For those who are keeping up with the Royal Family drama over the last couple of months, you might be wondering how did Prince William react to Prince Harry’s Spare? Tensions are already heightened with the release of Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, but will what the Duke of Sussex reveals in his new book be the end of his relationship with his brother?
The book named Spare launched on January 10, 2023, but many details of its contents were leaked a week prior. The book is described by its publisher, Penguin Random House, as a “landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.” The book will be the first insight into Prince Harry’s life since he and his wife Meghan Markle stepped down from their royal duties and since the bombshell Oprah interview in 2021. The book was obtained in advance by outlets including The Guardian and Page Six, which revealed bombshell details about the Duke of Sussex’s life including his ongoing feud with his brother. So how did Prince William react to Prince Harry’s Spare?
How did Prince William respond to Prince Harry’s Spare?
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How did Prince William respond to Prince Harry’s Spare? A source told Us Weekly on January 11, 2023, that William is “absolutely horrified” by what Harry wrote about him in Spare and considers their relationship done. “[William] doesn’t even recognize his own brother anymore,” the insider said. “He wants to believe that there’s hope for peace down the line, but it’s hard.” The insider added that William “doesn’t see how” Harry can “come back into the fold” of the royal family after the “rude and insulting” claims he wrote in his “explosive” and “embarrassing” memoir. “At this point, he’s got no plans to speak to Harry,” the source said. “He’s come to terms with the fact [that] he’s lost his little brother and quite possibly for life.”
According to palace insiders and friends close to the Prince and Princess of Wales, per Vanity Fair, William is furious about what’s been revealed in the book. He is reportedly not going to “forgive” his brother for revealing very personal details of their fights and regarding him as his “archnemesis.”The source also said there was “a massive trust issue” between the brothers about what’s being revealed.
Other sources added that William is “furious” and that Harry has “crossed a line.” A source told Entertainment Tonight, “The family is appalled that Harry has revealed such private and lurid details which are completely inappropriate. He’s gone about dealing with it the wrong way. The problem is no family conversation can ever take place because Harry claims he and Meghan are opposed to leaks and then he and Meghan share extremely private family matters with the public.”
Royal expert Katie Nicholl also claimed that William is angry to Page Six. “William’s privately seething and devastated by what Harry has done. And just cannot forgive Harry for the things that he’s written.” Nicholl also added that the family is still in shock from the announcements, “They’ve been taken aback by the level of detail and just how far Harry has gone in all of this.”
A source told Us Weekly that William and Kate are privately reacting to the news. They are “very upset about Harry’s revelations,” the insider said. “It’s hit them very hard. They’re both confiding in each other right now.” The insider also said that Harry and Meghan should have “handled these issues behind closed doors” and that William “wished Harry wasn’t so public and cutting” with his accusations about the royal family.
Weeks after the release of the book, an insider reported to Us Weekly that William “has made no effort to speak to Harry.” “William feels that Harry is all smoke and mirrors and is not to be trusted. He’s trying to move on with his life,” the insider added. “There has been a massive breach of trust” due to the “leaking” of certain stories.
RELATED: Read all the bombshells from Prince Harry’s memoir Spare in this summary.
In one chapter, William confronted Harry in his home of Frogmore Cottage and called his wife Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive.” Harry then accused his brother of “parroting the press narrative” about his wife, to which William claimed that he was just helping his brother. “Are you serious? Help me? Sorry – is that what you call this? Helping me?” Harry responded.
He then revealed that William attacked him after Harry offered him a glass of water. “He set down the water, called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast,” he wrote. “So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”
William left, Harry wrote, then returned “looking regretful, and apologized”. When William left again, his brother writes, he “turned and called back: ‘You don’t need to tell Meg about this.’ Harry replied, “‘You mean that you attacked me?’” “‘I didn’t attack you, Harold.’” William responded (it’s mentioned throughout the book that “Harold” is William’s brotherly nickname for his brother, while Harry calls William “Willy”). After the altercation, Harry called up his therapist. “‘We’d had a million physical fights in our lives,’ I told [my therapist]. As boys, we’d done nothing but fight. But this felt different.”
When Meghan came home she noticed Harry’s “scrapes and bruises” on his back, and he told her of the attack, Harry says she “wasn’t that surprised, and wasn’t all that angry.” In fact, “She was terribly sad.” There was another instance of the brothers fighting after Prince Philip’s funeral where the Invictus Games founder described it as a duel. He noted that his family would “come for a fight.” “I tried to explain my side of things. I wasn’t at my best. For starters. I was still nervous, fighting to keep my emotions in check, while also striving to be succinct and precise,” he wrote about the meeting, which took place at Frogmore Gardens. “More, I’d vowed not to let this encounter devolve into another argument. But I quickly discovered that it wasn’t up to me.”
He then noted the argument became more “heated.” Charles then butted in with a remark to stop the argument so that they wouldn’t make his “final years a misery.” William finalized the argument with a claim that he knew why Harry and Meghan left the Royal Family. “Staggering. But maybe it was true,” he wrote. “And if they didn’t know why I’d left, maybe they just didn’t know me. At all. And maybe they never really did.”
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According to Royal expert Jonathan Sacerdoti to Us Weekly, the Royal family might not respond immediately with their thoughts about Harry’s book. “I think that they have two different agendas, and that’s why sometimes the royal family probably is willing to ride out a storm if it’s not too irrevocably damaging or permanently damaging because they know that in the longer war, even if they lost the odd battle, they’re going to come out on top,” Sacerdoti said. “And I suspect that will be their guiding principle when they’re deciding how to react. But of course, they will have to react here and there, even if not directly to some of the things that are being said.”
Christopher Anderson, another Royal expert, claims that Harry’s book is not going to make the royal family budge for an apology. “Kings and future kings are used to getting what they want. Harry is not, and he wants that to change. It won’t,” Anderson told Us Weekly. “If Harry wants his father and brother back as he says [in a trailer for his ITV sit-down], he has an awfully peculiar way of going about it. Spare makes any hope of rapprochement impossible.” He then said that it might affect the status of Harry and Meghan’s invite to King Charles’ coronation. “As far as I can see, even if Harry does attend his father’s coronation in May, it will be his farewell appearance as a member of the family.”
In an ITV interview premiering on January 8, 2023, Harry revealed what he really wants from the coronation. “If you are invited to the Coronation, will you come?” ITV News anchor Tom Bradby asked Harry, who responded, “There’s a lot that can happen between now and then. But, the door is always open. The ball is in their court. There’s a lot to be discussed and I really hope that they’re willing to sit down and talk about it.”
Towards the end of the book, William tried to reconcile with Harry by bringing up their late mother Princess Diana. William swore on their mother’s life that he wanted Harry to be happy, which “stopped me cold, as it was meant to.” Harry explained that they usually don’t use the words “on Mummy’s life,” when they were in “times of extreme crisis.” In this instance, Harry “didn’t believe” and “didn’t fully trust” his brother, something that William had picked up on. “He saw that we were in a place of such hurt and doubt that even those sacred words couldn’t set us free,” he said.
Courtesy of: Random House
For more about Prince Harry, read his upcoming memoir, Spare. Told for the first time in his own words, the book takes readers through the Duke of Sussex’s life with the British royal family, from the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997 to how the moment led to his decision decades later to move to America with his wife, Meghan Markle, and leave Buckingham Palace for good in 2020. “With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief,” the publisher’s description reads.
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