It is a story without filter, which is already causing a sensation.
In his memoirs, Prince Harry tells everything and spares no detail.
According to extracts that leaked on Thursday January 5, he would not only return to a violent altercation with his brother William, but would also reveal that he had taken cocaine from the age of 17 and opposed the remarriage of his father Charles, now king, with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
In video, the trailer of the interview granted by prince Harry to ITV
A month after the Netflix documentary about Harry and his wife Meghan aired, which contained no earth-shattering allegations, the British monarchy is facing far more damning revelations about the couple's 2020 move to California with the January 10 release of
Spare
(
Le Suppléant
, published by Fayard in France).
Before this dreaded deadline, several media obtained copies of the book, especially since Spanish bookstores put it on sale by mistake.
Immediately followed a flood of extracts that caused amazement, from his bloody engagement in Afghanistan to sordid details such as his cocaine consumption or his loss of virginity.
The altercation with William
The main revelation is given by the
Guardian
: according to the English media which consulted the book, the Duke of Sussex accuses his brother William, heir to the throne, of having thrown him to the ground during an argument in 2019 concerning Meghan Markle, whom Harry had married the previous year.
In
Spare,
the younger Charles III recounts that his eldest called his wife "difficult", "rude", and "abrasive".
The tone would then be raised and the insults would have flared up.
The altercation would have taken a serious turn when the two brothers would have come to blows.
"[William] grabbed me by the collar, ripping my collar, and knocked me to the ground," the 38-year-old prince said.
Before adding: "I landed on the dog's bowl, which broke under my back, the pieces cut into me".
Meghan Markle's husband would have remained on the ground "stunned", before asking his brother to leave.
Although William apologized, this fight would have left Prince Harry with “scrapes and bruises”, he wrote in the extract revealed by
The Guardian
.
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Cocaine from 17 years old
As revealed by the British channel Sky News on Thursday, Harry admits having "of course" taken cocaine at one time, while explaining that he did not find it "amusing".
The father of Archie and Lilibet thus evoked the conditions in which he had consumed this drug for the first time.
"At someone's house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line and then I took it again," writes the prince, now exiled in California.
Before adding: "It wasn't very 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."
An experience he had when he was still a teenager.
"I was a 17-year-old who wanted to try anything that would shake up the established order," he continues.
At least that's what I was trying to convince myself.
King Charles III is said to have subsequently taken him to a drug rehab clinic to meet former drug addicts.
William and Harry opposed to Charles' remarriage
The Daily Mail also reveals that Harry would have opposed his father's remarriage to Camilla, fearing that she was an “ugly stepmother”.
What his older brother also feared, he was also hesitant at the idea of seeing Prince Charles at the time marrying his lifelong mistress and Lady Diana's rival.
The Nazi costume
In his writings, Harry also explains that William and his wife Kate encouraged him, when he was 20, to dress up as a Nazi at a fancy dress party, which at the time caused a scandal and shook the reputation of the grandson of Elizabeth II.
According to information from
Page Six
, Harry was originally hesitating between two suits: a pilot's uniform or a Nazi uniform.
“I phoned Willy and Kate, asked them what they thought.
"Nazi uniform," they replied," wrote the Duke of Sussex, in the right pages of the book consulted by the American media.
After which, the young prince returned home for a fitting session.
“[Kate and William] both roared with laughter.
It was worse than Willy's leotard outfit!
Much more ridiculous!
Which, again, was the goal,” he recalls in his memoirs.
Indeed, Prince William also participated in this party, to which he arrived wearing a homemade lion costume.
The outcome of this party will ultimately be fatal for Harry.
On January 11, 2005,
The Sun
publishes the photo of the disguise on the front page under the title “Harry the Nazi”.
Faced with the scale of the scandal, Harry will have no choice but to issue a public apology.
25 dead in Afghanistan
Determined to tell the whole story, Harry claims in his autobiography to have killed 25 “enemy combatants” during his missions in Afghanistan, without remorse or pride, reports
The Daily Telegraph
.
“We shoot when necessary, take a life to save a life”, explains the one who is now exiled in California.
Prince Harry has, in fact, spent ten years in the British army, with two deployments in Afghanistan: in 2007-2008 for ten weeks, then as a helicopter pilot in the south of the country from September 2012 to January 2013. He finally resigned in 2015, unable to return to the field.
The eternal number 2
According to the
Guardian
, Harry talks throughout his memoir about the difficulty of being "the substitute".
He says in particular that on the day of his birth, his father Charles would have said to his mother Diana: “Magnificent!
From now on you have given me an heir and a substitute - mission accomplished.
Read alsoPrince Harry, the eternal number 2
The silence of Buckingham Palace
These shattering revelations fall in any case in the midst of a transition period for the British royal family after the accession to the throne of Charles III, following the death of Elizabeth II on September 8 at the age of 96.
The ruler of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth states is due to be crowned on May 6, an event heralded as awe-inspiring and broadcast around the world.
Will Harry be there?
In a trailer broadcast by ITV, the prince dodges, believing that “a lot of things could happen between now and then”.
For now, Buckingham Palace has remained silent.
As always a creed remains:
never companion, never explain
... Nevertheless, this great unpacking only reinforces the unpopularity of the Sussexes in the United Kingdom, where a large part of the press describes them as spoiled children.
In video, "Silence is betrayal", says Prince Harry in an interview
