in 2019.
The Duke of Sussex claims his brother, the Prince of Wales, grabbed him by the collar and ripped his necklace before knocking him to the floor, the Guardian reported.
Harry alleges the heated confrontation with William took place at his then-home in London, Nottingham Cottage, during a row about Meghan, and that it left him with “scrapes and bruises” to his back.
Harry writes: “(William) called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor.
“I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”
He shared more details with ITV’s Tom Bradby about his claims and described how William was consumed by a "red mist".
“I talk about the red mist that I had for so many years, and I saw this red mist in him,” Harry said. “He wanted me to hit him back, but I chose not to.”
In a clip from an interview with US show Good Morning America, Harry says his late mother Diana, Princess of Wales, would have been “sad” over her sons’ fractured relationship.
Harry accuses the King of being jealous of the public attention William and Kate receive
The duke claims he became aware in 2015 his father was unhappy with the amount of attention his brother and sister-in-law received as it overshadowed Charles and Camilla.
According to The Telegraph, Harry writes in his memoir: “Willy did everything he (Charles) wanted, and sometimes he didn’t want him to do much, because my dad and Camilla didn’t like Willy and Kate getting too much publicity.”
He alleges that ahead of one particular public engagement, Charles’s staff had insisted Kate was not photographed holding a tennis racket, writing: “Undoubtedly that kind of photo would have pushed Dad and Camilla off every front page. And that couldn’t be tolerated under any circumstances.”
William and Kate encouraged him to dress up as a Nazi
When he was 20, Harry sparked widespread international outrage when he was pictured on the front of The Sun wearing a swastika armband as a Nazi soldier from the Afrika Korps.
The media storm surrounding his choice of fancy dress for a “Colonials and Natives” party was a major blow to his reputation and he has described it in his Netflix documentary as “probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life”.
But according to reports, in Harry's memoir, he lays part of the blame on William and Kate.
He claims he called the couple to ask them whether he should chose a pilot’s uniform or a Nazi one for the fancy dress party and William and Kate said the latter, and both howled with laughter when he went home and tried it on for them.
Harry killed 25 people during tour of duty in Afghanistan
Reports revealed Harry wrote that flying six missions during his second tour of duty on the front line resulted in “the taking of human lives”, of which he was neither proud nor ashamed.
Describing watching a video of each “kill” when he returned to base, he wrote of Taliban fighters as “baddies” who were being eliminated before they could kill “goodies”. “So, my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he wrote.
The Duke of Sussex has taken cocaine a number of times
Harry says in his memoir he had “taken cocaine” during a shooting weekend during the summer of 2002 when he was 17. He also said he did “a few more lines” on other occasions, according to reports.
The 38-year-old wrote it was not “fun and it did not make me feel as happy as it seemed to make others but it did make me feel different and that was my main goal. To feel. To be different”.
William was ‘tormented’ by his father's affair
Harry has reportedly claimed his brother “felt tremendous guilt” for not speaking up about his father’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, now the Queen Consort.
In the Spanish translation of Harry’s memoir, obtained by journalists from the US publication Page Six, the duke reportedly writes the now-Prince of Wales had “long harboured suspicions about the Other Woman”.
Their father’s cheating – which was confirmed by the then-Prince of Wales in 1994 two years after his separation from Diana – had caused the older prince immense suffering as a child and teenager, Harry claims.
“(It) confused him, tormented him, and when those suspicions were confirmed he felt tremendous guilt for having done nothing, said nothing, sooner,” Page Six reports the duke wrote in a copy of his book translated from Spanish.
He and William ‘begged’ Charles not to marry Camilla
In Spare, Harry reportedly alleges that he and his brother begged their father not to marry the now-Queen Consort and that he wondered if she would one day be his “wicked stepmother”.
He alleges that his father did not respond to their pleas.
The book also includes details of the moment he was introduced to Camilla for the first time, according to reports.
The duke reportedly claims he and his brother had separate meetings with Camilla before she married the now-King in 2005.
He said seeing her for the first time was like avoiding pain while getting an injection, writing: “This is nothing. Close your eyes and you won’t even feel it.”
Harry also alleges that Camilla appeared “bored” during the meeting.
In an interview with the PA news agency in 2005, Harry denied that Camilla was a “wicked stepmother”, declaring that he and William “loved her to bits”.
Harry suggests Camilla leaked private conversation with William
In his memoir, Harry said that the Queen Consort Camilla met privately with him and William before she married their father.
"Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to play the long game. A campaign aimed at marriage, and eventually the Crown, with Pa’s blessing we presumed," Harry wrote.
When asked about this excerpt, Harry told Bradby: "Stories began to appear everywhere in all the papers about her private conversation with Willie, stories that contained pinpoint accurate details, none of which had come from Willie, of course. They could only have been leaked by the other one other person present."
Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Harry said Camilla’s willingness to forge relationships with the British press made her “dangerous” and there would be “bodies left in the street because of that”.
Charles once joked about not being his father
Harry reportedly writes in Spare how Charles would tell of a visit to a mental health unit where he met a man claiming to be the Prince of Wales.
The duke said his father then joked: “Who knows if I’m even your real father? Perhaps your father really is in Broadmoor, my dear son!”
Harry said the joke was in “bad taste” due to long-existing rumours about a five-year affair between his mother Diana and cavalry officer James Hewitt.
