Prince Harry’s highly-anticipated memoir, “Spare,” was officially released this week, and he didn’t spare any details.
Contrary to Harry’s Netflix documentary “Harry & Meghan,” which was slammed for its lack of explosive reveals, “Spare” truly is a tell-all. Harry doesn’t just expose family secrets in the book, but lets audiences in on a fair share of embarrassing stories from his own past — such as the time he peed his pants before his first date with Meghan Markle.
CNN anchor Don Lemon compared Harry’s extreme reveals to “airing dirty family laundry,” per the New York Post.
The memoir is stuffed with explosive reveals shared from Harry’s perspective. But if you don’t want to read the entire book, here are 10 major takeaways.
1. For years, Harry didn’t believe Diana was really dead
Harry wrote that his father, now-King Charles, woke him up the morning after his mother, Princess Diana, died to let him know what had happened.
“He sat down on the edge of the bed,” Harry writes. “He put a hand on my knee. ‘Darling boy, Mummy’s been in a car crash.’” He went on, “‘They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it,’” Harry wrote in the book, per The New York Times.
Harry barely remembers how he reacted to the news, or what he said, but he claims he did not cry — not until he saw her coffin buried. He was 12 years old at the time.
Harry looked for closure to his mother’s untimely death in many ways. It took him years to accept that she was really gone. He was under the impression that his mother was not really dead, and that she had simply gone into hiding, as previously reported by the Deseret News.
At one point, Harry asked his driver to re-create the journey his mother took through a Paris tunnel the night she was killed.
“I’d thought driving the tunnel would bring an end, or brief cessation, to the pain, the decade of unrelenting pain. Instead, it brought on the start of Pain, Part Deux,” wrote Harry, per CNN.
2. King Charles pled with his sons not to fight
Harry returned to the UK in 2021 for the first time after his royal departure to attend the funeral of his grandfather, Prince Philip, who was the husband of Queen Elizabeth.
“So, though I’d flown home specifically and solely for Grandpa’s funeral, while there I’d asked for this secret meeting with my older brother, Willy, and my father talk about the state of things,” Harry wrote, per CNN.
Harry claims he tried to explain his side of things, but that his brother, William, had “come ready for a fight,” per CNN.
Charles asked Harry and William to not “make my final years a misery,” Harry wrote, according to CNN.
3. Harry’s goodbye to the queen
In his memoir, Harry recounts how he responded to the queen’s death. His father, King Charles, was the first to call Harry and inform him that his grandmother’s health “had taken a turn,” per CNN.
Harry texted William to ask if he and Kate were flying to Balmoral. According to Harry, William never responded.
When Harry finally arrived at Balmoral Castle, his grandmother had already passed. He wanted a moment with her to say goodbye.
“I braced myself, went in. The room was dimly lit, unfamiliar — I’d been inside it only once in my life. I moved ahead uncertainly, and there she was. I stood, frozen, staring. I stared and stared. It was difficult, but I kept on, thinking how I’d regretted not seeing my mother at the end. Years of lamenting that lack of proof, postponing my grief for want of proof. Now I thought: Proof. Careful what you wish for,” said Harry, per CNN.
4. Meghan and Kate’s relationship
Prince Harry recalled a few tense interactions between Meghan and Kate .
In one case, Harry described a confrontation between the women after Meghan made a comment about Kate’s “baby brain because of her hormones” before Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding, per People magazine.
Kate, the princess of Wales, gave birth to her third child, Louis, a month before Harry and Meghan got married. According to the book, Kate responded to Meghan, “We’re not close enough for you to talk about my hormones!” per CNN.
In another instance, the women got emotional over a tube of lip gloss, according to Harry.
Before a joint appearance at the Royal Foundation Forum in 2018, Meghan asked Kate if she could borrow some lip gloss, an act Harry described as “an American thing,” per Cosmopolitan.
“Kate, taken aback, went into her handbag and reluctantly pulled out a small tube,” Harry wrote, per Cosmopolitan. “Meg squeezed some onto her finger and applied it to her lips. Kate grimaced.”
