King ‘didn’t want Meghan to be another Diana’
Duke claims father did not want to support Meghan because he believed she would steal the spotlight
THE Duke of Sussex has claimed that the King did not want to support Meghan financially because he feared she would eclipse his popularity just as Diana, Princess of Wales, had done.
He writes in his memoir, Spare, that his father asked whether Meghan intended to keep working as an actor. When he said that it was unlikely, Charles is alleged to have replied: “Well, my dear son, you already know that we don’t have money to spare.”
Prince Harry claims that, in reality,
‘Father could not face the prospect of a resplendent royal taking the limelight and dominating monarchy’
the King could not face the prospect of “a novel and resplendent” Royal family member taking the limelight and “dominating the monarchy”.
In an apparent reference to his mother, he writes: “He had experienced that before and he had no interest in letting it happen to him again.” The King did go on to provide financial support to the Sussexes during their time as working royals. But, he ended it once the couple moved to North America and abandoned their duties.
During the Sussexes’ interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, the Duke said that his father had “literally cut me off financially”.
In his book, he also revealed that he had not realised he would have to ask the late Queen for permission to marry, thinking the protocol was absurd.
‘That kind of photo would have pushed Dad and Camilla off every front page. And that couldn’t be tolerated’
THE Duke of Sussex has alleged that the King wanted to avoid financially supporting his wife, Meghan, because he was jealous that she might become a new Diana and steal the limelight from him.
In his new memoir, Spare, the Duke says his father raised the subject during a visit to the Sandringham Estate, where Prince Harry would need to ask the late Queen’s permission to marry Meghan Markle, who was a divorcée.
The two were in a Land Rover driving to the Norfolk estate, alongside Prince William, when, according to the book, the King asked whether Meghan intended to keep acting.
When Prince Harry said that she would probably not and would want to live with him in the UK, he claims the King, then Prince of Wales, said, “Well, my dear son, you already know that we don’t have money to spare.”
The book claims Charles said he was already having difficulties supporting Harry’s brother, William, and his wife, then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. While Prince Harry writes that he did not respond at the time, in the book he engages in a sustained attack on his father for thinking he was “supporting them”. He insists, the support was actually a form of salary for their royal roles. There was an implicit agreement, he said, that required royals to live in a “gilded cage” and give up their autonomy in return for “food and clothing”.
The Duke questioned how his father could claim their “captivity was costing him too much money” when he was earning “millions from the tremendously lucrative” Duchy of Cornwall.
The reality, Prince Harry claims to have realised, was that the King had previously experienced being eclipsed and could not face “a novel and resplendent” royal who would take the limelight from him and his wife, Camilla, and “dominate the monarchy”.
“He had experienced that before and he had no interest in letting it happen to him again,” the Duke writes, in an apparent allusion to his mother, Diana.
The King did go on to provide financial support to the Sussexes during their time as working royals but he eventually ended it once the couple moved to the United States and finished their royal duties after a transition period.
During the Sussexes’ televised interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, the Duke said that his father had “literally cut me off financially”.
He has linked the issue to the cost of private security for his family, believed to be in the millions of pounds, which is no longer funded by the taxpayer.
The Duke also revealed that he had not realised he would have to ask the late Queen for permission to marry, thinking it absurd that a grown man could not wed without permission, and that royal aides had to explain the law to him and remind him of the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson.
The Duke of Windsor, Prince Harry’s great uncle, had been King Edward VIII but chose to abdicate rather than break off his relationship with Simpson, who was a divorced American.
Prince Harry details the moment at Sandringham when he asked his grandmother if he could marry Meghan. He writes that she seemed surprised at needing to grant her permission and, after appearing to hesitate, said: “I suppose I have to say yes to you.”
The apparently ambiguous answer left the Duke, he claims, doubting whether the late Queen was sincere in saying yes or simply joking around with him a little.
It was not only Meghan that Prince Harry claims the King was jealous of. Elsewhere in Spare, he alleges that the future monarch did not like it when the Cambridges received public attention.
Prince Harry claims that in 2015, the King was becoming increasingly unhappy with the amount of publicity that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were receiving.
“Willy did everything [the King] wanted, and sometimes he didn’t want him to do much, because my dad and Camilla didn’t like Willy and Kate getting too much publicity,” he writes.
The Duke of Sussex claims that ahead of one particular public engagement, the future King’s staff insisted that Catherine not be photographed holding a tennis racket lest she take attention away from him.
“Undoubtedly, that kind of photo would have pushed Dad and Camilla off every front page. And that couldn’t be tolerated under any circumstances,” Prince Harry writes.
Much of the book deals with Prince Harry’s lingering trauma over the death of his mother, and while he appears to believe that his father would rather avoid the subject of Diana at all costs, he and Meghan cannot escape her.
In one section of Spare, the Duke writes of visiting his mother’s grave at Althorp along with Meghan.
They rowed out together to the island on a lake where she was laid to rest and, while there, the Duke took a private moment.
He then sensed, he writes, that Meghan wanted her own time alone at the tomb, so he left her there.
“When I returned, she was on her knees with her eyes closed and her palms flat against the stone,” he writes, adding that Meghan had told him she’d asked his late mother for “clarity and guidance”.
In a separate chapter, Prince Harry says that he visited again on the 20th anniversary of her death alongside his brother Prince William. It was at this point that he told his brother that he believed Diana had “guided” him to Meghan.
As well as the clashes over money, the Duke writes about how his father was dismissive of his concerns over press intrusion, telling him simply to not read the papers.
While Prince Harry turned to his father for help, the Duchess of Sussex phoned Camilla only to be told that, if they wished to escape the press’s attention, the Duke should take the job of governor-general of Bermuda, the tiny mid-atlantic island.
That, the Duke said, would come with the “added bonus” of making him and his wife disappear from the picture.