The Duke of Sussex has called into question the role he played at his brother’s wedding, saying he was not in fact the real best man for the Prince of Wales.
Harry reportedly said the ruse was carried out to save William’s two closest friends, James Meade and Thomas Van Straubenzee, from the attention the role would bring to their private lives.
Writing in his controversial memoir, Spare, which was accidentally released early in Spain, the duke said his apparent role as best man was a “bare-faced lie”, and that Mr Meade and Mr Van Straubenzee were the ones to give the traditional speech at the reception.
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The Daily Mirror obtained the Spanish version of Harry’s book and translated it, in which the prince writes: “Willy doesn’t want me giving a best man’s speech.”
He went on to explain how William was “wasted” on rum just hours before his wedding to Kate, and was intoxicated when greeting people on The Mall before tying the knot.
Harry said he offered his “tipsy” brother some mints, telling him: “You smell of alcohol” from “the aftermath of last night’s rum”.
But at his own wedding to Meghan some seven years later, Harry claims William ordered him to shave his beard as he could not stand the thought of his younger brother having a perk he was denied.
“At one point he actually ordered me, as the heir speaking to the spare, to shave,” he writes.
The book, due out on Tuesday and ghost written by JR Moehringer, comes after Harry and Meghan’s Netflix documentary, in which the duke said he was terrified when William screamed and shouted at him during a tense Sandringham summit in 2020.
The memoir is being published four months after the death of Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and the start of his father’s reign as King, and follows years of turmoil for the royal family amid the Megxit crisis, the Duke of Edinburgh’s death, accusations of racism in the Sussexes’ Oprah interview and the brothers’ long-running feud.
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