A new book about King Charles is packed with information about his feuding sons and their combustible relationship.
“Our King: Charles III — The Man and the Monarch Revealed” by royal family expert Robert Jobson will be on shelves April 13, but selections of the book were published early in British tabloids.
Here are five of the biggest bombshells from those excerpts:
Charles kept Meghan off the royal payroll
When Prince Harry told Charles and his brother, William, that he planned to marry Meghan Markle, he got a lukewarm response, according to Jobson.
“Are you sure, Harold?” William reportedly asked.
And rather than congratulating his son, Charles responded by telling Harry that he wouldn’t be adding Meghan to the payroll during their relationship. Charles said he was already paying for Queen Consort Camilla and William and Kate’s growing family.
“This infuriated Harry,” Dobson writes.
Charles and William stopped trusting Harry
Harry and Meghan’s March 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey unsurprisingly burned quite a few bridges in the royal family. Charles and William met afterward to do damage control.
“From then on, Harry’s father and brother decided, they would no longer treat him as a trusted — if often infuriating — member of the family,” Jobson writes. “In short, they would never again meet Harry alone. There would always have to be another person in the room.”
The two men were particularly upset that Harry claimed to know they felt “trapped” as members of the royal family, according to the book.
Even Queen Elizabeth II was tired of Harry’s drama
According to Jobson, by the time Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, “Harry had precious few supporters left in the family.”
One of those supporters had been his grandmother, but even she was tired of Harry’s actions, Jobson writes.
“The Queen was frankly mystified by (Harry and Meghan’s) behavior, describing it as ‘quite mad,’” Jobson writes. “She came to believe, however, that her grandson was ‘so consumed’ by his love for his wife that it was ‘clouding his judgment.’”
Queen Elizabeth was also disappointed by Harry and Meghan’s decision to step away from the royal family and move to America.
Meghan was cut out of the famous “Megxit” meeting because the queen was worried her video call wouldn’t be secure and could be recorded while the other royals met in person.
Princess Kate did not enjoy walking with Harry and Meghan
After the Queen’s death, Harry, Meghan, William and Kate greeted people outside Windsor Castle in a show of family unity and strength.
However, it was all a show, according to the new book. Tensions were so high that Kate called the simple walkabout “one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do.”
Jobson cited sources that called the show of unity a complete “illusion.”
Charles was upset when Harry announced his relationship with Meghan
When Harry released a statement confirming his relationship with Meghan in 2016, Charles was on a trip to Bahrain.
“As any member of the Royal Family could have predicted, press attention immediately switched from the tour to his besotted son and the new girlfriend,” Jobson writes.
Charles did not enjoy that fact. He was angry at Harry about the timing and considered it bad manners to interrupt the tour with relationship news.
“He would never have done such a thing if the Queen was on tour,” a source told Jobson. “Understandably, there is a hierarchy and a grid system, but Prince Harry seemed to think when it came to Meghan Markle, she would always take precedence.”
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