Will the British royal family survive a new burst of confessions? After an end to the year marked by the broadcast of the Netflix documentary on Harry and his wife Meghan without sensational allegations, the British monarchy faces much more damning revelations about the couple’s departure in 2020 for California with the publication on January 10 of the book The Alternatethe memoir of Prince Harry.
A story without filter and which is already causing a sensation: the Duke of Sussex recounts a violent altercation with his brother William, having taken cocaine, and his opposition to the remarriage of his father Charles, now king, according to extracts which leaked this Thursday.
Silence in Buckingham
Before this dreaded deadline, several media obtained copies of the work, in particular when Spanish bookstores put it on sale by mistake. There followed a flood of extracts that caused astonishment, from his bloody engagement in Afghanistan to sordid details such as his cocaine consumption or his loss of virginity.
Main shock: depending on the Guardian, the Duke of Sussex accuses his brother William, heir to the throne, of knocking him to the ground during a 2019 row over Meghan, whom Harry had married the previous year. William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my collar off, and knocked me to the ground,” Harry would relate, adding that he “landed on the dog bowl.” William would then “apologize”.
Buckingham Palace has remained silent on this information, as on the accusations made in the Netflix docuseries released last month. The couple blamed the royal family for not having protected them and Harry accused his brother of having “screamed” at him in 2020 in the presence of Elizabeth II.
The big unboxing
The flamboyant marriage in May 2018 between Prince Harry, now 38, and Meghan, a divorced mixed-race American actress, seemed to give the royal family a facelift. It quickly turned to family warfare and media harassment, pushing the “Sussexes” to leave the monarchy with a bang in 2020.
The couple have since publicly criticized the Royal Family and their communications teams, including in a 2021 interview where they accused a family member of racism. Since then the two brothers, once united behind the coffin of their mother Diana in 1997, have been openly cold, only appearing together on extremely rare occasions.
This great unboxing only reinforced the unpopularity of the Sussexes in the United Kingdom, where much of the press describes them as spoiled children. “I’m tired of all that, tired of hearing about the problems in their families when we all have our problems in our families,” said Catherine Doherty, a 63-year-old secretary in London, to AFP.
Scandals
The communication upstream of the publication promised to be precise, with interviews to be broadcast on Sunday and Monday in the United Kingdom and the United States, before the leaks began.
The MailOnline thus reveals that Harry explains that he opposed his father’s remarriage to Camilla, fearing that she would be a “nasty stepmother”. According to the tabloid The SunHarry also explains that William and his wife Kate encouraged him, when he was 20, to dress up as a Nazi at a costume party, which caused a scandal.
Sky News relates the passage where Harry admits having taken cocaine or that he and his brother William were dissuaded from requesting the reopening of the investigation into the death of their mother Diana. Harry also claims to have killed 25 “enemy combatants” during his missions in Afghanistan, without remorse or pride, reports the Daily Telegraph.
” Mission accomplished “
According to Guardian, Harry evokes throughout his memoirs the difficulty of being “the substitute”. He says in particular that on the day of his birth, his father Charles would have said to his mother Diana: “Magnificent! From now on you have given me an heir and a substitute – mission accomplished”.
These critics fall in the midst of a transition period for the British royal family after the accession to the throne of Charles III, following the death of Elizabeth II on September 8 at age 96. The sovereign of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth states is to be crowned on May 6, an event announced as grandiose and broadcast around the world.
Will Harry be there? In a trailer broadcast by ITV, the prince dodges, believing that “a lot of things could happen between now and then”.
An exclusive interview
Ahead of the release of his memoir, Prince Harry gave two interviews, one to ITV and the other to CBS in the United States, which is also due to air on Sunday.
The interview with Prince Harry, who publishes his memoirs when he is cold with the royal family, will be broadcast in France by TF1 on Monday evening, the day after it was broadcast by the British channel ITV, TF1 announced on Thursday.
This interview will be broadcast “exclusively in France on Monday January 9 at 11:10 p.m. on TF1 after the launch of the new series Toulouse-Lautrec high school “, said TF1 in a press release. This interview was conducted by Tom Bradby, journalist and presenter of the British channel ITV, which will broadcast it on Sunday evening.