The Duke of Sussex has reportedly claimed his brother “felt tremendous guilt” for not speaking up about his father’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, now the Queen Consort. In the Spanish translation of Harry’s memoir, which was accidentally released early in Spain and obtained by journalists from the US publication Page Six, the duke reportedly writes that the now-Prince of Wales had “long harboured suspicions about the Other Woman”.
Their father’s cheating – which was confirmed by the then-Prince of Wales in 1994 two years after his separation from Diana – had caused the older prince immense suffering as a child and teenager, Harry claims. “(It) confused him, tormented him, and when those suspicions were confirmed he felt tremendous guilt for having done nothing, said nothing, sooner,” Page Six reports the duke wrote in a copy of his book translated from Spanish.
Their father and mother had separated in 1992 but in January 1993, transcripts of audio recordings between Charles and Camilla were published in the British tabloids which had been recorded in December 1989 when both were still married to other people. The audio had made clear the pair were romantically involved with each other.
In June 1994, the now-King would admit to his affair with the now-Queen Consort in a televised interview with Jonathan Dimbleby. A year later, in a now widely-condemned BBC Panorama interview with Diana, she would famously tell Martin Bashir that there were “three people in this marriage”.
In his yet-to-be-released memoir, Harry refences this line from his late mother, and writes that her “maths was off” as he and his brother, who he calls “Willy” in the book, were equally impacted by their father’s betrayal.
“She left Willy and me out of the equation,” the 38-year-old writes. “We didn’t understand what was going on with her and Pa, certainly, but we intuited enough, we sensed the presence of the Other Woman, because we suffered the downstream effects.”
Their father would eventually marry Camilla in April 2005. In an earlier leaked extract from Spare, the Duke of Sussex claims he and his brother begged their father not to marry the now-Queen Consort and that he wondered if she would one day be his “wicked stepmother”.
The autobiography, which is ghost-written by JR Moehringer, alleges that Charles once joked to his youngest son: “Who knows if I’m even your real father?” Harry said it was in “bad taste” due to long-existing rumours about a five-year affair between his mother Diana, Princess of Wales and cavalry officer James Hewitt.
Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace have declined to comment on the leaked claims from Harry’s book which emerged five days before the explosive, tell-all memoir is due to be published. The book includes details of the moment he was introduced to Camilla for the first time, according to The Sun newspaper, which also said it obtained a Spanish copy.
The duke reportedly claims he and his brother had separate meetings with her before she married the now-King in 2005. He said seeing her for the first time was like avoiding pain while getting an injection, writing: “This is nothing. Close your eyes and you won’t even feel it.” Harry also alleges that Camilla appeared “bored” during the meeting.
In an interview with the PA news agency in 2005, Harry denied that Camilla was a “wicked stepmother”, declaring that he and William “loved her to bits”. The duke described his father as a “much more relaxed” person since he married Camilla, and urged people to “feel sorry for her”.
“Everyone has to understand that it’s very hard for her. Look at the position she’s coming into. Don’t always feel sorry for me and William, feel sorry for her,” he said at the time. “She’s a wonderful woman and she’s made our father very, very happy, which is the most important thing.”
Also in the book, the duke claims he and his brother were willing to forgive her if she could make Charles happy, adding: “We saw that like us, he wasn’t. We could recognise the absent glances, the empty sighs, the frustration always visible on his face.”
Harry also claims that he and William told Charles they would welcome Camilla into the family on the condition he did not marry her and “begged” him not to do so. He alleges that his father did not respond to their pleas.
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