Harry’s high thoughts? win stuff. Photo Illustration: Vulture. Photos: Samir Hussein – Pool/WireImage; Fox
Prince Harry’s new memoir, Spare, is the literary equivalent of the tea getting cold and the crumpets a little too stale. Sure, there’s never enough gossip to satiate the palace’s intrigue, but Harry and his wife Meghan Markle had previously done a full-length interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 and another Netflix documentary in 2022 – making Spare more of a recap than exposé . Still, Harry is cautiously injecting some crowns into the House of Windsor. We save you the long reading and tell you the winners and losers.
Loser: Prince Andrew
When security services were pulled from Harry, Meghan and their newborn Archie in February 2020 – a “government decision,” his brother William claimed – Harry couldn’t help but think about who else had protection: his disgraced uncle and Jeffrey Epstein- Employee Prince Andrew. “He was embroiled in a shameful scandal alleging the sexual assault of a young woman and no one had even suggested he was losing his security,” Harry writes.
Worst Burn: “Whatever people accused us of, sex crimes weren’t on the list.”
Winner: Stevie
Who Harry shares an “inexplicable bond” with — at least when he’s smoking weed and super high — because the Family Guy character is a “prophet without honor.” He also once disparagingly compares William to Stewie.
Loser: Camilla, Queen Consort
Harry claims that his stepmother – whom he and William begged his father not to marry – was always the smartest queen when it came to tabloid coverage, so much so that she frequently leaked details of the Windsors’ lives to members of the trade the press for their own favorable reporting. “Everywhere, in all the newspapers, stories appeared about her private conversations with Willy,” writes Harry, “stories containing pinpoint details, none of which, of course, came from Willy.” Charles’ decline after Diana’s death – reflected in a senior member of her and Charles’ joint communications team who “developed and launched a campaign to get good press for Pa and Camilla at the expense of bad press for us.” All of it , and she turned Harry’s bedroom into a dressing room after he moved out. “I tried not to care,” he admits. “But especially after the first time I saw it, it really mattered to me.”
Sickest Burn: “She started playing the long game. A campaign aimed at marriage and ultimately at the crown.”
Winner: Pixar
After his first date with Meghan, Harry – who arrived 30 minutes late due to traffic and believed it had ruined his chances – regretted a friend afterwards by drinking, smoking and watching Inside Out. “An animated film about emotions,” he says. “Perfect. I was thorough from the inside out.” Meghan FaceTimed him mid-film, confused as to why he was “watching cartoons.”
Loser: Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales
Harry shares how Kate felt a sense of unease around Meghan and how the relationship between the “Fab Four” fell apart because of it. Kate, for example, was upset that the couple hadn’t brought their Easter holiday gifts for a year and also insisted she was “owed an apology” after Meghan mentioned her post-baby attitude in a private conversation. “We’re not close enough to talk about my hormones!” Kate told Meghan in front of her spouses, writes Harry. Kate previously voiced several “problems” she had with the arrangements for Meghan and Harry’s wedding, which he attributes to American and British cultural differences. Oh yes, and Kate (with William) reportedly encouraged Harry to wear a Nazi uniform to a costume party in the mid-1900s.
Sickest Burn: “She loved clothes.”
Winner: friends
Harry, who identifies as Chandler, mentions his “fanatical” love for the NBC sitcom four times in the book. “I think I watched every episode of Friends in 2013,” he writes. He cites “The One With Monica and Chandler’s Wedding” as a particularly good episode for folding underwear. In 2016 he was a guest of Courteney Cox in Los Angeles: “The idea of staying at Monica’s was very tempting. And amusing.” There he took magic mushrooms – a “trip” that ended with a talking toilet that had a mind of its own.
Loser: King Charles
Harry accused his father of being complicit in enabling Camilla’s fixation with the press, so much so that William and Kate thought they were being “caught and unfairly pursued” by the couple. “Pa and Camilla didn’t want Willy and Kate making headlines about them or their causes,” Harry writes. “They had openly insulted Willy many times about it.” Charles was also “angry” about Harry’s crusade against the racist tabloid reporting about Meghan because it “makes him look bad” that he is not doing such an action for Camilla. “What he couldn’t really take was someone new dominating the monarchy,” Harry continues, “grabbing the limelight, someone shiny and new, coming in and overshadowing him.” Without warning, he cut Harry off financially when that Couple was running low on resources in early 2020, a decision his son said left him “fed up for slaughter.”
Sickest Burn: “He wasn’t good at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in a crisis?”
Winner: Will Arnett
Harry was so impressed upon meeting the voice of Batman in The Lego Batman Movie that he repeatedly asked Arnett to say “Hello, Harry” to him at a party. “He wanted to say no, but he didn’t mean to be rude,” Harry recalls. “Or he realized I wasn’t going to stop.”
Loser: Prince William
In 2019, William is said to have physically assaulted Harry during an argument over Meghan, whom William found “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive” – and whom he had previously asked his brother not to date. The attack left Harry scratches and bruises on his back. William seemed the most prone of the Windsors to believing tabloid stories about Meghan, with Harry recalling that “he just repeated press narrative and spat out false stories that he had read or told.” He also told Harry, that his therapist was brainwashing him, which Harry believes was William’s strategy to discredit Harry’s well-being in the family.
Sickest Burn: “My dear brother, my nemesis, how did we get here?”
Winner: Suits
When Harry first opened up to William and Kate about his romantic relationship with Meghan, they reacted with genuine shock and joy. They turned out to be “religious” Suits observers who knew every detail of their paralegal Rachel Zane’s exploits. “Now I had to worry that they would pursue her for an autograph,” Harry recalls.
Loser: Bad tattoos
A drunk Harry was physically prevented from getting a Botswana foot tattoo during a boys’ trip to Las Vegas in 2012. He thought it honored his “sense of carpe diem.” His friends disagreed.
Winner: BrainyQuote.com
Harry was “thunderstruck” when he found a quote from William Faulkner on the website to refer to – “The past is never dead. It’s not even over” – enough to fit 17 pages .
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