He said the rumours continued even though his mother “hadn’t met Major Hewitt until long after” Harry was born.
Harry drove through the tunnel where his mother died at the same speed
According to reports, Spare details how the royal relived Princess Diana's final moments before her death.
While attending the 2007 Rugby World Cup semi-final in Paris, a then 23-year-old Harry drove through the same tunnel where his mother died 10 years prior.
He admitted: "It had been a very bad idea. I'd had plenty of bad ideas in my twenty-three years, but this one was uniquely ill-conceived."
According to People magazine, he writes: “Off we went, weaving through traffic, cruising past the Ritz, where Mummy had her last meal, with her boyfriend, that August night.
"Then we came to the mouth of the tunnel. We zipped ahead, went over the lip at the tunnel’s entrance, the bump that supposedly sent Mummy’s Mercedes veering off course. But the lip was nothing. We barely felt it."
The inquest into Diana’s death heard that her car was travelling at between 60mph and 65mph – around twice the 31mph (50kph) limit for the road – when it struck the 13th pillar of the westbound carriageway in the underpass.
Harry reportedly added: “I’d always imagined the tunnel as some treacherous passageway, inherently dangerous, but it was just a short, simple, no-frills tunnel. No reason anyone should ever die inside it.”
Harry admits he was “probably bigoted” before meeting Meghan
The Duke of Sussex has admitted he was “probably bigoted” before his relationship with Meghan Markle.
In a new teaser for the CBS News interview which is due to air this Sunday, Harry tells interviewer Anderson Cooper he was “incredibly naive” about how the British press would treat his relationship with the American actress.
“The race element” to the couple’s relationship had been “jumped on straight away” by the British press, he tells the programme, adding that he had no idea how “bigoted” the UK media was until his wife and their relationship were thrust into the spotlight.
Cooper asks the duke: “You think you were bigoted before the relationship with Meghan?
To which Harry replies: “I don’t know. Put it this way, I didn’t see what I now see.”
William and Kate didn’t get on with Meghan from the get-go, Harry says
The Duke of Sussex said he had put a lot of hope into the idea the four of them would get along but stereotyping caused a “bit of a barrier” to the Prince and Princess of Wales welcoming Meghan.
Bradby said the impression was that his brother William and sister-in-law Kate did not get on “almost from the get-go” with Meghan, to which Harry replied: “Yeah, fair.”
When asked what the reason was, he said: “Lots of different reasons … I had put a lot of hope in the idea that it’d be William and Kate and me and whoever.“
I thought the four of us would bring me and William closer together, we could go out and do work together, which I did a lot as the third wheel to them, which was fun at times but also, I guess, slightly awkward at times as well.
“I don’t think they were ever expecting me to get… into a relationship with someone like Meghan who had a very successful career.”
Some members of the royal family got into bed 'with the devil'
Harry told Bradby: "After many, many years of lies being told about me and my family, there comes a point where, going back to the relationship between, certain members of the family and the tabloid press, those certain members have decided to get in the bed with the devil."
Queen was not angry at Harry for quitting the Royal Family
Speaking on Good Morning America Harry said the Queen "knew how hard" it was for him, but was sad at how things turned out.
He also described how he "can’t ever get out" of the royal family.
When asked if the Queen was ever upset over the decision he said: "No. My grandmother and I had a very good relationship. It was never a surprise to anybody, least of all her.
"She knew what was going on. She knew how hard it was. She never said to me that she was angry. I think she was sad that it got to that point."
The Queen asked Meghan about Donald Trump during first meeting The Queen first met Meghan at Royal Lodge, the Duke of York’s Berkshire home,In the book Harry says: "It was all very pleasant. Granny even asked Meg what she thought of Donald Trump. (This was before the November 2016 election, so everyone in the world seemed to be thinking and talking about the Republican candidate.)
"Meg thought politics a no-win game, so she changed the subject to Canada."
Harry was the target of leaks to the press
He tells Anderson Cooper: "Every single time I've tried to do it privately, there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife."
The duke suggests the family motto of "never complain, never explain" when dealing with the media is hollow, given, he says, complaints were effectively made through passing stories to the press.
Charles delighted at Diana giving birth to a “spare”
Reports state that in Spare Harry tells how, after he was born, his father supposedly told the Princess of Wales that his son’s arrival was wonderful and that now she had given him an heir and a spare, his work was done.
The royal family have made no attempt to make up with the Sussexes
In the ITV interview, he defended his public approach saying "I'm not sure how honesty is burning bridges. You know, silence only allows the abuser to abuse."The Duke of Sussex also spoke of his strained relationship with King Charles and Prince William, saying he wanted to "get his father back" and to "have his brother back".
Speaking on CNN he said he was "not texting" William and that he has not spoken to his father for "quite a while."
Harry refuses to commit to his father's coronation
In the ITV interview, Prince Harry said he still believes in the British monarchy but refuses to commit to coming to the historic coronation of his own father, the King, later this year.
“There is a lot that can happen between now and then,” Harry told ITV's Bradby.
Buckingham Palace has not yet commented on any of Harry's allegations.
'I'm very happy, I'm very at peace'
Harry told Bradby he's happy, at peace and "in a better place than I’ve ever been".
"I think that probably angers some people, infuriates others...I’ve got two beautiful kids and an amazing wife -the happiness in my family now, I have never felt anywhere else before," he said.
Listen to the ITV News Royal Rota podcast