5 Charles and Camilla Wedding Moments Prince Harry Remembered in ‘Spare’
As King Charles III and Queen Camilla celebrate 18 years of marriage find out what Prince Harry had to say about his father remarrying in Spare. From delays to thoughts of Princess Diana, what went through his mind before, during, and after their 2005 wedding.
1. Harry on Charles and Camilla’s wedding in ‘Spare’: He and William asked their father not to get remarried
King Charles and Camilla got married on April 9, 2005, with both Harry and the now-Prince of Wales in attendance. However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the couple.
After getting Queen Elizabeth II’s permission to marry, the king’s sons asked him not to go through with it. “Despite Willy and me urging him not to, Pa was going ahead. We pumped his hand, wished him well. No hard feelings,” the Duke of Sussex said (via Spare).
“We recognized that he was finally going to be with the woman he loved, the woman he’d always loved, the woman Fate might’ve intended for him in the first place,” Harry continued. “Whatever bitterness or sorrow we felt over the closing of another loop in Mummy’s story we understood that it was beside the point.”
The brothers “sympathized with Pa and Camilla as a couple” and their taking “star-crossed to a new level.”
2. Harry on Charles and Camilla’s wedding in ‘Spare’: Delays suggested Princess Diana wasn’t ‘blessing their union’
“A few steps from happiness” following “years of thwarted longing,” King Charles and Camilla kept encountering “new obstacles” in wedding planning, Harry recalled.
“First there was the controversy over the nature of the ceremony,” he said, noting courtiers “insisted” it be a civil ceremony because, “as future supreme governor of the Church of England,” the then-Prince of Wales “couldn’t marry a divorcée in the church.”
A “furious debate about locations” ensued with “the couple’s first choice,” Windsor Castle, being ruled out due to civil wedding licenses. Finally, the matter of the venue was settled. King Charles and Camilla would get married at Windsor Guildhall. Then the Pope died, changing wedding plans yet again.
“Other than feeling sorry for them, I couldn’t help but think that some force in the universe (Mummy?) was blocking rather than blessing their union,” Harry said in his memoir. “Maybe the universe delays what it disapproves of?”
3. Harry on Charles and Camilla’s wedding in ‘Spare’: Ceremony was ‘almost cathartic’
It seems if Harry had to pick one word to describe the king and Camilla’s wedding it would be “cathartic.”
“When the wedding did finally take place — without Granny, who chose not to attend — it was almost cathartic for everyone, even me,” he said.
“Standing near the altar I kept my head bowed, eyes on the floor, just as I had during Mummy’s funeral,” Harry recalled.
The few times he sneaked “several peeks” at the bride and groom the same thought occurred to Harry: “Good for you.”
4. Harry on Charles and Camilla’s wedding in ‘Spare’: ‘This marriage would take Pa away from us’
The Duke of Sussex revealed he thought “goodbye” not only at his father’s wedding but at William’s too.
“I knew without question that this marriage would take Pa away from us. Not in any real sense, not in any deliberate or malicious way, but nevertheless — away,” he said. The now-king “was entering a new space, a closed space, a tightly insular space.”
“Willy and I would see less of Pa, I predicted, and that left me with mixed feelings,” Harry explained. “I didn’t relish losing a second parent, and I had complex feelings about gaining a step-parent who, I believed, had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar.”
5. Harry on Charles and Camilla’s wedding in ‘Spare’: Realizing ‘they’re really happy’
Despite the aforementioned “mixed feelings,” Harry couldn’t help but see his father glow with happiness when he married Camilla.
“I saw Pa’s smile and it was hard to argue with that, and harder still to deny the cause: Camilla,” Harry said in Spare. “I wanted so many things,” he added. “But I was surprised to discover at their wedding that one of the things I wanted most, still, was for my father to be happy.”
“In a funny way,” Harry continued, “I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy?”
The now-38-year-old went on to recall what he’d thought as the newlyweds left the ceremony. “I do remember watching them drive off and thinking: They’re happy. They’re really happy. Damn, I’d like all of us to be happy.”
