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The big shockers from Prince Harry’s memoir: Cocaine use, killing Taliban fighters, messages from Diana after death

FP Explainers January 6, 2023, 15:56:40 IST

Prince Harry’s memoir Spare is dropping one bombshell after another. He speaks about his mother Diana, his tumultuous teens when he took cocaine and lost his virginity, the tension between Meghan and Kate, and his reservations about Camilla

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The big shockers from Prince Harry’s memoir: Cocaine use, killing Taliban fighters, messages from Diana after death

A “wicked” stepmother, a “rude’” sister-in-law, and a fistfight between brothers. One of the world’s most famous families is also a complicated one. The Royals of Britain have always come with their share of drama and now Prince Harry’s bombshell memoir ‘ Spare is spelling more beans.

It’s five days to the book’s release but amid the highly restrictive security around it, Spare has gone on sale in Spain and The Guardian has secured a copy. As accusations and revelations about the Royals, leave everyone stunned, Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace have been tight-lipped.

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We take a look at some shockers from Harry, the estranged prince.

Also read: Royal Feud: How Britain’s Prince Harry has gone to war with his family

Message from Diana from beyond the grave

In his memoir, Prince Harry described how sadness over his mother, Princess of Wales Diana’s death led him to seek help from a woman who “claimed to have ‘powers’” to relay a message.

According to The Guardian, which claims to have a copy of the book, Harry doesn’t mention when or where the meeting took place. However, he explains that he met the woman because his trusted friends recommended her.

Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex gestures at the unveiling of a statue of their mother, Princess Diana at The Sunken Garden in Kensington Palace, London. AFP

He wrote in the book, “The minute we sat down together I felt an energy around her.” He says the woman told him that his mother was with him, to which he replied, “I know. I’ve felt that of late.”

As the woman told the prince that Diana was with him “right now”, his neck grew warm and his eyes watered. She told him that Diana knew that he was “looking for clarity, felt confused, and had so many questions,” and that answers would come in time, the report claims.

According to Harry, the woman told him, “You’re living the life she couldn’t. You’re living the life she wanted for you.”

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Killing Taliban fighters

In his 400-page memoir, Harry claims that he killed 25 Taliban fighters while he was serving as a helicopter pilot during his second tour in Afghanistan, reported The Telegraph.

Notably, the 38-year-old, who was known as ‘Captain Wales’ in the military, was first deployed to the Helmand province as a forward air controller in 2007. He returned to Afghanistan’s Camp Bastion in the south in September 2012 to fly Apache helicopters where he stayed for 20 weeks. He provided helicopter support to the International Security Assistance Force and Afghan forces that operated throughout the Helmand province.

Britain’s Prince Harry joins British troops and service personal remaining in Afghanistan. AFP

Disclosing the details of his military service for the first time, Harry says that he did not think of the 25 Talibanis as “people” but instead as “chess pieces” that had been removed from the board – “bad guys eliminated.”

According to the report, the Prince said that it is not possible to kill someone “if you see them as a person” and that the army had “trained me to ‘other’ them and they had trained me well.”

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As per the report, Harry says that he flew on six missions that resulted in “the taking of human lives”, something of which he is neither proud nor ashamed.

“Took cocaine a few times”

Prince Harry has also admitted to taking cocaine a “few” times.

According to Daily Mail, he writes that he had been questioned by an unnamed member of the Royal household staff during his grandmother and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 after a journalist asked the Palace about his drug-taking habits. He admits that he lied during the interrogation and that taking cocaine “wasn’t much fun.”

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex has also admitted to taking cocaine a “few” times in his memoir ‘Spare’. AFP

“It wasn’t much fun, and it didn’t make me feel particularly happy the way the others seemed to, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main goal. To feel. To be different,” he writes.

“Camila plotted to marry Charles and take the Crown”

In Spare, Prince Harry accuses Camilla, now Queen Consort, of plotting to marry Charles, obtaining the Crown, and leaking stories to the media.

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Harry writes, “Shortly after our private meetings with her, she began to develop her long-term strategy, a campaign directed at marriage and with time, the Crown (with the blessing of our father, we supposed).”

“News stories started appearing in all the newspapers about her conversations with Willy, stories which recounted lots of small details, none of which came from my brother, of course,” he adds, according to a report in The Daily Mail.

King Charles III and Britain’s Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for the Royal Family’s traditional Christmas Day service at St Mary Magdalene Church. AFP

Harry also claimed that he and his brother William “begged” their father then-Prince of Wales not to remarry after Princess Diana’s death as they feared that she would be their “wicked stepmother.”

The book further claims that Charles tried to win over his sons before asking the public to accept Camilla. Harry recalls his first meeting with her and compares it to taking an “injection.”

He writes, “I remember wondering… if she would be cruel to me; if she would be like all the wicked stepmothers in the stories”.

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Losing virginity

Harry recalls losing his virginity in a field behind a busy pub, to an “older lady" who “loved horses very much". But he adds it was a “humiliating episode” and rued it happening in the open, where they might have been seen.

A copy of the “En la sombra” (In the shadow) Spanish version of Britain’s Prince Harry’s autobiography “Spare” is pictured at a reader’s home in Madrid. AFP

Also read: Bombshell Alert! Did Prince William assault Harry, encourage him to wear Nazi uniform?

“Well, it’s rude, Meghan”: William’s confrontation

The Duke of Sussex alleges that his brother Prince William, once called Meghan Markle “difficult,” “rude,” and “abrasive” during the argument that took place at Nottingham Cottage, reported The Guardian.

He told William that he was repeating the press narrative of his wife’s character and that he expected better.

Additionally, Harry also revealed that Meghan offended his sister-in-law Kate Middleton by telling her she must have a “baby brain because of her hormones”. This reportedly offended Kate who demanded an apology, saying they weren’t close enough

Meghan made the remark during the run-up to the Sussexes’ Windsor wedding in May 2018.  Kate, who was upset, had given birth to her third child, Prince Louis, a month before.

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Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain’s Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex on the long Walk at Windsor Castle. AFP

In the book, Harry explains there was a discussion about the timing of the wedding rehearsal and the flower girl dresses and Kate was very upset.

“It caused a huge row because Meghan was told that she wasn’t close enough to her sister-in-law to discuss her hormones and it wasn’t the way people spoke to each other within the Royal Family,” a well-placed source told Daily Mail.

The source added, “The book makes clear that Meghan felt the fall-out wasn’t her fault, but it doesn’t exactly make her look very good either.”

William and Kate encouraged Harry to wear a Nazi costume

According to Page Six, Harry claims that William and Kate “howled” with laughter when they saw him dressed up in the Nazi costume in 2005.

Harry, then 20, had sparked a massive outrage when he was pictured on the front of The Sun wearing the costume, complete with a swastika armband as a Nazi soldier from the Afrika Korps. He claimed that he called the couple to ask them whether he should wear a pilot’s uniform or a Nazi one to the “colonials and natives” themed party.

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The Sun features Harry, 20, the younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, wearing a khaki uniform with an armband emblazoned with a swastika, an emblem of the German WWII Nazi Party. AFP

The couple urged him to pick the latter, and both howled with laughter when he went home and tried it on for them.

With inputs from agencies

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