In the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, Prince Harry shared that the royals sometimes have their separate press offices plan negative tabloid stories about other members to make themselves look better.
Us Weekly reports that Harry has gone further, sharing detail about this in his upcoming memoir Spare. The Duke of Sussex wrote about his and Prince William’s confrontation in 2019 with their dad King Charles III when William suspected Charles “planted” stories about Kate Middleton and his children Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis to improve his image at William’s expense.
Harry wrote that William called him, “seething,” “upset,” and “talking too fast” about what happened. Harry was able to piece together that, per Us, “one ‘gung-ho’ member of his father’s communication team had ‘devised and launched a new campaign of getting good press [for Charles and his wife Queen Consort Camilla, which came] at the expense of bad press’” for Harry and William.
Harry alleged that was the final straw for William, who said on the call, “They’ve done this to me for the last time,” and he “wasn’t going to take it anymore.”
William and Harry both went to see Charles on the issue. “Pa instantly got upset,” Harry wrote, per the outlet. “He began shouting that Willy was paranoid. We both were. Just because we were getting bad press, and he was getting good, that didn’t mean his staff was behind it.”
The two came with “proof” from reporters that Charles’ team was behind the coverage. Still, his father “dismissed” them, Us wrote, and Harry was surprised to find William then turned his anger onto Harry.
“In a blink he shifted all his rage onto me,” Harry said, adding that William then began listing his issues with his brother and his brother’s wife Meghan. “He was going on and on and I lost the thread. I couldn’t understand and I stopped trying. I fell silent, waiting for him to subside.”
That was the same year that Harry alleged in his memoir that William physically assaulted him over Meghan. The two had exchanged insults after William called Meghan “difficult,” “rude,” and “abrasive,” and Harry accused him of parroting tabloid talking points about her. It escalated, and William attacked Harry. “[He] came at me,” Harry wrote. “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.” William later came back and apologized.
In excerpts of his memoir outlets have published, Harry made it clear that William was never fully behind Harry’s relationship with Meghan. “He’d actually been pretty discouraging about my even dating Meg,” Harry wrote in the memoir, per Us. “One day, sitting together in his garden, he’d predicted a host of difficulties I could expect if I hooked up with an ‘American actress,’ a phrase he always managed to make sound like a ‘convicted felon.’”
Harry spoke in his and Meghan’s docuseries Harry & Meghan about how William’s own press office planted negative stories about him and Meghan, something Harry felt was a betrayal. “To see my brother’s office copy the very same thing that we promised the two of us would never ever do, that was heartbreaking,” Harry said.
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
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