MADRID – A Spanish-language version of Spare, the much-awaited memoir of Britain’s Prince Harry, went on sale in book stores in Spain on Thursday, days ahead of its official launch date.

The book reveals details about his relationship with his father, King Charles III; his elder brother, Prince William; and other members of the British royal family that have never been published.

As is usual for the royal family, the spokesmen for King Charles and Prince William have declined to comment.

Here are some of the key details outlined in the book.

Brawl with brother

Prince Harry says Prince William, now heir to the British throne, knocked him to the floor during a 2019 argument at his London home over his American wife Meghan Markle. Prince William called Markle difficult, rude and abrasive, Prince Harry writes.

He says his brother grabbed him by the collar and knocked him to the floor, where Prince Harry says he landed on a dog’s bowl, cracking it. He says he refused his older brother’s challenge to hit back and that the latter later apologised over the incident.

‘Arch-nemesis’

Prince Harry refers to Prince William as his “beloved brother and arch-nemesis”.

“There has always been this competition between us, weirdly,” he said in an interview with American television show Good Morning America set to air next Monday.

“I think it really plays into, or is played by, the ‘heir/spare’ (issue),” he added, referring to his traditionally diminished royal role compared with Prince William, who is first in line to the throne.

‘Misery’

The brothers’ father, King Charles, pleaded with his sons to stop fighting at a meeting after the funeral of his father, Prince Philip, in April 2021. “Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery,” he told them, according to the memoir.

Prince Harry also describes the “secret meeting” as resembling a duel rather than reconciliation. Prince William claimed he did not know why his younger brother had exiled himself in the United States, Prince Harry writes, while his father “was looking at me with an expression that said, ‘me neither’”.

‘Heir and a spare’

Prince Harry writes about his father’s delight when his mother Princess Diana gave birth to him in 1984. King Charles supposedly told his wife that Harry’s arrival meant she had now given him an heir and a spare – and that his work was done.

Camilla

Prince Harry states that he and Prince William “begged” their father not to marry Camilla, with whom King Charles was having an affair while married to their mother. Camilla is now Queen Consort.

He recounts that the brothers said they would not stand in the way of King Charles’ relationship with her, but asked that they did not marry.

Prince Harry also details how he felt when meeting Camilla for the first time, likening it to having an “injection”.

“I remember wondering... if she would be cruel to me; if she would be like all the wicked stepmothers in the stories,” he writes.

Dressing as a Nazi

Prince Harry says he was encouraged by Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton to go dressed as a Nazi to a fancy dress party in 2005, in what he has described elsewhere as “one of the biggest mistakes of my life”.

Major Hewitt rumours

Prince Harry dismisses media rumours that he was the result of an affair between Major James Hewitt and his mother Diana, and suggestions that his father had often joked about not knowing who Prince Harry’s real father was.

He says the idea is absurd, given that his mother did not meet Major Hewitt until long after he was born.

Fight over wedding venues

Prince Harry claims the royal household dragged its feet over the date and venue for his wedding with Markle.

He says when he consulted his brother about the possibility of marrying in Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s Cathedral, Prince William said he could not marry there because they had been venues for the weddings of King Charles and Diana and of Prince William and Middleton respectively.

Instead, he suggested a village chapel near King Charles’ home at Highgrove House in south-west England. Prince Harry and Markle finally got married at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in May 2018.

Taking drugs

Prince Harry says when he was 17, he was offered a line of cocaine at someone’s house and consumed the drug on several other occasions, although he insists media reports suggesting he was a drug addict were false and that he did not enjoy it.

“It wasn’t much fun and it did not make me feel especially happy as it seemed to do to everyone else, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective. I was a 17-year-old boy ready to try anything that altered the pre-established order,” he writes.

He also recounts how, as a student at the exclusive Eton College, he used to smoke cannabis in a bathroom at his house while the Thames Valley police served as his bodyguards, patrolling the exterior of the building.

Seeing a clairvoyant

Prince Harry describes meeting a woman with “powers”, who said she could feel Princess Diana’s spirit. He says the woman was recommended by friends and that, while he had his doubts about her, as soon as he sat down, “I felt an energy around her”.

“Your mother says that you are living the life that she couldn’t live, the life she wanted for you,” he quotes the woman as telling him.

Arctic trip

Prince Harry describes how during a trip to the North Pole, he suffered from the early stages of what appeared to be frostbite, including to his penis. He recounts telling his father about his injuries at a dinner on the eve of Prince William’s wedding.

“My father showed interest and sympathised with me when I mentioned that my ears and cheeks had burned due to the cold. I struggled to contain myself to not talk too much and tell him that my penis had also been affected...”

Afghanistan

Prince Harry says he killed 25 people when serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. He says he participated in six missions, all of which involved deaths, but says he saw them as justifiable as Taliban insurgents wanted to kill his comrades.

“It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it leave me ashamed. When I found myself plunged in the heat and confusion of combat, I didn’t think of those 25 as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bad people eliminated before they could kill Good people.” REUTERS, AFP