PRINCE HARRY. On January 10, Prince Harry’s shock book, “The Substitute”, is released. Many revelations lift the veil on behind the scenes and disputes within the British royal family.
[Mis à jour le 9 janvier 2023 à 19h45] Available this Tuesday, January 10, 2023, Prince Harry’s Memoirs are making headlines in the British tabloids. “The Substitute” (Editions Fayard, 26.50 euros) actually written by the novelist and biographer JR Moehringer, accompanied of course by Prince Harry, is added to the list of embarrassing revelations about the royal family. During interviews prior to the release of his Memoirs, Prince Harry also had the opportunity to comment on these indiscretions.
Meghan Markle’s husband, settled with his family in the United States, returns in particular to a violent argument which allegedly took place in 2019 with his brother, and also claims to have taken cocaine at the age of 17. Another striking revelation from these Memoirs: the father of Archie and Lilibet claims to have killed 25 “Taliban” in Afghanistan, as reported The Daily Telegraph. He was deployed twice to Afghanistan during his ten years in the British Army. Comparing those killed to “chess pieces” that had to be put out of play, he says his army training taught him that you can’t eliminate a target “if you consider as a person”.
If Harry’s revelations about his time in Afghanistan have, of course, shocked British society, they have also aroused the ire of certain soldiers in the country. For Colonel Richard Kemp, who was questioned by sky news, these “unwelcome” remarks could provoke attacks against British soldiers. The soldier, who led the British armed forces in Afghanistan in 2003, said of Harry: “He characterized the British army as an army that basically trained him and the other soldiers to see his enemies as less than human beings (…), which is not the case. It is even the opposite.”
On the evening of Sunday January 8, Prince Harry, ensuring the commercial promotion of his Memoirs, gave two interviews respectively; one on the american channel CBS and the other on the British channel ITV. Here’s what to take away from these revelations.
The unspeakable Sun reports another anecdote from the book, which refers to a very old scandal. In early 2005, Harry caused an uproar after he was photographed in Nazi uniform at a costume party. The stolen photo appeared on the front page of the press, just two weeks before the Holocaust commemoration ceremonies in the United Kingdom. In The AlternatePrince Harry says that it was William and Kate Middleton who encouraged him to choose this disguise in bad taste, when he was 20 years old.
The passage through drugs
Harry also admits in his book to having “of course” taken cocaine in the past, as the channel indicates. sky news. “At someone’s house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line and then I took it again”, can we read in the book. “I was a 17 year old who wanted to try anything that would challenge the established order […]. It wasn’t very fun, it didn’t make me particularly happy”, adds Prince Harry, who nevertheless admits that the drug made him feel “different”.
Harry and William’s heated argument
Prince Harry’s memoirs are full of many other revelations, especially family ones. He also recounts a “humiliating episode”, that of his deflowering with an “older woman”, who, in love with horses, had treated him like a “young stallion”, ending their antics in the open fields with a spanking, according to The Independent. But it was the relationship with his brother that caused the first big surprise, on the sidelines of the publication of the book.
According to Guardian this time, an argument with Prince William, at his brother Harry’s London residence in 2019, would indeed have gone wrong. According to the elements reported by the British daily, William would have described Meghan as “difficult” and “rude” during a stormy conversation. Words that would have prompted Harry to call his brother a “parrot of the press”. According to the account of the youngest, William would not have been able to keep his calm at that moment and would have grabbed his brother “by the collar”, “ripped off his collar and [l’aurait] thrown to the ground”. Harry writes of having “landed on the dog’s bowl, which broke under [son] back”, the pieces causing him “scratches and bruises”. Meghan Markle’s husband specifies that after his violent gesture, William would have “apologized”.