5. Harry suffered from panic attacks
In the book, Harry described suffering from intense anxiety, which evolved into full-blown anxiety attacks, reports The New York Times. Harry believes the anxiety came to him as a form of PTSD due to the death of his mother and his time in the military.
When Harry filled his father in on what he was going through, Charles reportedly responded, “I suppose it’s my fault. I should’ve got you the help you needed years ago.” Harry wrote, per The New York Times, “I assured him that it wasn’t his fault. But I appreciated the apology.”
6. Meghan convinced Harry to go to therapy
Harry shared that one night while he and Meghan were dating, Harry snapped at her over a comment he took the wrong way. Meghan left the room, Harry wrote, per The New York Times.
“I went and found her upstairs. She was sitting in the bedroom. She was calm, but said in a quiet, level tone that she would never stand for being spoken to like that,” Harry wrote, per The New York Times.
According to the book, Meghan asked Harry where he learned that behavior.
“Where did you ever hear a man speak like that to a woman? Did you overhear adults speak that way when you were growing up?” Meghan was quoted asking Harry. “Yes,” he responded, per The New York Times.
Harry told Meghan he had tried therapy before, but it had not worked. She told him he needed to give it another try.
7. Harry did his own laundry while he watched ‘Friends’
Harry claims he did his own laundry, revealing that his life is not as glamorous as most people expect.
“Besides my own laundry (often laid out to dry on my radiators) I did my own chores, my own cooking, my own food shopping,” Harry wrote, per Variety. “People often speculated that I was clinging to my bachelor life because it was so glamorous. Many evenings I’d think: if only they could see me now. Then I’d go back to folding my underwear and watching ‘The One with Monica and Chandler’s Wedding.’”
Apparently Harry is an avid viewer of “Friends,” which he would watch while folding his laundry. He even compared himself to Chandler Bing, one of the sitcom’s main characters, because they both use humor to cope with trauma, reports Yahoo News.
8. The reason Meghan’s personal assistant quit
Harry revealed his perspective on why Meghan’s personal assistant quit. He said that “nerves were shattering, people were sniping” during the weeks before Meghan was accused of being “difficult” to work with, per Newsweek.
“She was also said to have driven our assistant to quit; in fact that assistant was asked to resign by Palace HR after we showed them evidence she’d traded on her position with Meg to get freebies. But because we couldn’t speak publicly about the reasons for the assistant’s departure, rumors filled the void,” Harry wrote, per Newsweek.
According to “Spare,” the palace was under a lot of pressure around the time Meghan was accused of “bullying” the staff. People were working around the clock and getting exhausted.
“More than once a staff member slumped across their desk and wept. For all this, every bit of it, Willy blamed one person. Meg. He told me so several times and he got cross when I told him he was out of line. He was just repeating the press narrative, spouting fake stories he’d read or been told,” Harry said, per Newsweek.
9. The royal family made showrunners change ‘Suits’ scripts
Meghan continued to star on the TV show “Suits” after her relationship with Harry was made public — and apparently Buckingham Palace got involved.
“The show writers were frustrated, because they were often advised by the Palace comms (communications) team to change lines of dialogue, what her character would do, how she would act,” Harry shared, per Variety.
Harry also shared that William and Kate were fans of “Suits.” He said that when he first informed them of who he was dating “their mouths fell open.”
“I was baffled until Willy and Kate explained that they were regular — nay, religious — viewers of ‘Suits.’ Great, I thought, laughing. I’ve been worrying about the wrong thing. All this time I’d though Willy and Kate might not welcome Meg into the family, but now I have to worry about them hounding her for an autograph,” wrote Harry, per Variety.
10. Harry said William didn’t want him to be his best man
The public believe Harry was William’s best man at his wedding, but according to Harry, that is not true.
“The public had been told that I was to be best man, but that was a bare-faced lie,” Harry wrote, per The New York Times. “Willy didn’t want me giving a best-man speech. He didn’t think it was safe to hand me a live mic and put me in a position to go off-script. He wasn’t wrong.”