'Spare': The biggest revelations in Prince Harry's new memoir

Prince Harry's new memoir, "Spare," offers a no-holds-barred glimpse into the royal family and its deeply-fractured relationships.

Dedicated to "Meg and Archie and Lili ... and, of course, my mother," the new book breaks with the royal protocol to "never complain, never explain," providing unflinching details of his personal life and estrangement from his father, King Charles III, and "beloved" brother, William, who Harry also calls his "arch nemesis."

The title of the new memoir, "Spare," is a nod to a comment Charles allegedly made to Diana after giving birth to their second son saying, "Now, you have given me an heir and a spare — my work is done," and comes on the heels of the recent Netflix documentary "Meghan and Harry."

In the six-part Netflix series, the couple shares details from their life and courtship, including their decision to withdraw from the monarchy in 2020 and Harry's prickly relationship with William. In the final episode, Harry cites a heated family meeting in which Harry says his brother lost his temper.

"It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that just simply weren’t true," and Queen Elizabeth II doing nothing but "quietly sit there and sort of take it all in," Harry reveals in Episode Five.

The admissions were a prelude to far-more blistering allegations made in the new book including an alleged physical attack by William, whom Harry writes "knocked (him) to the floor" during an altercation.

During a different quarrel, Harry writes that the Prince of Wales allegedly pointed at Meghan, calling her "rude." Harry says Meghan replied by telling William to "kindly take your finger out of my face."

According to "Spare" the rift between the royals is nothing short of a "full-scale rupture," and as the shockwaves reverberate from the tell-all memoir, here are some of the most explosive and surprising revelations.

Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace has declined to comment, as has a rep for Prince Harry.

The last time Harry spoke to Diana

The Duke regrets the last conversation he had with his mother, citing a phone conversation the two had the day she died in August 1997.

"She'd called early in the evening, the night of the crash, but 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," Harry says he rushed his mom off the phone and wishes he had apologized for it.

"I wished I'd searched for the words to describe how much I loved her," he writes. "I didn't know that search would take decades."

Kate, Meghan faced off over 'baby brain'

In the weeks leading up to Harry and Meghan's 2018 nuptials, Prince Harry writes that Meghan offended Kate when suggesting she had "baby brain" after the future Princess of Wales had forgotten a detail about one of their pre-wedding conversations.

Kate had given birth to her and Prince William’s third child, Prince Louis, on April 23, 2018, weeks before the May wedding.

According to "Spare," the upset princess said to Meghan of the comment, "You talked about my hormones. We are not close enough for you to talk about my hormones!"

The exchange warranted a reconciliatory tea between the couples after the wedding to smooth things over.

During the meetup, Harry writes Kate gripped the side of her upholstered chair tightly enough to make her fingers turn white, according to the book. While talking, William pointed at Meghan and said her “rude” comment wasn't the way things were done in Britain.

The Duchess then told William to “kindly take your finger out of my face."

Harry writes, "Our staff sensed the friction, read the press, and thus there was frequent bickering around the office. Sides were taken. Team Cambridge versus Team Sussex. Rivalry, jealousy, competing agendas — it all poisoned the atmosphere.”

He says Kate and Meghan had a tearful exchange over a bridesmaid dress

"Baby brain" isn't the only purported pre-wedding incident between the two women.

Kate and Meghan apparently had an exchange over bridesmaid dresses, leaving Meghan "sobbing" on the floor, Harry writes.

According to the book, Kate texted Meghan that daughter, Charlotte's, bridesmaid dress was "too big, too long, too baggy," and that Charlotte "cried when she tried it on at home,"

Harry says Meghan texted Kate back writing, "Right, and I told you the tailor has been standing by since 8am. Here. At KP. Can you take Charlotte to have it altered, as the other mums are doing?”

While rumors swirled at the time that Meghan was the one who made Kate cry, the Duchess of Sussex set the record straight on her version of events during a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.

"A few days before the wedding, she was upset about something, yes, the issue is correct, about the flower girl dresses, and it made me cry and it really hurt my feelings," Meghan says.

Meeting Dodi Fayed for the first time

At the time of her death, Princess Diana was dating Emad “Dodi” Fayed, son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed and a film producer, whose work notably included the 1981 Oscar-winning film, "Chariots of Fire." Fayed also died in the 1997 car crash.

