Prince Harry is acutely aware of the rumors about his “real father.”
For decades, there’s been speculation thatPrincess Diana‘s former lover James Hewitt is the 38-year-old’s true father (despite the fact that Harry was born in 1984 and the couple’s romance reportedly started in 1987.)
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And allegedly, none other than King Charles III would laugh off the paternity claims, according to Harry’s new memoir, Spare.
“Pa liked telling stories, and this was one of the best in his repertoire,” Harry wrote in the book, per NBC News. He said Charles used to joke, “‘Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your real father? Maybe your real father is in Broadmoor, darling boy!'”
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Recalling how Charles would “laugh and laugh,” Harry went on to say it was “a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumor circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy’s former lovers: Major James Hewitt.”
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“One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt’s flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism,” Harry shared. “Tabloid readers were delighted by the idea that the younger child of Prince Charles wasn’t the child of Prince Charles. They couldn’t get enough of this ‘joke,’ for some reason. Maybe it made them feel better about their lives that a young prince’s life was laughable.”
However, Harry set the record straight by noting in his memoir, “Never mind that my mother didn’t meet Major Hewitt until long after I was born, the story was simply too good to drop.”
James Hewitt, now 64, has also denied the claims, suggesting in 2017 that the rumor only continues to circulate because it “sells papers.” He added, “It’s worse for him probably, poor chap.”
Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the book’s allegations when contacted by NBC News. (E! is a member of the NBCUniversal family.)
Read on for more bombshells from Prince Harry’s book, out Jan. 10.
Harry Regrets the Last Conversation He Had With His MotherHarry last spoke to his mother hours before the car crash that took her life on Aug. 31, 1997—but he regretfully remembers being too preoccupied to really sit down and talk.When she called earlier that night, “I was running around with Willy and my cousins and didn’t want to stop playing,” he writes. “So I’d been short with her. Impatient to get back to my games, I’d rushed Mummy of the phone. I wished I’d apologized for it. I wished I’d searched for the words to describe how much I loved her. I didn’t know that search would take decades.”The Long Walk at Diana’s FuneralAmid differing opinions over whether Harry, still days away from his 13th birthday, and William, 15, should have to walk behind their mother’s coffin in the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey, Harry recalls that another option was considered.”Willy would walk alone. He was fifteen, after all,” Harry writes. “Leave the younger one out of it. Spare the Spare. This alternative plan was sent up the chain. Back came the answer. It must be both princes. To garner sympathy, presumably. Uncle Charles [Spencer, Diana’s brother] was furious. But I wasn’t. I didn’t want Willy to undergo an ordeal like that without me. Had the roles been reversed, he’d never have wanted me—indeed, allowed me—to go it alone.”And so both brothers made the 20-minute walk, with their father, grandfather Prince Philip and their uncle.”I remember feeling numb,” Harry writes. “I remember clenching my fists. I remember keeping a fraction of Willy always in the corner of my vision and drawing loads of strength from that. Most of all I remember the sounds, the clinking bridles and clopping hooves of the six sweaty brown horses, the squeaking wheels of the gun carriage they were hauling. (A relic from the First World War, someone said, which seemed right, since Mummy, much as she loved peace, often seemed a soldier, whether she was warring against the paps or Pa.) I believe I’ll remember those few sounds for the rest of my life, because they were such a sharp contrast to the otherwise all-encompassing silence.”
