Henry of Sussex, called Prince Harry, delivers his rancor and his resentments in an autobiography, pointing out the animosities and the climate of tension which reign within his family.
“After 38 years of having my story told by so many people with intentional distortions and manipulations, it felt like a good time to reclaim my story and tell it myself.” These are the words of Prince Harry at the microphone of ITV News, Sunday, January 8. While his memoirs entitled Le Suppléant were released on January 10, 2023 in bookstores, the good sheets of his book published last week, followed by his exclusive interviews granted to CBS and ITV News on Sunday and broadcast on French television Monday January 9, on M6 and TF1, sparked a veritable tsunami of reactions. The British tabloids did not hide their concern. Daily Mirror royal correspondent Russell Myers says Harry ‘is on a mission to destroy his family’, when King Charles III biographer Catherine Mayer tells The Guardian it could ‘mark the beginning of the end of the monarchy’ .
In the columns of 20 Minutes, the analyst of the media and the press people, Virginie Spies, temporizes however: “The crown of England has seen others! What is new is that the impact is still faster than before.” Proof, according to her, that the “soft power” of the royal family is not about to disappear just yet: it “is at the heart of all the media discourse in the United Kingdom and around the world. It is a subject gossip [potins ndlr.] among the gossips which interests a lot of people”.
For his part, Gwendal Cosson, multimedia communication consultant Agence Média, analyzes, also close to the daily, that Prince Harry, even if he sows disorder in a certain way, would have everything to lose by totally harming the aura. of the British crown, if he wishes to “exist in the media over the long term”. “If the corona collapses, he also loses,” he says. The fact remains that Prince Harry still managed to weaken the royal family since he clearly put his famous communication strategy to the test. “It looks like everything that the British monarchy has been fleeing for twenty years. […] It completely escapes them”, concludes with 20 Minutes the communication expert Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet.
No doubt on one point: the memories of Prince Harry will remain as the acme of the family divorce. Prince William and Kate Middleton, King Charles III and his wife Camilla: the one who now lives in the United States with his wife, Meghan Markle, spares no one in this new work, a month after the broadcast on Netflix of the documentary Harry
The information brought to the public square by Prince Harry is, in fact, surprisingly detailed. He thus evokes an episode where his brother William would have been violent with him, the fact that he and his brother would not have wanted his father to remarry Camilla, or even the dubious jokes of his father, who would have questioned his relationship to Prince Harry. He also reveals several still unknown facets of his private life, such as the fact that he would have taken cocaine at the age of 17.
Entitled The Substitute, in reference to his delicate position as second (for a long time, the children of Kate and William having since passed him), behind his older brother William, to succeed Charles when the time comes, Prince Harry’s autobiography reveals the various points of friction between the husband of Meghan Markle, her father Charles III and her brother Prince William.
Act one, Charles’ unwelcome joke on the day of his birth. “Magnificent! From now on, you have given me an heir and a substitute – mission accomplished”, would have dropped to Lady Diana the one who was then only Prince Charles, at the birth of his second son, says Harry, as reported The Guardian. A simple joke for some, an unshakable pain for the king’s youngest son, who believes he was regularly hurt by his father’s humor. In his viewfinder, Charles’ jokes about his “real father”.
Still according to Prince Harry, which the Daily Mail is echoing this time, Charles III regularly had fun saying to Harry: “Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your father ?” And the prince recalled: “He was laughing and laughing, although it was a particularly unfunny joke given the rumor circulating at the time that my real father was one of mum’s former lovers: Major James Hewitt. “
The Daily Mail finally reveals that Harry and William would have implored their father, in 2005, not to remarry Camilla. Harry says he was particularly worried about having to deal with a stepmother “cruel […] like all the mean stepmothers in the stories”. “Despite pleas from Willy and I, Pa went ahead. We shook his hand and wished him well. No hard feelings,” Harry recalls, however.
Prince William also takes it for his rank, according to the first revelations on Harry’s autobiography. As revealed by the Guardian, the youngest son of King Charles III returns to an episode in which we discover a whole different facet of Prince William. Harry explains that in a relatively recent argument, as it allegedly took place in 2019, William allegedly “grabbed him by the collar, ripping [his] collar, and knocking [him] down earth”. And Harry to add: “I landed on the dog bowl, which broke under my back, the pieces cutting into me.” The subject of this argument? Meghan Markle, relates Harry. Before coming to blows, William allegedly called Meghan Markle a “rude”, “difficult” and “abrasive” woman. Harry specifies that after his violent gesture, William would have “apologized”. This episode would have left him “scrapes and bruises”, adds Prince Harry.
In another extract from The Substitute, Harry also claims that his choice for his now famous Nazi costume, which made tabloid headlines in 2005, creating scandal, and for which he finally had to apologize, would have been encouraged by Kate Middleton and William. As Page Six reveals, Harry writes that he hesitated between a pilot costume and a Nazi one. “I phoned Willy and Kate, I asked them what they thought of it,” says Harry, assuring that they would have answered: “The Nazi uniform.” Meghan Markle’s husband also explains that when he got home, he tried on the costume in front of them. “They both roared with laughter. It was worse than Willy’s leotard! Much more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.”
Beyond his shattering revelations about his conflicting relationships with his brother and father, Prince Harry also returns in his Memoirs to his cocaine consumption at 17 and his time in the British army, during which he fought in Afghanistan. .
Sky News reveals that Harry admits in his memoir to having ‘of course’ taken cocaine, although he did not find the experience ‘amusing’. He says he used this drug for the first time “at someone’s house, during a hunting weekend”. “It wasn’t a lot of fun, it didn’t make me particularly happy (…), but it made me feel different, and that was my main goal, to feel, to be different,” explains the prince. “I was a 17-year-old who wanted to try anything that would upset the established order. Anyway, that’s what I was trying to convince myself,” he concludes. Harry also reveals that his father then took him to a rehab clinic to meet former drug addicts.
Meghan Markle’s husband also returns, in this new book, to his ten years in the British army, during which he was deployed twice in Afghanistan. Prince Harry was deployed in the country for ten weeks, between 2007 and 2008, then from September 2012 to January 2013, this time as a helicopter pilot. He claims in his Memoirs that he killed 25 “enemy combatants” in Afghanistan. “We shoot when necessary, take a life to save a life,” he added. Information reported by The Daily Telegraph.
