When Prince Harry released Spare in January 2023, he not only gave the British public a sneak peek into the inner workings of the monarchy — he blew the bloody doors off.
Revelations from the book initially came in courtesy of a leak from Spain, where the book was released ahead of its UK scheduled date. The headlines then came thick and fast about the book’s contents — from William and Kate allegedly encouraging Harry to wear his Nazi costume, to physical family brawls and claims Queen Consort Camilla turned Harry’s bedroom into a dressing room the moment he moved out.
Here’s a summary of the bombshell allegations that were dropped at the time.
Kate insisted Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaids dress be remade
The Duchess of Cambridge with Princess Charlotte and other bridesmaids arrive at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (Jane Barlow/PA)
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According to Harry, Kate apparently texted Meghan on the week of her and Harry’s wedding saying that there was “a problem” with Princess Charlotte’s outfit. The bridesmaids dresses, which were designed by Clare Waight Keller for Givenchy (same as Meghan’s wedding dress), were tailored specifically for the bridesmaids’ measurements.
Despite this, Princess Charlotte was apparently very unimpressed with her outfit, which Harry writes was “too big, long and baggy”, claiming that Charlotte “burst into tears” when she tried it on. In response, Meghan offered for Princess Charlotte’s dress to be remade, but the Princess of Wales was unsatisfied, alledgedly hitting back that all the bridesmaid dresses needed to be remade, four days before the wedding. The altercation lead to Harry finding Meghan Markle “in tears” on the floor afterwards, though Kate did arrive the next day with cards and flowers as an apology.
Prince William knew about Charles’ affair with Camilla
Prince William was apparently “tormented” by the knowledge of the “other woman” in his parent’s relationship. “[It] confused him [Prince William], tormented him, and when those suspicions were confirmed he felt tremendous guilt for having done nothing, said nothing, sooner,” Harry writes.
Later on, Harry claims they “begged” Charles not to marry Camilla, and threatened that they would not welcome her into the family if he did. Prince Charles did not respond to this request.
Camilla turned Harry’s bedroom into a dressing room
Duchess of Sussex, cries as she, Prince Harry, Queen Camilla and King Charles attend the state funeral and burial of Queen Elizabeth
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Harry also explains how hurt he felt when Camilla turned his room in Clarence House into her own personal dressing room as soon as he moved out. “I tried not to care. But especially the first time I saw it, I cared,” he writes.
He also compares Camilla to an “evil stepmother” at one point, at least in reference, saying: “I remember wondering … if she would be cruel to me; if she would be like all the evil stepmothers in the stories.”
Prince William ‘recoiled’ from Meghan’s hug when they first met
Many extracts from the book focus on William and Kate’s alleged aversion to Meghan Markle’s “un-royal” habits, such as asking to borrow lip gloss from Kate when she forgot her own — “[Kate] grimaced,” Harry says — including Meghan’s first run-in with Prince William.
“[It] completely freaked him out,” Harry writes. “He recoiled. Willy didn’t hug many strangers. Whereas Meg hugged most strangers.
“Will had hoped that she would greet him with standard reverence per the protocol,” he added, “[but] she didn’t know it and I hadn’t told her.”
Will and Kate loved Suits
Meghan Markle in Suits
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When Harry first told the pair he was dating Meghan, he recalls, “Their mouths fell open. They turned to each other. Then Willy turned to me and said: ‘F–k off?’”
“I was baffled until Willy and Kate explained that they were regular — nay, religious — viewers of ‘Suits,’” Harry writes. “‘Great,’ I thought, laughing. I’ve been worrying about the wrong thing. All this time I’d thought Willy and Kate might not welcome Meg into the family, but now I had to worry about them hounding her for an autograph.”
William and Kate encouraged him to wear that Nazi costume, alleges Harry
William and Kate, along with Harry, were set to attend a “Native and Colonial” themed party (yikes) in 2005. Harry was apparently choosing between a Nazi uniform or a pilot, but his brother and sister in law to-be swung the decision.
According to Harry’s memoir, the couple “howled” at the prospect of the Nazi costume: “I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said. They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leopard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.”
Harry lost his virginity in a field
William and Harry’s bond appeared unbreakable in their younger years (Anthony Devlin/PA)
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Prince Harry also revealed that he lost his virginity at age 17, around 2002, with an unnamed older woman in a field behind a pub in Windsor. In the book, Harry outlines how one of the royal bodyguards, Marko, had paid him a visit when he was studying at Eton, telling the Prince he had been sent to “find out the truth”.
Harry writes: “I suspected he was referring to my recent loss of virginity, a humiliating episode with an older woman who liked macho horses and who treated me like a young stallion. I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and sent me away. One of my many mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a very busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us.”
