“Spare,” the book he wrote telling his story, went on sale this week globally. He took aim at the royal family and asked that they apologize to his wife.
Prince Harry, the youngest son of Britain’s King Charles III, said he left out many intimate revelations from his autobiography, published this week, that would have further soured his relationship with his father and brother, William.
In an interview with the “Daily Telegraph” newspaper published this Saturday, the Duke of Sussex said that the King and his brother, the Prince of Wales, “they would never forgive him” if he had made all the details public of their complex relationship.
He recognized that many of these intimacies were included in the first draft of the book “Spare” (“Replacement”, in English), which it was twice as long as its final version, but they were left out so as not to further deteriorate the situation.
“The first draft was different. It had 800 pages and it stayed at 400. It could have been two books. And the hard part was getting things out,” she said in the interview.
“There are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to a certain extent between me and my father, that just I don’t want the world to know. Because I don’t think they ever forgave me,” she added.
He also said that the media “sweep under the rug” many of his family’s dirty laundry and exchange them for “juicy stories about other people.”
Harry admits that he worries about his nephews, George, Charlotte and Louis, because he knows that one of them will end up being “a spare” -title of his autobiography- like himself, but that his brother has made it clear that his children are not his responsibility”.
At the same time, he once again offered his family a “proper conversation” so that everyone assumes their responsibilities and, above all, that they ask his wife, Meghan Markle, for “apologies”.
What is the book about
“Spare” talks about Harry’s grief over his mother’s death in 1997, and the resentment he has long felt for his role as the royal “spare”, overshadowed by the “heir”: his older brother, Prince William. She recounts arguments and a physical altercation with him, reveals how she lost her virginity (in a field) and tells that she used cocaine and cannabis.
It also says that killed 25 Taliban fighters while serving as an Apache helicopter pilot in Afghanistana claim criticized by both the Taliban and British military veterans.
Harry told ITV that he only cried once after his mother died: at his funeral. He said he felt guilty for not showing emotion when he and William greeted the crowd of mourners outside Kensington Palace, Diana’s London home.
In the book, Harry blames his family’s ethics for not showing his feelings, saying that he had “learned all too well… the family maxim that crying is not an option.”
Harry defended his decision to publish the memoir that exposes rifts within the British royal family by saying that is an attempt to “own my story” after 38 years of “misrepresentations and distortions” by others.
However, the book did not arouse much interest after a leak in The Guardian that generated the first headlines in the British press.
First they generated pity and then total disinterest, causing sellers like Amazon or Waterstone to cut the pre-sale price in half. In the UK it went from £28 ($34) to £14 (US$17).
With information from EFE
