Prince Harry has revealed the harsh one-word response he received from King Charles and Prince William when he requested a "secret meeting" to work out a solution to their ongoing family feud .
In his bombshell memoir Spare , the Duke of Sussex recounted his return to London for Prince Philip's funeral in April 2021. It was his first trip back to the UK since stepping down from the Royal Family and following the explosive Oprah Winfrey interview with him and Meghan Markle , where they laid bare their Royal struggles.
Harry described feeling anxious while waiting for William and Charles, even fearing at one point that they had decided against meeting him. He recalled the moment he finally saw his father and brother approaching with a "grim, almost menacing" expression.
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Harry said that when he offered them "a weak smile", they didn't reciprocate, which made him feel "a hugely intense vulnerability" and reminded him of his late mother, Princess Diana, hoping she could provide him strength during the meeting. Harry said that when he greeted his brother and father, they responded with a single and "painfully tepid" word: "Harold."
Harry penned: "At last, I saw them. Shoulder to shoulder, striding towards me, they looked grim, almost menacing. More, they looked tightly aligned. My stomach dropped. Normally they'd be squabbling about one thing or another, but now they appeared to be in lockstep - in league. The thought occurred: Hang on, are we meeting for a walk...or a duel?
"I rose from the wooden bench, made a tentative step towards them, gave a weak smile. They didn't smile back. Now my heart really started thrashing in my chest. Deep breaths, I told myself. Apart from fear, I was feeling a kind of hyper-awareness, and a hugely intense vulnerability, which I'd experienced at other key moments of my life. Walking behind my mother's coffin. Going into battle for the first time. Giving a speech in the middle of a panic attack.
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"There was that same sense of embarking on a quest, and not knowing if I was up to it, while also fully knowing that there was no turning back. That Fate was in the saddle. OK, Mummy, I thought, picking up the pace, here goes. Wish me luck. We met in the middle of the path. Willy? Pa? Hello. Harold. Painfully tepid."
Following the release of Spare, Harry spoke to The Telegraph and made an unexpected claim that he had actually omitted a number of stories about his family. He said: "It could have been two books, put it that way. And the hard bit was taking things out.
"There are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don't want the world to know. Because I don't think they would ever forgive me."
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