Any suspicions of this older woman being the actress Liz Hurley, who has been rumoured to have dated Prince Harry, have already been shut down by the actress. “Not me. Not guilty,” the Austin Powers actress told The Sunday Times in December, when pressed on whether she had taken Harry’s virginity, before adding, “No. Not me. Absolutely not.”
This, it transpires, was the real reason for the bodyguard turning up at Eton. Prince Charles had apparently been informed that Harry had taken drugs and that there was evidence of this, so needed to confirm it with Harry himself. The first part was true, at least, though Harry says he dismissed the potential evidence as “all lies”.
Speaking of his cocaine use, Harry writes that 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.
“I was a 17-year-old willing to try almost anything that would upset the established order. At least that was what I was trying to convince myself of.”
He also writes that he took magic mushrooms in California in 2016 and saw a bathroom bin growing a head.
He had a frostbitten penis at his brother’s wedding
Prince William and Kate followed by best man Prince Harry and maid of honour Pippa Middleton
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Harry reveals that he was nursing a frostbitten penis during his brother’s wedding to Kate Middleton, as a result of his 200 mile expedition to the North Pole in March 2011. He says that the frostbite he’d acquired had affected his ears, cheeks and “todger”. “While the ears and cheeks were already healing,” he writes, “the todger wasn’t. It was becoming more of an issue by the day.”
This also leads to Prince Harry adressing that he is circumcised, which he says was of huge interest to people when he was first born. “There were countless stories in books, and papers (even The New York Times) about Willy and me not being circumcised,” Harry explains. “Mummy had forbidden it, they all said, and while it’s absolutely true that the chance of getting penile frostbite is much greater if you’re not circumcised, all the stories were false. I was snipped as a baby.”
Prince William ‘pointed his finger’ in Meghan’s face during an argument
According to reports the book claims, Prince William got heated with Meghan Markle after she had made a joke about Kate in 2018, around the time of the wedding. It was allegedly because Kate forgot a detail of the wedding’s rehearsal timing, leading to Meghan joking that she had “baby brain” — Kate gave birth to Prince Louis in April 2018, the wedding was in May — which apparently hurt Kate’s feelings.
Harry claims that Meghan then apologised to Kate, but defended herself as well, saying she had made the comment to other friends before, when William then jumped in, saying “Well, it’s rude, Meghan,” with his finger pointed towards her face. In response, Meghan said, “If you don’t mind, move your finger away from my face.” Tense.
The physical altercation between Harry and William
Princes William and Harry at the unveiling of Princess Diana’s statue
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Harry reportedly says that things came to literal blows with his brother in 2019 while he was living in Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace. The encounter is alleged to have happened while Meghan Markle was away, and William came over to confront Harry, asking him to “do something” about his wife. “Meg is a difficult person . . . she is rude, brusque and has made enemies of half the staff,” William said, according to Harry.
Harry writes: “Willy had not come to debate anything. He had come to lay down the law. He wanted me to recognise that Meghan was in the wrong and to assure him I would do something about it. Like what? Call her to order? Let her go? Divorce her? I didn’t know. And neither did Willy. Because he wasn’t being rational. Each time I asked him to relax and try to see that what he was saying didn’t make sense, he raised his voice more. In a short time we were interrupting each other and shouting.”
He then details how William reached his breaking point, pushing Harry to the ground out of rage. “Everything happened very fast… He broke my necklace by grabbing me by the collar of my shirt and he threw me to the ground. I fell on the dog bowl, it broke under my back and the pieces scratched me. I stayed on the floor a few seconds, stunned, and then I got up and told him to leave.” Apparently William urged Harry to retaliate, too, saying: “Go on, hit me! You’ll feel better if you hit me!” but Harry refused.
Harry killed 25 people in Afghanistan
Prince Harry has made controversial comments about his time in the army
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In one of the most controversial revelations from the book, Harry admits to killing 25 Taliban fighters during his tour in Afghanistan, gloating that he was better than his brother: “For one brief moment, Spare outranked Heir,” he says.
“I was no longer Prince Harry, I was Second Lieutenant Wales of the Blues and Royals, second oldest regiment of the British Army,” Harry writes in his memoir. And because William, at this point, was still a cadet, he had to salute Harry in military settings. “[William] couldn’t resort to his typical attitude when we were sharing an institution … or he’d be insubordinate,” he explains.
Then Harry reveals his “number”, as he puts it. “And it seemed to me essential not to be afraid of that number [of people killed]. So my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me.”
He thought Diana had faked her death to escape royal life
In the book, Harry claims he had a wild “suspicion” which then turned into a “firm belief” following Diana’s death that she had faked her own death to avoid the palace. He was convinced it “was all a trick,” he says, explaining: “For once the trick wasn’t being played by the people around me, or the press, but by Mummy.
“Her life’s been miserable, she’s been hounded, harassed, lied about, lied to. So she’s staged an accident as a diversion and run away.”
