Details from Prince Harry’s memoir have been grabbing headlines this week all over the place, giving those who feed on Royal Family news a lot to feast on. A salacious tidbit that stands out is allegations about Harry’s father King Charles and the public allegations that another man was truly the prince’s father.
In Spare, Harry talks about growing up while those rumors would float around. He also shares that King Charles apparently enjoyed poking fun at the situation. “Pa liked telling stories, and this was one of the best in his repertoire. He’d always end with a burst of philosophizing … Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your real father?,” the new king reportedly said. “He’d laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumor circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy’s former lovers: Major James Hewitt. One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt’s flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism.”
Videos by PopCulture.com
Harry does indicate that Charles never made the comments or addressed the rumors about Hewitt directly with him, but tabloid coverage of the rumor left enough impact on the young prince. “Maybe it made them feel better about their lives that a young prince’s life was laugh-able. Never mind that my mother didn’t meet Major Hewitt until long after I was born,” Harry added.
Princess Diana famously had a five-year affair with Hewitt after a meeting at a dinner party in 1986. Both Diana and King Charles started to have affairs around the same time, though his connection to Queen Consort Camilla runs a bit deeper. Hewitt didn’t do himself any favors with his affair with Diana, attempting to sell love letters from the late princess after her death. As Page Six adds, this earned him the title of “Britan’s biggest cad.”
2019 saw Anna Pasternak writing about the affair in her book Princess In Love, addressing the lengths the couple would go to with their affair. “Hewitt was regularly bundled into car boots [trunks] and driven to Kensington Palace when their affair ensued,” she wrote in The Daily Mail, according to Page Six. “He told me he was terrified the first night he stayed in Kensington Palace, relieved at least that Charles and Diana had separate bedrooms.”
