Princes Harry and William Urged King Charles Not to Marry Camilla

They were afraid she'd be like a storybook "evil stepmother."

With castles, princesses, and even horse-drawn carriages, the royal family's real life often does resemble a fairy tale, but according to a new excerpt supposedly pulled from Spare, Prince Harry's forthcoming memoir, things were not always enchanting. In a new passage published by the Daily Mail, Harry says that he and his brother, Prince William, urged their father, the now-King Charles but at the time Prince Charles, not to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles.

After the death of their mother in 1997, Charles publicly announced his relationship with Camilla, though everyone knew that they had been courting one another for years and years (see: The Crown, every Princess Diana documentary ever, and the British tabloids). In his book, Harry wrote that he thought that there was a possibility that Camilla would be like an evil stepmother.

"I remember wondering ... if she would be cruel to me; if she would be like all the wicked stepmothers in the stories," Harry reportedly wrote.

The outlet noted that the young princes were not completely against their father having a romantic relationship with Camilla — but that they were opposed to their father walking down the aisle with the "other woman."

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Charles and Camilla got married in April 2005. Subsequently, Camilla received the title of Duchess of Cornwall. After Queen Elizabeth II's death in late 2022, Charles became King Charles III and gave Camilla the title of Queen Consort.

In addition to the new passage, other leaks of Harry's book have revealed that the brothers got into a physical altercation over Harry's relationship with Meghan Markle. He claimed his older brother was "piping hot" and called Meghan "difficult," "rude" and "abrasive." Harry went on to say that his brother was simply "parrot[ing of] the press narrative" surrounding everything happening with Meghan.

"He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor," Harry wrote. "I landed on the dog's bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out."

Meghan later saw "scrapes and bruises" on his back.

"(She) wasn't that surprised, and wasn't all that angry," Harry said of the incident, according The Guardian. "She was terribly sad."

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