More on his mind? Prince Harry revealed that the first draft of his best-selling memoir, Spare, was originally 800 pages — and had more stories about his brother, Prince William.
“It could have been two books, put it that way,” the Duke of Sussex, 38, said in an interview with The Telegraph published on Friday, January 13. “And there were other bits that I shared with [ghostwriter] J.R. [Moehringer], that I said, ‘Look, I’m telling you this for context but there’s absolutely no way I’m putting it in there.’”
Harry’s debut book, which was released on Tuesday, January 10, details his relationships with various members of the royal family including his brother, William, father King Charles III, late mother Princess Diana, wife Meghan Markle and more. The Invictus Games founder told the British newspaper it was “impossible” to tell his story without mentioning his family “because they play such a crucial part in it” but he made the decision to exclude some details, specifically about his father and brother.
“But there are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don’t want the world to know,” Harry confessed. “Because I don’t think they would ever forgive me.”
He continued: “Now you could argue that some of the stuff I’ve put in there, well, they will never forgive me anyway. But the way I see it is, I’m willing to forgive you for everything you’ve done, and I wish you’d actually sat down with me, properly, and instead of saying. ‘I’m delusional and paranoid,’ actually sit down and have a proper conversation about this, because what I’d really like is some accountability. And an apology to my wife.”
In Spare, Harry details an alleged physical altercation with William in 2019 over the former military pilot’s marriage to the Suits alum. Harry claimed that William “grabbed” him by the collar and broke his necklace before knocking him “to the floor.”
Harry has appeared in several TV interviews ahead of and following Spare’s release. In his 60 Minutes interview, he opened up to Anderson Cooper about where he stands with William.
“You know, my brother and I love each other. I love him deeply,” he told Cooper. “There has been a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years. None of anything I’ve written, anything that I’ve included is ever intended to hurt my family. But it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up, and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers.”
