Prince Harry’s intimate confessions raise puzzled questions

A competent PR campaign to promote a bestseller or a dirty scandal that shocks the foundations of the British monarchy? Whatever it was, the release of Prince Harry’s memoir The Spare made a big buzz. Not only tabloids, but also quite respectable media share the most striking passages from the autobiography of the youngest son of the King of Great Britain.

Prince Harry details the loss of his virginity to an older woman who treated him like a ‘young stallion’ In the pages of The Spare, the Duke of Sussex also admits that he used a wide range of illegal substances, which caused him strange hallucinations.

Harry, now 38, opens up about his first sexual experience. The outdoor date that ended his virginity happened when he was an Eton student in 2001, he says. The youngest son of the current King Charles III would have been 17 years old at the time.

“Infamous episode,” characterizes the “romantic story” of Harry. “She loved horses, quite a lot, and treated me almost like a young stallion. A quick ride, after which she slapped my bottom and sent me on my way … It happened on a grassy field behind a busy pub.

The British prince did not identify this woman on the pages of his memoirs. It was suspected for years that he lost his virginity to Elizabeth Hurley, who is 19 years his senior. However, the British model and actress, who is now 57 years old, categorically denied these speculations. In November, The Real Housewives star Katherine Ommanni revealed that she had been having an affair with Harry for a month when she was a 34-year-old mother of two. She noted that at the time he was 21 years old.

Harry dated 37-year-old businesswoman Chelsea Davy on and off from 2004 to 2011. He was also romantically involved with Caroline Flack, an English TV presenter who died in 2020 at the age of 40, as well as Camila Romestrand and Ellie Goulding before he entered into a relationship with Meghan Markle in 2016. And as you know, it was this American actress, who starred in the TV series Suits, who became the Duchess of Sussex when she married Harry in 2018.

Sexual contact wasn’t the only memory the father-of-two has of his hangouts. In the book, Harry says that at the age of 17 he took cocaine several times, he also admitted that he used other drugs that caused him to hallucinate that the toilet was talking to him.

Also, Harry made some revelations about his time in the military. He spent ten years in the British Army, having been to Afghanistan twice. He claims that during his second deployment as an Apache co-pilot and gunner in 2012 and 2013, he killed 25 Taliban militants. Harry claims that he felt neither satisfaction nor shame for his actions – and in the heat of battle viewed enemy fighters as pieces being removed from the chessboard, or as “evil guys eliminated before they could kill the good ones.”

British veterans criticized the comments, which they believe could increase the risk to Harry’s safety. Retired Colonel Richard Kemp said it was “an error of judgment” and treating enemy fighters like chess pieces is “not the way the British Army teaches”.

“I think these kinds of comments that don’t reflect reality are misleading and potentially valuable to those people who wish the British forces and the British government harm,” the retired colonel told the BBC. Foreign Ministry spokesman to the Afghan Taliban government, Abdul Kahar Balkhi, called the Western invasion of Afghanistan “odious” and said Harry’s comments “are a microcosm of the trauma experienced by Afghans at the hands of the occupying forces, who were killing innocent people without any accountability.”

Harry’s story is dominated by his rivalry with his older brother, Prince William, who became heir to the throne, and the death of their mother, Princess Diana, in 1997. Harry, who was 12 at the time, never forgave the media for Diana’s death in a car crash while being chased by photographers. She was 36 at the time of her death. The loss of his mother runs throughout the book, which Harry dedicates to his 41-year-old wife Meghan, as well as his two children “and, of course, my mother.”

The first chapter describes how the then Crown Prince Charles broke the news of Diana’s accident to his son. Harry claims that his father didn’t hug him back then. The Duke of Sussex says that years later he asked his driver to take him through the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, the scene of a fatal crash, hoping in vain that it would help end “a decade of unrelenting pain.” He also writes that he once consulted a woman who claimed to have “powers” and be able to relay messages from Diana.

Harry is also tormented by his status as the royal “spare” after William (which, in fact, was taken out in the title of the memoirs). He talks about a long-standing sibling rivalry that escalated after he started dating Markle. Prince claims that during an argument in 2019, William called Meghan “difficult” and “rude” and then grabbed him by the collar and knocked him down. Harry received cuts and bruises from falling onto the dog bowl.

Harry wrote that Charles begged the brothers to reconcile, saying after Prince Philip’s funeral in 2021: “Please boys. Don’t make my last years misery.”