The pair are said to have initially met at a polo matches, but didn't become a couple until almost a decade later.

During the summer that Fayed and Diana dated, Harry recalls he and William visiting St. Tropez, France where they met Fayed for the first time at his father's villa.

"Actually, we’d been with Mummy weeks earlier when she first met him, in St. Tropez," Harry writes. "We were having a grand time, just the three of us, staying at some old gent’s villa.

"There was much laughter, horseplay, the norm whenever Mummy and Willy and I were together, though even more so on that holiday. Everything about that trip to St. Tropez was heaven. The weather was sublime, the food was tasty, Mummy was smiling," he writes.

Fayed was "cheeky," Harry says, but "nice enough."

“As long as Mummy’s happy, I told Willy, who said, he felt the same.”

William and Harry told his father he didn't need to marry Camilla

On meeting the queen consort for the first time, Harry writes that he recalls wondering if she was going to be mean to him, if "she'd be like all the wicked stepmothers in storybooks. But she wasn’t," he says.

Camilla Parker Bowles had long been a fixture in Charles' life. They began dating in the 1970s, and remained intimate after marrying others. Diana famously cited their relationship in the 1995 interview with Panorama's Martin Bashir, saying "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."

Seven years after Diana's death, Charles announced to William and Harry that he was marrying his longtime love.

“The only thing we asked in return was that he not marry her," Harry writes. "You don’t need to remarry, we pleaded. A wedding would cause controversy. It would incite the press. It would make the whole country, the whole world, talk about Mummy, compare Mummy and Camilla, and nobody wanted that," he writes.

Despite their objections, the two married in 2005.

During a recent interview with "60 Minutes," the Duke explained to Anderson Cooper that he hoped Camilla's happiness would make her "less dangerous."

When asked to explain, Harry writes that Camilla's need to "rehabilitate her image," made her "dangerous" because of the allegiance she was forging with the British press to obtain it.

"There was open willingness on both sides to trade of information and with a family built on hierarchy and with her on the way to being queen consort," he says in the interview.

"There was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that," and that he, himself, was one of them, saying in the book that stories with "accurate details" about their private lives began appearing in the press, stories only one person would know.

"And the leaking had obviously been abetted by the new spin doctor Camilla had talked Pa into hiring," he writes.

Diana's death: 'Pa didn't hug me'

On August 31, 1997, Princess Diana died from injuries sustained in a car accident in Paris. Harry recounts his father breaking the news to he and brother William, 12 and 15 at the time.

"They tried, darling boy, I'm afraid she didn't make it," Harry writes in "Spare."

"These phrases remain in my mind like darts on a board," he continues.

According to the Duke of Sussex, his father told him Diana had sustained fatal head injuries in the accident. What he remembers with "startling clarity" is that he didn't cry.

"Not one tear. Pa didn't hug me," he writes in "Spare."

"But his hand did fall once more on my knee and he said: It’s going to be OK. That was quite a lot for him. Fatherly, hopeful, kind. And so very untrue.”

Speaking to Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes," Harry says he felt numb in the days following his mother's death because while greeting mourners outside Kensington Palace, he realized they were more emotional than he and William were with "maybe more emotion than we even felt," he says.

"There was a lot of tears," he says in the interview. "Their hands were wet from wiping their own tears away."

He says he struggled to cry until Diana’s coffin was lowered into the ground. “That was the first time that I actually cried,” he says. “There was never another time.”

He also recalls the silence as he walked behind his mother's coffin, saying, "There wasn’t one human voice, which was impossible, because two million people lined the roads. The only hint that we were marching through a canyon of humanity was the occasional wail."

For years, he believed Diana faked her death

In “Spare,” Harry writes that in the wake of his mother’s death, he found it difficult to grieve not only because he was numb, but also that he believed that might have faked her own death to escape the constant hounding of the press.

“Her life’s been miserable, she’s been hounded, harassed, lied about, lied to. So she’s staged an accident as a diversion and run away,” he writes of his former mindset.

Even after four years, Harry says that he’d often tell himself first thing in the morning that “maybe this is the day” that she’d finally reappear, having “forged a new life, a new identity,” shocking the world and calling for her sons while answering questions from “astonished reporters.”

