Prince Harry’s book has not yet appeared and the revelations it contains are already shaking the royal family. Prince William would be “sad” to read his brother’s comments about their relationship and their various arguments.
A second fiddle, this is how Prince Harry sees his role within the British royal family. It is also under this label that the man testifies to his most complicated relationships with his family and the Crown in his soberly titled book Spare translated by Le Suppléant and expected on Tuesday January 10. A title that in a single expression says a lot about the state of relations between Harry and his brother William, Prince of Wales and destined to reign over the United Kingdom.
On several occasions and in long paragraphs, Prince Harry expands in his book on his exchanges with his eldest, of whom he was a close child, but with whom the fracture has worsened over the years. A distance that struggles for the two brothers to believe their respective statements. “I would like to reconnect with my brother”, confided the one who distanced himself from the Firm in an interview granted to the British channel ITV and broadcast on January 8 before regretting the absence of “willingness to reconcile” on the part of of his brother William and his father, King Charles III. However, the Prince of Wales is said to be bubbling over the distance his brother has created between them. Plus, he is said to be “anxious and sad” after reading the latest revelations from Lady Diana’s youngest son, according to an insider who spoke to The Sundy Times on January 8, 2023. “William is focused on his wife and children. He must focus on them and watch over the rest of the royal family. On the surface, he deals well with all of this, but in reality, he is bubbling”, concluded the anonymous source in the columns of the tabloid.
A reaction that can be heard after reading the passages in which Harry distills sarcasm and criticism of his brother and the way the royal family adjusts to a very tight protocol. A protocol which would have pushed the Firm to unite against Harry and Meghan Markle, according to the couple exiled in the United States since 2020. Prince William could also have been tested by the exposure of two disputes which opposed him to his brother and told by him.
Prince Harry’s memoir due out on January 10 has already seen some excerpts leaked to the media. Two of these passages in the book refer to disputes that broke out between the two sons of King Charles III. One would have consummated the rift between Harry and the rest of the royal family in 2019. Prince William would have called Meghan Markle a “difficult” and “rude” woman and would have taken to his brother in the “[ grabbing] by the collar”, according to Harry’s account. “I landed on the dog’s bowl, which broke under my back”, then specifies the youngest in the extract from his book.
The second row is said to have erupted after the funeral of Prince Philip, husband of the late Elizabeth II, in April 2021. In excerpts from the book The Substitute, we can read that Princes Harry and William and their father King Charles III were reunited privately to discuss the hot topic of “Megxit” and the interview with Oprah Winfrey in February 2021. “You never came to tell us about it. You never came to tell me about it”, would then have the Prince of Wales scolded his younger brother before exclaiming, “Listen to me, Harold, listen! I love you, I want you to be happy!” But Prince William’s passionate and repeated speech would not have convinced his brother, who would have retorted: “I really don’t think that’s the case” before acknowledging brotherly love but insisting on the extraordinary stubbornness “of his elder.
For the past few years, the British people press has been gargling rumors and confessions from relatives of William and Harry about their complicated relationship. Many observers have seen a deterioration in this relationship in 2005. And for good reason, as Harry writes in his book Spare, an event has considerably estranged them: in January of this year, he went to a party disguised as a Nazi, he says in his book that he did it on the recommendation of the couple Harry and William, who were hilarious at the idea. Except that the younger brother was severely criticized, around the world, without his brother being splashed by the scandal. “One of the biggest mistakes of my life,” he wrote in Spare.
Can Harry and William patch things up? “I would like to find my father and my brother”, he said in an interview given to the British channel ITV, broadcast on Sunday January 8, but he also adds about the royal family: “They have the impression that there is better to continue to make us look like the bad guys. Prince William’s response could be much less sensationalist than the attacks formulated: according to confidences of relatives of the crown prince, he could not react at all publicly so as not to fuel a media soap opera that would serve the royal family. We must therefore expect a circumstantial silence from Harry, even if this reserve would be surprising. Buckingham’s services have already responded, on January 3, indicating to the “Telegraph” that the King has always “made it clear how much he loves his two sons and has kept the channels of communication open over the past few years, despite numerous attacks from California”.
The work Le Suppléant contains several long paragraphs devoted to his relationship with his brother, in other words that the English tabloids will have enough to feed a soap opera over several weeks while the royal family will go through the crisis. For Harry, the book has two main virtues: if one ignores the amount of the check made by its British publisher Bentam Gb, one can imagine that it is considerably substantial. Prince Harry, however, has pledged to donate huge sums to several charities for sick children. But publishing this book is also a way for Harry to deliver his side of the story in a story carefully crafted with the assistance of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist JR Moehringer.
The book is billed by the French publisher as “rawly and unvarnishedly honest,” a “landmark book, full of insight, revelation, self-questioning, and hard-learned lessons about the eternal power of love in the face of sorrow”. A nice way to present a text, over 500 pages, in which Prince Harry develops a long statement to explain his distance from the royal family and why what he calls “The institution” is according to him a toxic universe . Some British media, The Guardian and The Sunday Times have had preview access, have already given some excerpts and general comments. An unpacking of the private life of the Firm which could further distance the cut of Harry and Meghan from the rest of the royal family. “Personally, I don’t see how Harry and William can reconcile after this,” a family member told The Sunday Times.
