King Charles Pleaded With Feuding Prince William and Prince Harry Not to ‘Make My Final Years a Misery,’ Harry Writes in ‘Spare’
In a leaked excerpt from Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, he shares how King Charles pleaded with him and Prince William to mend their relationship. The trio gathered together for a “secret meeting” in an attempt to “find a solution,” but Harry discovered his father and brother truly didn’t understand why he and Meghan left the UK.
Prince Harry recalled King Charles’ plea for him and Prince William at ‘secret meeting’
In his book, Prince Harry shed light on a meeting between him, William, and Charles after Prince Philip’s Windsor Castle funeral in April 2021.
According to the excerpt from Harry’s memoir Spare printed on The Guardian site, Charles stood between the brothers “looking up at our flushed faces,” Harry recalled. He told them, “Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery.”
In an excerpt the Mirror translated from a copy of the memoir obtained from a bookshop in Spain, Harry recalls the details of their meeting.
“The Windsors had been at war for months. Intermittent feuds had occurred in our ranks for centuries but this was different,” he wrote. It was a full-on public rupture which threatened to become unrepairable.”
Harry continued, “Therefore, although I had flown home only and exclusively to attend grandfather’s funeral, I had decided to take advantage of the trip to ask for that secret meeting with my elder brother Willy and my father to talk about how things were going. To find a solution.”
Harry compared the meeting to other moments of ‘intense vulnerability’ in his life
Prince Harry said he waited for them to arrive and worried they weren’t going to show up. “Finally I saw them. Shoulder to shoulder, advanced towards me briskly, they looked very serious, almost threatening,” he remembered. “What’s more, I would say they were on the same wavelength.”
Harry noted, “In normal circumstances I would say they would be talking about one subject or another but at that moment they seemed in symphony, conspiring.”
Harry greeted them with a smile but they didn’t respond. He compared the moment of “intense vulnerability” to that he had “experienced at other decisive moments” of his life. “Like when I walked behind my mother’s coffin. Or entered battle for the first time,” Harry wrote.
He got a “painfully lukewarm” response when he said hello to them and they made small talk before they “got to the point.” Harry admitted that his nerves and emotions got in the way of him being “succinct and precise.”
Harry said the scene got ‘heated’
Prince Harry didn’t want the discussion to turn into a fight. “How it wasn’t long before I discovered that didn’t depend on me,” he explained. “My father and Willy had come looking for a fight. Every time I tried to offer a new explanation one of them would interrupt me.”
Things took a turn as he and William “began to insult each other, with the same accusations we had been making for months.”
He noted, “Things got so heated my father raised his hands. ‘Enough,’ he said looking at our angry faces, “Please boys, don’t turn this my last years into a torment. His voice sounded hoarse, fragile. It seemed, to be honest, like the voice of an old man.”
Harry said he asked his brother if he knew why he and Meghan left the UK. William responded, “No.”
He wrote, “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. One thing was to disagree about who was to blame or what could have been done so things turned out differently but for him to claim he had no idea about the reasons why I had left my birthplace, the country I had fought for and been ready to die for, my Mother Country.”
His father also wasn’t clear about Harry and Meghan’s reasons for leaving. “Wow, I thought. Perhaps it’s true they don’t know. Amazing but maybe true,” Harry noted. “If they didn’t know the reasons why I left maybe what was happening was they didn’t know me at all.”
He added, “Perhaps they had never really known me. The idea made me feel cold and a terrible loneliness but it also fired me up. I thought ‘I have to explain it to them.’ How can I explain it to them?’ I can’t. It would take too long. Moreover it’s obvious they are not willing to listen. For the time being they’re not at least. Not today.”