Harry says he shared the theory with William, who admitted that he had also entertained the idea, but dismissed it saying, “She’s gone, Harold. She’s not coming back.”

“I suppose I knew the truth deep in my heart,” Harry writes. “The illusion of Mummy hiding, preparing to return, was never so real that it could blot out reality entirely. But it blotted it out enough that I was able to postpone the bulk of my grief.”

Harry details a fight between him and his brother William

According to "Spare," the fact that Meghan was a divorced American actress with a Black mother, made her an easy target for the British press.

In the early days of their relationship, the Duke issued a rare press release, going public to condemn the media for what he said was a "wave of abuse and harassment," including a "smear of the front page of a national newspaper" and "racial undertones of comment pieces."

In "Spare," Harry says that the prejudice didn't end there. He says members of the royal family were also biased against Meghan, including William. Harry says he and his brother had a heated argument in 2019 after William came to Nottingham Cottage and complained about Meghan.

“Meg’s difficult, she’s rude. She’s abrasive. She’s alienated half the staff," Harry alleges that "Wills" said, writing, "Not the first time he’d parroted the press narrative.”

"I was defending my wife and he was coming for my wife," Harry tells Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes."

"He was shouting at me. I was shouting back at him. It wasn't nice. It wasn't pleasant at all and he snapped and pushed me to the floor."

He further details the encounter in "Spare," saying that it all happened very fast. "He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace" and knocking him down.

The Duke landed on a dog bowl, which he says broke and cut his back. "I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out."

Before leaving, Harry writes William told him that Meghan didn't need to know about the incident. "You mean that you attacked me?" he writes. "I didn't attack you, Harold," William replies.

Later, though, Harry says Meghan noticed “scrapes and bruises” on his back. After he ultimately told her of the attack, Harry says she “wasn’t that surprised, and wasn’t all that angry. She was terribly sad.”

Harry says Charles and Camilla wanted the spotlight

According to "Spare," Harry writes that Charles and Camilla didn't want William and Kate getting "loads" of publicity. He writes, "Pa and Camilla didn’t like Willy and Kate drawing attention away from them or their causes. They’d openly scolded Willy about it many times."

He writes about a day that his father had an engagement and Kate was scheduled to visit a tennis club.

"Pa's press officer berated Willy's team," Harry writes and alleges that when Kate's event couldn't be rescheduled, the press officer told her she couldn't hold a tennis racquet in any of the photos taken.

"Such a winning, fetching photo would undoubtedly wipe Pa and Camilla off the front pages. And that, in the end, couldn’t be tolerated," he writes.

He used cocaine and other drugs to numb the pain

In his younger days, Harry writes in "Spare" that he struggled "to feel" and "to be different," which led him to experimenting with drugs.

"At someone's house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line, and since then I had consumed some more," he says.

The Duke didn't enjoy the experience, saying, "It wasn't very fun, and it didn't make me feel especially happy as seemed to happen to the others, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective."

Along with using drugs, Harry tells "60 Minutes" that he "resorted to drinking heavily" to help numb his feelings.

"I had a lot of anger inside of me that luckily I never expressed to anybody," he says. For Harry, drugs and alcohol were a way to cope: "I wanted to distract myself from whatever I was thinking."

Those days are behind him, and he says his wife is partly responsible for the change.

"I'm really glad I changed because rather than getting drunk, falling out of clubs, taking drugs, I had now found the love of my life," Harry tells "60 Minutes. "And I now have the opportunity to start a family with her."

Harry watched 'Friends' and went discount clothes shopping

Harry writes in the book that people speculated that being a royal was "glamorous," which is why the young prince was supposedly "clinging" to his bachelor life.

Instead, he says there were many nights he'd think, "If only they could see me now," then would return to "folding (his) underwear and watching 'The One with Monica and Chandler's Wedding.'"

Though Harry says that he received an annual stipend for clothes from his father, it was "strictly for formal wear. Suits and ties, ceremonial outfits."

For his everyday, casual, wardrobe, the Duke of Sussex says he went discount shopping at T.J. Maxx.

"I was particularly fond of their once-a-year sale, when they’d be flush with items from Gap or J.Crew, items that had just gone out of season or were slightly damaged," he writes.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com