Prince Harry admitted he felt heartbroken in a shocking moment when his brother Prince William finally took his side. The Duke Of Sussex detailed an incident that left him reeling and struggling to cope as he described how he turned to his brother for support. Harry spoke about how a seven-page newspaper article accusing him of having issues with substance abuse left him devastated.
Writing in his memoir Spare Harry explained the moment from January 2002 when he made front page news under the headline ‘Harry’s Drugs Shame’. Harry branded the article as “lies” as he explained how the story “not only had me down as a habitual drug user, it had me recently going to rehab. Rehab!”
Harry also explained that the editor “had got her mitts on some photos of Marko and me paying a visit to a suburban rehab centre, months earlier,” as he described the visit as “a typical part of my princely charitable work,” which the journalist had used and “repurposed the photos, made them visual aids for her libellous fiction.” The dismayed Prince said that he had then “gazed at the photos and read the story in shock.” He explained: “I felt sickened, horrified, I imagined everyone, all my countrymen and countrywomen, reading these things, believing them.”
Harry also expressed that it made him internally “hear people all across the Commonwealth gossiping about me.” He then went on to express that his father, Charles, and stepmother, Camilla, may have been a part of the story leaving him “heartbroken at the idea that this had been partly the work of my own family, my own father and future stepmother.”
Harry mused how they had “abetted this nonsense. For what? To make their own lives a bit easier?” He then detailed how he “phoned Willy, I couldn’t speak. He couldn’t either. He was sympathetic, and more.” Harry elaborated on the conversation further as he added: “At moments he was even angrier about the whole thing than I was, because he was privy to more details about the spin doctor and the backroom dealings that had led to this public sacrifice of the Spare.”
However, Harry admitted that William also played down his distress as he told him nothing could change what had happened. He continued: “And yet, in the same breath, he assured me that there was nothing to be done. This was Pa. This was Camilla. This was royal life.”
The brothers have since become embroiled in a bitter feud and are thought to have not spoken for months, maybe even years.
