It will come as no surprise that Prince Harry’s new memoir, Spare, packs its fair share of royal family drama into its 416 pages. One tidbit in particular clearly illustrates the king’s somewhat turbulent relationship with his stepmother. According to Page Six, the forthcoming book claims that Camilla, who became Queen Consort when Charles took the crown this year, turned Harry’s bedroom at Clarence House into her personal dressing room when he moved out. “I tried not to care. But especially when I saw it for the first time, it really interested me,” Harry wrote of the incident.
Clarence House, which was built in the mid-1820s and still serves as the London residence of King Charles and Camilla, was also Harry’s official home from 2002 to 2012 when he moved to Kensington Palace and was posted to Afghanistan shortly thereafter. According to the autobiography, Camilla remodeled the room immediately after he left.
The Gardens of Clarence House.
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The highly anticipated memoir also describes how Harry and William begged their father not to marry Camilla. Harry wrote that he remembered speculating “whether she would be cruel to me; if she was like all the bad stepmothers in the stories.”
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The much-hyped tome drops a few other bombshells, including Harry’s claim that William physically assaulted him during a conflict between the brothers over his marriage to Meghan Markle. Much of the book seems to deal with Harry’s resentments and struggles within his famous family – the title itself is a reference to his position in Prince William’s shadow. At the beginning of the book, Harry writes about his birth story, when King Charles is said to have said to Princess Diana, “Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an heir and a surrogate – my job is done,” according to The Guardian, which obtained an early copy of the memoir.
Spare will be released on Tuesday January 10th.
Originally appeared on Architectural Digest
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