Prince Harry is reportedly revealing in his forthcoming memoir that he genuinely believed his mother, Princess Diana, faked her own death.
In excerpts from Spare made available to Page Six, the Duke of Sussex, who was 12 when Diana died in a car crash in Paris, recalled the idea taking shape:
“Having nothing to do but roam this castle and talk to myself, a suspicion set in, which then became a firm belief. It was all a trick.”
The book supposedly goes on:
“And for once, the trick wasn’t played by the people around me or the press, but by Mom. Her life was miserable, she was hounded, harassed, lied to, lied to. So she staged an accident as a distraction and ran away.”
The young prince and his brother, Prince William, were in Scotland with grandparents Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at Balmoral Castle when Diana’s vehicle, driven by chauffeur Henri Paul, crashed in a Paris tunnel while escaping a horde of paparazzi.
Diana, 36, died on August 31, 1997 along with Paul and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed. Only her bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, survived the crash.
Prince Philip and William, Earl Spencer and Prince Harry and Charles at Diana’s funeral.Anwar Hussein via Getty Images
Harry’s book reportedly says his teachers let him write one “last” letter to his mother and that he “wanted to protest that she’s still alive” but went along with it “for fear they’d think I was crazy.” However, he says he reviewed confidential police files as an adult, and both he and William questioned official conclusions.
“We’ve spoken about the crash for the first time ever,” he wrote, according to Page Six. “We talked about the recent investigation. A joke, we agreed. The final written report was an insult. Imaginative, riddled with fundamental factual errors and gaping logical holes. It raised more questions than it answered.”
Harry has met Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes and Tom Bradby for ITV for one-on-one interviews, both of which will air on January 8th. “Spare” officially hits shelves on January 10th.