would be a quieter year

after the drama and tragedy of 2022,

then the release of Prince Harry's autobiography, "Spare,"

has just about destroyed all hope.

- A lot of you tonight have told me you have my back.

Well, I'm also here to tell you I've always got yours.

- [Narrator] The book has caused international frenzy

amongst the media, and the public.

Opinion is now more divided than ever

on whether Prince Harry should retain his royal titles.

- Categorically, no negative story was ever planted with me,

and I was the royal editor of The Mail on Sunday

and The Sun, two of the biggest tabloids in Britain.

- [Narrator] Though Harry and Meghan fled the royal family

for a second chance at the private life

they've always wanted,

the world refused to let them go quietly.

Despite their escape,

the media's continued attention

caused a barrage of headlines,

flaring up rumor after scandalous rumor about the couple

and the royal family.

In order to set the record straight,

they decided to tell their own side of the story,

giving a tell-all series of interviews, podcasts,

and Netflix documentary series.

- [Reporter] Have you had a chance

to read a brother's book at all?

- [Narrator] But eclipsing all of the revelation

shared previously, in January, 2023,

Harry released his controversial

and much anticipated autobiography, "Spare."

- Harry's been the one to sort of pull the lever

and say, "Enough."

- [Narrator] Despite their escape,

the media's continued attention

caused a barrage of headlines,

flaring up rumor after scandalous rumor about the couple

and the royal family.

- They feel very wronged,

but they can't ask for privacy

when they've made the Netflix series,

it's opening up a can of worms.

- You'll watch that series

and think, "The royal family need looking after,

they've come out of it better."

Or you'll be on the side of Harry and Meghan and think,

"Wow, they had to put up with a lot and I'm on their side."

- [Narrator 2] She's becoming a royal rockstar.

(people cheering)

- And then- - Everything changed.

There's a hierarchy of the family.

There's leaking, but there's also planting of stories.

- There was a war against Meghan

to suit other people's agendas.

- It's about hatred.

It's about race. - It's a dirty game.

- I think there's a sort of sense of both disappointment

and exasperation at the palace,

that the couple feel a need to keep going on

about how miserable they were

in their royal existence.

At the same time, the couple feel that they need

to keep telling the world why they left.

- [Narrator] Unlike anything seen before

from the royal family,

perhaps the only close in comparison

to the intimate details shared by the couple

is the Panorama interview that Princess Diana gave in 1995.

- To cope with your new status on your own.

Do you feel that was your experience?

- Yes, I do, on reflection,

but then here was a situation

which hadn't ever happened before in history,

in the sense that the media were everywhere,

and here was a fairy story that everybody wanted to work.

And so it was isolating,

but it was also a situation where you couldn't indulge

in feeling sorry for yourself.

You had to either sink or swim,

and you had to learn that very fast.

- [Narrator] On the 10th of January, 2023,

Prince Harry's autobiography, "Spare" was released.

This highly anticipated book tells his side of the story

from the very beginning,

and delivers lurid detail about his life.

However, only days before its release in the UK,

a leaked copy of the book surfaced,

with copies going on sale early in Spain.

- There's been parts of it shared

that shocked, surprised me,

because there's things that he's talked about

that royals just don't talk about.

I can expect of a celebrity,

I can expect even maybe from a politician,

but when it comes to royals,

there's certain things and certain parts of bodies

and things they don't talk about,

and he's been talking about it.

So it's a very frank

and he wants people to understand what makes him tick,

I think it's the easiest way to explain it.

- Confidently sold at half price already.

I think it's terrible for him to reveal his difficulties

and unhappiness in public like this.

I mean, maybe he thinks it helps him, but I can't see how.

- I think if he were truly committed

to serving other people,

he wouldn't be serving his interests as he is.

- [Narrator] From the leaked Spanish copy,

news outlets in the UK shared that in "Spare,"

Harry recounts how he was allegedly physically attacked

by his older brother, Prince William.

Going into never heard before detail,

he describes how their relationship fell apart

over Harry's relationship with Meghan,

the Duchess of Sussex.

In a moment of high emotion,

Harry states, William called Meghan, difficult,

rude, and abusive.

Harry shared, "How William grabbed me by the collar,

ripping my necklace, and knocked me to the floor."

This account of the altercation ends

with William's suggestion to keep it from Meghan.

