Prince Harry has made a number of explosive claims about his stepmother, Camilla, Queen Consort.
In his interview with Anderson Cooper for CBS’ 60 Minutes, the Duke of Sussex described Camilla Parker-Bowles as “the villain,” while noting that she had needed to “rehabilitate her image” after Princess Diana famously described her as being the “third person” in her and Charles’ marriage.
“She was the villain. She was the third person in their marriage. She needed to rehabilitate her image,” Harry said in Sunday’s interview, before confirming that he and his brother Prince William begged their father not to marry Camilla.
“We didn’t think it was necessary,” he explained. “We thought that it was going to cause more harm than good, and that if he was now with his person that surely that’s enough. Why go that far when you don’t necessarily need to?
“We wanted him to be happy and we saw how happy he was with her, so at the time it was OK.”
King Charles III and the now-Queen Consort were famously involved in an affair during the then-Prince of Wales’ marriage to Princess Diana, which lasted from 1981 to 1996. King Charles announced his engagement to Camilla Parker-Bowles in February 2005, with the pair tying the knot on 9 April 2005.
In his new book Spare, which hits shelves on 10 January, Prince Harry has claimed Camilla launched a “campaign” to marry his father, now King Charles III, in the British press. Harry writes that while he and William “supported” their father’s relationship with Camilla and “endorsed” her, they asked him not to marry her.
“Shortly after our private summits with [Camilla], she began to play the long game,” the prince writes. “A campaign aimed at marriage, and eventually the Crown, with Pa’s blessing we presumed.”
“Stories began to appear everywhere in all the papers about her private conversation with Willie. Stories that contained pinpoint accurate details, none of which had come from Willie, of course. They could only have been leaked by the other one other person present.”
During the CBS interview, Cooper read out an excerpt from the highly-anticipated book. “I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she would be less dangerous if she was happy,” he read, before asking Harry why he felt his stepmother was dangerous.
“Because of the need for her to rehabilitate her image, that made her dangerous,” the duke responded. “Because of the connections she was forging within the British press, and there was open willingness on both sides to trade information.
“And with the family built on hierarchy, and with her on her way to being Queen Consort, there were going to be people – or bodies – left in the street because of that.”
In his autobiography, Harry writes that Camilla “sacrificed me on her personal PR altar”.
Spare is scheduled for release on Tuesday (10 January), but extracts from the book were published by the UK press earlier this week after it was accidentally put on sale in Spain, five days before its official launch date.
One excerpt from the memoir states that his stepmother allegedly turned Prince Harry’s bedroom into her dressing room. He claimed the Queen Consort changed over his room at Clarence House in London shortly after he moved out, according to Page Six, which obtained a copy of the book.
The duke said that although he “tried not to care,” he couldn’t help but be upset by the change. “I tried not to care. But especially the first time I saw it, I cared,” he recalled.
As for the first time Prince Harry was introduced to the Queen Consort, Harry reportedly likened the meeting to an “injection,” with the duke writing: “Close your eyes and you won’t even feel it.”