In comments relayed by ITV, in a promotional interview, the Duke of Sussex gave more details about the violent altercation he allegedly suffered. He said he saw “the extreme anger” that emanated from his brother William during this dispute. The Duke of Sussex even went into more detail, saying he thought William wanted to be “hit back”. It’s on CBS in the show 60 minutes, that the Duke of Sussex felt that his brother William’s annoyance was due to “an accumulation of frustration”. Prince Harry indeed points to the responsibility of the press and more particularly of the tabloids in the tensions which distanced him from his brother. For Harry, the heir to the throne “consumed a lot of tabloid press” at the time, which would have caused anger over his relationship with Meghan.
A second “quarrel” between the two brothers
The Sun, British tabloid which was also able to obtain a copy of the book “The Substitute” in preview revealed that another argument took place between the brothers in 2021, two years after the first physical altercation. The latter would have occurred in the gardens of Frogmore Cottage, an English residence still belonging to Harry.
The British media clarified that the book contains a passage evoking an argument during a walk in these gardens. The children of King Charles III are said to have referred to Harry and Meghan’s infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 which had already caused quite a stir at the time. Prince William would then have gotten angry and “really furious” would have chanted to him: “You never came to talk to us about it, you never came to talk to me about it”. Thus, the Prince of Wales would have grabbed the t-shirt from him” twice, and said that this situation made him “sick” but that he only wanted “his happiness”.
Inquiry into the tragic death of Princess Diana
In the book, Harry reveals intimate elements, in particular having called on a woman to enter into contact with his mother Diana, who died in Paris in 1997, and to have felt her “energy”, as reported by the DailyMail. This person would have told him that the Princess of Hearts was telling him that he was “living the life she had not been able to live”.
Another touching revelation from the book, Harry mentioned according to sky news that he had wanted at one time to reopen the investigation into the causes of this terrible tragedy. “The final report [sur l’accident] was an insult. A heap of nonsense riddled with factual errors, where logic was conspicuous by its absence” is it written in “The Substitute”. The Duke Sussex was especially marked by the report according to which the driver of Diana was drunk at the time of Harry also added that he spoke to his brother Prince William about it, and that they had the same questions and wanted answers but were “talked out” of it by “those who decide”.
In addition to the thunderous revelations about his brother, the Memoirs of Prince Harry reveal strained relations between Harry and his father, King Charles III. In this book, the father of Archie and Lilibet returns to several jokes that the king, who was then only Prince Charles, would have made about his relationship with his son.
the DailyMail thus reports that, according to Harry, Charles III would have regularly joked by saying to Harry: “Who knows if I am really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I am even your father?”. Jokes that would have hurt his son, as the latter explains: “He laughed and laughed, although it was a particularly not funny joke given the rumor that was circulating then, that my real father was one of the former lovers. from mum: Major James Hewitt.”
Always according to DailyMailHarry also reveals in his Memoirs that he and his brother William would have implored their father not to remarry Camilla, in 2005. Harry writes that he dreaded the idea of having to face a “cruel” stepmother […] like all the wicked mothers-in-law in the stories”. “Despite pleas from Willy and I, Pa went ahead. We shook his hand and wished him good luck. No hard feelings,” continues Prince Harry.
After a shock interview given to Oprah Winfrey in March 2021 and her documentary series Harry & Meghan broadcast on Netflix a few weeks ago, the publication of the Memoirs of prince Harry is therefore once again flowing a lot of ink. As a reminder, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle live in exile in the United States. The royal family, meanwhile, continues to wallow in silence so as not to give more echo to these projections.
Harry accuses his brother and father, King Charles III, of leaking private information about the exiled couple that was completely confidential. Words that he hammered on CBS, harshly judging the royal family. “When we’ve been told for six years, ‘we can’t make a statement to protect you,’ but they do for the rest of the family, there’s a time when silence is betrayal,” said he castigated.
Faced with Oprah Winfrey a few months ago, Harry always said he “adored” William. “We have been through hell together (…) but we are on different paths”, he admitted, before concluding that “time heals all things”. It may take a little more, given the strength of Prince Harry’s latest attacks on the British monarchy.