And although Harry kept it to himself,

Meghan noticed the bruises on his back.

He recalls she wasn't that surprised,

and wasn't all that angry, and instead she was terribly sad.

- So the thing with the royal family is the biggest thing

to them is trust.

That's the be-all and end-all is trust.

And once you've lost that, it's gone.

And I think that war has been lost.

I think that will have gone.

However, Harry is still the King's son.

He's only got two boys.

I know the King loves and adores both boys equally.

I witnessed that a lot, on many occasions.

I know how much that love is.

Just as the Queen loved him as well.

And I don't think anything could change that.

I really don't.

I really believe that that kinda love cannot be destroyed.

But from the public point of view,

there is the embarrassment part and the awkwardness of that.

And I think that part,

a door will be closed on that part.

But behind the scenes, as far as the love

between a father and son, I don't know.

I'd like to think that one day that's fixed,

one day they can fix that,

even though the relationship

in the public might never be the same again.

It'd be nice to think that one day behind closed doors,

they can heal that part of the relationship,

that is possible, I think.

- [Narrator] Other revelations of the book reveal

that Harry killed 25 people while serving in Afghanistan,

and admits that he took cocaine, age 17.

These claims angered the military

and posed a potential risk to his US visa.

- I think Prince Harry's comments about Afghanistan

are ill-judged and potentially harmful both to him,

but also to the British Army as a whole.

And in the first case,

I think that he's already under security threat,

but specifying and spelling out so publicly

that he's killed 25 Taliban,

where there's nothing to be ashamed of,

in fact, it's something to be proud of.

It will refocus

and I think probably re-energize those people

who had in the past thought of taking revenge against him

for doing so.

So I think that's a pretty serious implication

for his personal security.

- [Narrator] Harry also recounts fond memories

of his time with his mother,

and his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth.

He describes immensely private conversations

and also mentions attending his grandfather's funeral,

after which his father, King Charles the third,

asks William and Harry not to make his life a misery.

- Well, in Harry's memoir,

there's a reported conversation

after Prince Phillip's funeral

where Charles says to his sons,

"Please boys, don't make my final years miserable."

Now, we have no way of knowing if that's true or not.

Like a lot of the stories in Harry's book,

it might be exaggerated, it might be completely false,

it might be a verbatim recording of what happened.

But I do feel that his referring to his final years

is an interesting idea,

because he has no way of knowing how long he's gonna live,

I mean, none of us do.

But what I think he wants to do during his reign,

is for it not to be miserable,

for it to be an uplifting and cathartic experience.

Because I think what he would like is that when he dies,

for the country to be in a better place

than when he became king,

I mean we can only hope that he's proved right.

But certainly, a spat between his sons

is not gonna go away anytime soon.

- [Narrator] Harry seems to be doing everything

to avoid responsibility.

As he claims,

William and Kate laughed at his infamous Nazi costume

he wore to a party in 2005,

which he described in their Netflix documentary

as, "One of the biggest mistakes in my life."

In a sit down interview released before the book

with "60 Minutes,"

Harry shares his wish to be a part of the family again.

As revelations continue to emerge,

it remains unknown whether Prince Harry

will attend his father's coronation in May,

and if it will be possible to rectify their relationship.

- I think that the general public, the public at large,

would be amazed if they knew the level of manipulation

and negotiation that goes on between the royal households

and tabloid editors and newspaper editors.

- I mean, I've given this so much thought,

I would say categorically, no negative story

was ever planted with me, given to me.

And I was the royal editor of The Mail on Sunday

and The Sun,

two of the biggest tabloids in Britain.

- [Narrator] As revelations continue to emerge,

it remains unknown whether Prince Harry will attend

his father's coronation in May,

and if it will be possible to rectify their relationship.

- My feeling about the Harry-Meghan situation

is for Harry is an attention seeking imbecile

who has created a difficulty for his family

that never needed to be created.

I feel sorry for him on a human level,

I feel sorry for what he's been through.

I feel sorry for all the things he went through as a child,

but the fact he has decided to take out his frustrations

and vexations not just on his family,

but right now, it seems the world at large.

I mean, it's a story that never needs to exist.

It's just going on and on and on.

- To be, I suspect, an element of whingeing in this book,

which I think, we've kind of got the message now.

And if he was to come out with some deep dark secrets

about the royal family that we don't know,

I would think that would reflect very badly on him.