4 of the Most Cringey Kate Middleton Anecdotes in Prince Harry’s ‘Spare’ Memoir
Prince Harry opens up about the royal family in his Spare memoir, and Kate Middleton is no exception. In addition to some positive anecdotes about his sister-in-law, the Duke of Sussex also shares stories that don’t reflect kindly on the Princess of Wales. Ahead, our picks for the Spare excerpts that don’t do Kate any favors.
1. ‘Spare’: Kate Middleton ‘grimaced’ when Meghan Markle borrowed her lipgloss
Harry recalled an “awkward” moment between Kate and Meghan moments before the first — and only — Royal Foundation Forum in 2018. Before answering “softball questions” with Kate, Meghan, and his brother, Harry remembered his then-fiancée asking Kate if she could borrow her lipgloss.
Harry claimed Meghan asked — an “American thing” — only because she forgot hers.
“Kate, taken aback, went into her handbag and reluctantly pulled out a small tube,” he wrote (via UsWeekly). “Meg squeezed some onto her finger and applied it to her lips. Kate grimaced.”
Harry explained they “should’ve been able to laugh about” it. Instead, borrowing Kate’s lipgloss became part of “something bigger” the press “sensed.”
“‘Here we go,’ I thought sorrowfully,” he recalled, thinking Kate had been “on edge” because “she was now going to be compared to, and forced to compete with, Meg.”
2. ‘Spare’: Kate Middleton wanted flower girl dresses for Harry and Meghan’s wedding remade 4 days before the ceremony
Another Spare excerpt that doesn’t necessarily reflect kindly on Kate is one about the flower girl dress drama. Harry remembered the days leading up to his and Meghan’s May 2018 royal wedding and finding his soon-to-be wife “sobbing” after an incident with Kate.
“[Princess] Charlotte’s dress is too big, too long, too baggy. She cried when she tried it on at home,” Harry claimed Kate texted Meghan.
“Right and I told you the tailor has been standing by since eight a.m. Here. At KP. Can you take Charlotte to have it altered, as all the other moms are doing?” Meghan replied. To which Harry claimed Kate responded, “No, all the dresses need to be remade.”
Harry went on to say Kate noted Alexander McQueen’s Sarah Burton, the designer of her own royal wedding gown, had “agreed.”
“Meg asked if Kate was aware of what was going on right now. With her father. Kate said she was well aware, but the dresses.” Shortly after the text exchange, Harry remembered arriving home to find “Meg on the floor. Sobbing.”
The next day he wrote it off as “a simple misunderstanding” when Kate apologized with a note and flowers.
3. ‘Spare’: Prince Harry claimed Kate Middleton and Prince William encouraged him to wear Nazi uniform
What Harry referred to as “one of the biggest mistakes of my life” in Harry & Meghan, the 38-year-old alleged in Spare William and Kate encouraged him to wear a Nazi uniform to a 2005 costume party.
“I went up and down the rows, sifting through the racks, seeing nothing I liked. With time running out I narrowed my options to two. A British pilot’s uniform. And a sand-colored Nazi uniform. With a swastika armband. And a flat cap,” Harry wrote.
“I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said. I rented it, plus a silly mustache, and went back to the house. I tried it all on. They both howled,” he continued.
Harry recalled the Prince and Princess of Wales telling him at the time that the outit was “way more ridiculous than William’s own lion costume. However, that was “the point” of the party.
4. ‘Spare’: Kate had ‘problems’ with Meghan’s wedding planning
The flower girl dresses from Harry and Meghan’s wedding weren’t, as Harry wrote in Spare, the only issue Kate had with their nuptials.
“[She] had other problems with the way Meg was planning her wedding,” he wrote. “Something about a party for the page boys? The page boys? Half the kids in the wedding are from North America. They haven’t even arrived yet,” Harry wrote, divulging that “emotions were running high” before the wedding. “It was intolerable — but temporary.”
A month later, William and Kate had the newlyweds over for tea “to clear the air.” What started with “classic small talk” devolved into “shouting,” Harry claimed.
“For our part, we chipped in that we weren’t too pleased when Willy and Kate switched place cards and changed seats at our wedding,” he said.
They’d “followed the American tradition” of “placing couples next to each other,” which, Harry claimed, “Willy and Kate didn’t like.”
“So their table was the only one where spouses were apart. They insisted it wasn’t them, it was someone else,” he added. “And they said we’d done the same thing at Pippa [Middleton]‘s wedding. We hadn’t. Much as we’d wanted to.”
William and Kate, nor the palace, haven’t commented on Harry’s allegations in Spare. On Jan. 12, the couple made their first public appearance since the book’s Jan. 10 launch.
