Prince Harry will “never be forgiven” for revealing details of intimate conversation with his father King Charles and brother Prince William in his shocking memoir, royal insiders have said.
Sources close to the royal family said the Duke of Sussex would be branded a “traitor” because of Spare, which includes allegations that William attacked him as they argued about Harry’s wife Meghan.
A former royal staffer, who knew William and Harry while working in the household, said there would “never be a way back for Harry”.
The source said: “I believe he will never be forgiven. After everything he has said about privacy and intrusion, this is hard to comprehend. His words are so vicious and targeted.
“I don’t doubt he still loves his father and his brother but it’s impossible to see how he won’t come to bitterly regret his decision to do this.
“He knows he will be labelled a traitor, by crossing a red line so many times, his father, his brother, the Princess (of Wales) and Camilla, it’s utterly extraordinary.”
The book is set to be released on Tuesday, and tight pre-launch security was supposed to be in place to ensure details were not published before then. But the Mirror obtained a copy after Spare accidentally went on sale early in Spain.
In the book, Harry claims he killed 25 Taliban insurgents while serving in Afghanistan, took cocaine when he was 17, the age at which he also lost his virginity to an “older woman” in a field outside a pub.
But it is the revelations about his family that are most sensational.
Royal sources suggested William would be “devastated” by the book, one insider labelling it “an utter distortion of reality”.
He reveals that he and his brother call each other Willy and Harold, but his wrath across 557 pages is unforgiving. He claims William attacked him, grabbing him by the collar and throwing him to the ground in a row about Meghan. And he says Charles later sounded “like an old man” as he begged his sons to make peace.
Harry also claims Charles would joke with him about whether he was his “real father” after rumours Princess Diana had engaged in an affair,
Harry also claims that after Charles and Diana divorced he and William begged their father not to marry Camilla, fearing she would become their “wicked step-mother”.
And he claimed William pointed a finger at Meghan and called her “rude” after she said Kate, then pregnant with Prince Louis, must have “baby-brain” because of her hormones.
Harry also accuses Kate and William of playing a key part in his decision to dress as a Nazi for a fancy dress party in 2005, suggesting they “howled” with laughter at his costume.
He also addresses his use of racist language, claiming when he was 21 he had no idea calling someone from Pakistan a P was offensive.
He used the term to refer to Ahmed Raza Khan, while filming his Sandhurst colleagues. Harry was heard saying: “Ah, our little P friend.” The clip was eventually sold to a newspaper.
He said he had “heard many people use the word as a child” and “not seen anyone wince or get upset”.
Harry writes: “I didn’t know anything about unconscious biases either. I was twenty-one years old, I had grown isolated from the real world and wrapped in privilege, and I believed that word was the same as ‘Yankee’, harmless.”
He also reveals how 10 years after his mother was killed in a car crash in Paris, he drove through the tunnel where she died trying to find closure.
Harry also claims he and William were dissuaded from jointly asking for an investigation into Diana’s death as they disagreed with the “conclusion, that our mother’s driver was drunk and, as a result, that was the only cause of the accident”.
The brothers believed the paparazzi who had been following the car had “got off lightly”.
He writes: “Why weren’t they in prison? Who had sent them? And why weren’t those people in jail either? What other reason could there be apart from corruption and cover-ups.”
They had agreed to ask “jointly for the investigation to be reopened”. But, he writes: “Those who decided dissuaded us.”
Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace on Thursday refused to comment on the book’s allegations.
More trailers from an interview with ITV News at Ten anchor Tom Bradby also emerged yesterday. In it, Harry refused to say if he would attend the King’s coronation on May 6. In another trailer for an interview with Good Morning America, Harry branded William his “arch-nemesis”.
He said: “There has always been this competition between us, weirdly.
“I think it really plays into the ‘heir/spare’.”
Spare by Prince Harry, available Tuesday, RRP: £28
