The Duke of Sussex with the branded the Prince of Wales
(Picture: PA Archive)Prince Harry has claimed his brother William was jealous when he heard about the plan for the Invictus Games.
Writing in Spare, Harry said William “appeared supremely irritated” when he explained the idea of holding the tournament for wounded and sick veterans and serving members of the armed forces.
He suggested William was worried the event, launched in 2014, would drain money from the Royal Foundation — the charity the brothers founded in 2009. Harry branded the idea “absurd” and blamed it on “rivalry between brothers”.
He wrote: “Had we not gotten over that? All of that stuff about the heir versus the replacement? Were we not a bit too old for that tiring, child-like dynamic?
“He was married and had a baby on the way. Meanwhile, I would order food alone and do my dishes in front of the sink. My father’s sink! I still lived with my dad. The game is over, man. You win.”
The row is one in a series of niggling complaints described at great length in the book, including a claim William was left “livid” after the Queen gave Harry permission to keep his beard for his wedding.
He speculated William was upset because he worried the Queen had a “soft spot” for Harry and that the row went on for a week with several angry calls, including one where William “actually ordered me, as the ‘heir’ speaking to the ‘spare’, to shave.”
Harry said his brother was upset as he had been made to lose his beard when he got married and “he hated the idea of me enjoying a perk he’d been denied.”
The book also includes jibes from Harry about his brother’s “alarming” baldness which he describes as more “advanced than mine” while he also comments that William’s resemblance to their mother, Princess Diana, has “faded”.
Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace have declined to comment on the leaked claims from Harry’s book which emerged days before the explosive, tell-all memoir is due to be published.
In it, Harry reportedly claimed that his brother “felt tremendous guilt” for not speaking up about his father’s affair with Camilla. The autobiography, which is ghost-written by JR Moehringer, alleges that Charles once joked to Harry: “Who knows if I’m even your real father?” Harry said it was in “bad taste” due to talk about a five-year affair between Diana and cavalry officer James Hewitt.
